Gov. Charlie Crist on Monday unveiled a new Web site - floridaperforms.com - that outlines 35 of his goals for the state and rates the progress of each as improving, maintaining or worsening. Citizens will find mostly high grades when they check how Florida is doing in public safety, education, transportation, education, economy-taxes and environment-conservation. A color-coded arrow shows the trend for three to seven subjects in each area - green for improving, red for worse and yellow for steady. The data to determine the trends comes from the state agencies and the Legislature.

The purpose of the site, Crist stated, is "to work harder, to be more accountable, to be more responsible and to provide [the people] with services they expect and deserve and should have."

One of the two areas showing a downward performance is "access to health care/rehabilitative services," where things are "worsening," according to the Web site. The scorecard includes the finding that the U.S. census reports Florida is 47th among the states in percentage of population with health insurance. The second area showing a significant downward performance is the "housing market", where the website states, "Housing has slowed substantially, both in construction and sales over the past year. Single family building permits dropped by more than 25%, while the number of existing single-family homes sold by realtors witnessed a similar decline."

INPUT's Take

• Transparency, Transparency, Transparency...Government accountability means that public officials -- elected and un-elected -- have an obligation to explain their decisions and actions to the citizens. As budgets tighten, and constituents become more educated and demand more insight into State's decisions, INPUT anticipates more state Governors to pass into law transparency related bills expected to be introduced in upcoming legislative sessions. As a result, more online websites tracking "scorecards" of governors' goals and initiatives and how the states are meeting them will be developed and available to constituents to view.