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At Civil Beat, we often tell you that we’re committed to transparency.

We’ve tried to share with you over the past few months what that means in practice. For example, we’ve written about our open records requests and told you how the government has responded. In our articles and topic pages, we’ve shared links to the primary source documents we’ve used — usually from a government entity — so you can judge for yourself whether what we’re reporting is accurate and fair. And we’ve posted massive government documents on the site to make it possible for you to review important studies, such as the Final Environmental Impact Statement for Honolulu’s rail project.

The reason behind this approach: To enable you to learn more about and understand local issues. One such issue is the cost of government.

This week we’re going to take another step and publish a list of names of more than 14,000 state employees and their salaries or, in the case of some unionized workers, the salary range for their job. We believe it’s critical to open the window on how government compensates its staff, and will be publishing more such databases in coming weeks.

It was nearly 100 years ago that described sunlight as the best of disinfectants. The presumption in U.S. law is that government spending needs to be transparent so citizens can understand where and how their money is being spent. When they lack that understanding, the potential for abuse is higher and their ability to make decisions on how their tax dollars should be spent is diminished.

It’s my belief that the more the public knows about how the government spends the public’s money, the more likely that money will be well spent.

Salary figures reveal what work we value most and what work we value least. Salaries are the biggest single expense of state government, with some estimates putting the total at 60 percent of the budget. Yet little is known about how the money is actually spent. Sunlight makes it far more likely that no special deals will be cut. It goes a long way toward making sure that basic inequities will not be allowed to persist.

We’ve seen a particularly egregious example of that recently in Southern California, where the that the small city of Bell was paying its city manager almost $800,000 a year and its police chief more than $450,000 a year.

It all starts with us, the citizens. If we know what’s going on, we’re more likely to make good decisions. With the publication of specific information, such as the salary database, the public is much more likely to be able to evaluate whether they agree with how the government is spending their money and government employees are reminded that they truly do work for the public.

Sunshine Review, a nonprofit organization dedicated to state and local government transparency, to such databases from many other states. Absent, however, is Hawaii. We understand Hawaii is unique. But with something like government transparency, we believe it’s a basic right for citizens to know how government spends their money.

When you come to the site on Wednesday, you’ll find stories about the best paid workers in state government and the workers who’re making the least. But most important, you’ll find a PDF with the names of more than 14,000 state workers. The document will include their salary or salary range, department and job title. These documents will be available to everyone for free.

We’ll also include an example of a sortable database to show you what we’re offering our full members. (We have a special Election offer right now, half-off for the first three months.) Members will be able to sort the data by any field. So, for example, if they want to sort the salaries from highest to lowest, they’ll be able to do that.

We hope that you find this service valuable.