Albuquerque did it. The state of New Mexico got it done. Santa Fe County put it up. Even Clovis Municipal Schools publishes a list of employee salaries online.

Why can't the city of Santa Fe?

Santa Fe has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into various websites that include information such as bus schedules, minutes of government meetings and the amount of water released daily from municipal reservoirs.

Recently, the Finance Department posted more details than ever about annual reviews of the city's bank accounts, investments and budget. But basic salary information for individual government jobs is not available on any city website.

Ask Santa Fe's Media and Marketing Manager Carla Lopez about the holdup, and she says it boils down to two things: time and money.

"Anything is possible," she said, "It's just a matter of how much money we can spend on it."

Another factor in providing public access to databases such as what some people call a city's "check register," she said, is the city workers have to learn how to use content-management systems and provide them regular attention for accuracy.

When she asked Albuquerque workers about how they accomplished that city's "sunshine portal," she learned that five full-time employees spend about nine months on the project and that the city has its own in-house programmers. Those resources just aren't available to her, Lopez said, which is why even complying with a transparency resolution passed by the Santa Fe City Council about a year ago has been a tall order.

Santa Fe is negotiating a new contract for its online information systems since a four-year deal with Civic Plus is expiring, she said. But the new provider might not result in an abundance of content that is not already available. What she hopes will change, she said, is that data will be easier to find.

"What we have now is not searchable," she said.

There is another way interested readers can get the information today, however. The Rio Grande Foundation recently acquired and posted Santa Fe's city employee salaries along with similar information from nearly 50 local jurisdictions in New Mexico after requesting the electronic databases.

"The number of average citizens that are interested in looking at this data is somewhat limited, but the number of media and bloggers that are interested in it has been quite large," said Paul Gessing, the foundation's executive director, who added later that the group didn't do anything unique, it simply asked for and published public information.

The best-case scenario is not for the independent foundation or one like it to be the repository for this kind of information, he said, but the ideal is that governments themselves will move toward greater transparency by posting the information in a searchable format.

Just asking for the information has produce that result in some circumstances, including that the Clovis schools voluntarily posted its salary data recently, he said.

While he's wanted to undertake the project for years, it was only with the help of a new state law that it became practical in 2011. Lawmakers this year required public agencies to release data in electronic format.

"This is one step in a series of steps that we really need to undertake in terms of government transparency and openness," Gessing said. "There is a long way to go."

The League of Women Voters of Santa Fe County is happy that the city in October adopted a resolution agreeing to develop better transparency policies, said Jody Larson, chair of the league's Action Committee and a board member.

"They are headed in the right direction," she said, adding a caveat that "for people who are actively involved in issues like this, it's difficult to understand why they can't just jump in with both feet and really make a go of it."

The league, she said, is now watching what happens next.

"It's one thing to have a transparency resolution," said Larson. "It's another to see how things actually work."

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.