Hawaii’s Department of Budget and Finance last year launched a new website designed to provide a one-stop source for state spending and financial information, but the state still earned only a grade of "C" on the latest "transparency scorecard."

Hawaii trails 42 other states in the annual report on how well states provide spending data online, conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund.

Hawaii’s 15-month-old website was specifically dinged for failing to provide critical information for Hawaii’s four biggest subsidy programs: the Capital Goods Excise Tax Credit; Employment and Training Fund Statewide Training Grants; Enterprise Zones; and the Film & Digital Media Income Tax Credit (Act 88).

"Ideally the gold standard would be that you could say exactly who got these credits — or special grants — from the state, how many jobs or benefits they promised in return, and did they actually do what was promised?" said Phineas Baxandall, director of the U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s tax and budget program. "That information is what some states provide. Hawaii just comes up a big goose egg. They had none of that information."

Hawaii also comes up short in providing information for "quasi-public agencies" that "run as a government organization outside of the general budget," Baxandall said.

"They could be a licensing board for barbers," he said. "At best they’re independent professionals. At worse, they’re a shadow agency. We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with having a quasi-public agency. But it escapes scrutiny. They’re outside of the general budget so they’re less accountable to the public because there isn’t that legislative check and balance. This is something that is important to be shining a light on because it could be a place for mischief."

Overall, the U.S. PIRG Education Fund categorized Hawaii as one of 13 "Middling C States."

But Hawaii’s score of 71 points — out of a possible 100 — meant 10 other states with "C" grades had better scores, including Mississippi, Georgia and West Virginia.

Every year, the U.S. PIRG Education Fund is asked whether states that are dominated by one party — such as Hawaii — do better or worse in online government transparency than states that share political power.

"No matter how we crunch the numbers, it’s a nonpartisan issue," Baxandall said. "It doesn’t depend on what party people are coming from when it comes to how well they do on transparency."

At the end of 2013, Hawaii was one of "only a few states" that lacked a website to provide state financial information, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund’s 2014 report.

The new website the Department of Budget and Finance launched in January 2014 is easy to use and provides contract information for spending on health and human services and construction, among other areas, and provides links to state tax expenditure reports and tax collection reports, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.

"This one-stop tool is a major improvement and demonstrates the state government’s commitment to transparency in spending," the group said.

But the U.S. PIRG Education Fund contends Hawaii’s transparency website can get better.

Specifically, U.S. PIRG Education Fund said, the website needs to provide more details on programs that receive state subsidies or tax credits.

For now, the group said, Hawaii’s transparency website does not provide enough information for the public to understand the "actual public benefit created" by subsidy programs.