Was a stimulus side-effect:
The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory. … All totaled, 40 states now have transparency websites that provide checkbook-level information on government spending. “I think the stimulus requirements set a new standard for states,” [analyst Phineas Baxandall] says. “A lot of what states started doing was really mimicking what they had done with their stimulus transparency.”
The Dish 