Rogers County, Oklahoma
An Oklahoma County Transforms its Budgeting and Wins GFOA Awards Each Year

Primary Objective

Budgeting Goals With an Eye on the Prize

To modernize budgeting practices, improve transparency, and win the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award.

Challenge

Archaic Tools and a Trust Deficit

Named for famed Oklahoman actor/humorist Will Rogers, Rogers County sits just northeast of Tulsa. When Treasurer Jason Carini took office in 2015, he brought a clear mission: modernize outdated budget processes and rebuild public trust after years of turmoil. “I love what we do here at county government,” Carini says. “I’m always thinking a little bit long-term and thinking outside the box.”

Before ClearGov, Rogers County had no budget book. Instead, the county published financial documents that the Oklahoma State Auditor’s office requires all 77 counties to use. The state auditor’s documents were available online but lacked transparency and accessibility, especially for residents. Carini called them, “hard to read,” even for financial professionals. 

The county also used an assortment of Excel spreadsheets to organize its budget for viewing. The Excel spreadsheets were controlled by a single person, and others couldn’t access them until it was time to finalize the budget. This created a high-stress environment where elected officials were frequently surprised by budget cuts they had no visibility into. Staff often entered budget discussions blind, having not seen any numbers until the moment of adoption.

Personnel budgeting was especially difficult. Staff had to manually estimate salaries, benefits, and potential raises using Excel, often overcompensating to avoid shortfalls. All in all, budgeting was a time-consuming and error-prone process.

Solution

All In With a One-and-Done Platform

After being exposed to the GFOA, Carini aspired to win the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award. That ambition led him to discover ClearGov, and from the start, he was amazed with the product functionality. He did one demo, immediately started using ClearGov, and never looked back.

Digital Budget Book’s built-in checklist helped Carini meet the necessary criteria to win the award. Rogers County later expanded to include Personnel Budgeting and Operational Budgeting within the Treasury department. Carini loved Personnel Budgeting’s scenario planning capabilities, which allow him to run various scenarios and see their impact on budgets.

Carini also loved Operational Budgeting’s ability to line-item budget and compare items year over year. “One of the great things I love about ClearGov Operational Budgeting, and then, of course, how it ties into Digital Budget Book, is the fact that we can line item. So, if someone has $30,000 in maintenance and operation costs, we can actually see what those items are. And then, Operational Budgeting compares it year to year, so you can see the trend on that one specific item rather than at the account level,” Carini said.

Every year since we engaged ClearGov, we have won the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award, year after year after year. We’re going on to year five.

Implementation

Strong Partnership, Smooth Launch

Once Rogers County signed on, onboarding was quick and personalized. Carini uploaded the data, and ClearGov did the rest, pairing him with a dedicated point of contact who handled troubleshooting and fine-tuning. ClearGov’s support team also stepped in to help clean up data issues that weren’t initially obvious to staff, ensuring accuracy and alignment before publishing.

Results

Transparency, Efficiency, and Multiple GFOA Award Wins in a Row

Rogers County achieved a number of benefits with ClearGov Digital Budget Book, Operational Budgeting, and Personnel Budgeting:

• Repeated GFOA Recognition: Digital Budget Book’s built-in checklists for the GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Award has helped Rogers County earn the award every year since adopting ClearGov. 

• Tremendous Time Savings: The budgeting process that once took two staff members nearly 700 hours of full-time work to accomplish now takes only 20-40 hours of part-time work. 

• Precise Payroll Planning: Personnel Budgeting’s scenario-planning capabilities made it easy to model salary changes such as COLAs and understand their budget impact with a single click. And Personnel Budgeting’s position-based salary estimator allowed staff to factor in wages, insurance, and benefits with precision, removing the guesswork of previous years.

• A Long-Term View: Operational Budgeting’s multi-year budgeting capability enabled the county to compare specific budget items across different years, helping staff identify trends and improve long-term planning accuracy. 

• Manual Charts No More: Automatic updates to charts and graphs eliminated the need to manually revise figures as data changed, reducing the risk of errors and simplifying updates throughout the budgeting process. 

• Internal and External Transparency: Staff across departments now have shared login access to view budget data. This shared visibility has helped eliminate confusion and foster teamwork. Meanwhile, complex auditor data is now presented in a visual, accessible format the public can easily understand.

Rogers County turned an outdated, opaque budgeting process into a streamlined, award-winning operation. From internal clarity to public trust, the difference has been night and day for Carini and Rogers County. ClearGov made it possible, and it can help your government do the same.

I just like ClearGov Personnel Budgeting because I felt like it gives a much more accurate estimate. If you want to do, say, a COLA each year, with the press of a button on Personnel Budgeting, you get all that data at your fingertips.

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