Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt took to the bully pulpit this month, boasting in his State of the State message about his new Missouri Accountability Portal and pressuring legislators to make it permanent.

The Missouri Accountability Portal (or MAP, as in mapyourtaxes.mo.gov) is a searchable Web site where Missourians can find detailed information about their state budget. Not just broad sums of appropriations, but specific expenditures.

Texas has a similar site, and at least five other states are establishing their own. Even the federal government launched a version last month, in compliance with the 2006 federal Transparency Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, and Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat.

Now, depending on what happens during the next few weeks in Olympia, Washington could join the movement. Lawmakers should make sure it does.

It’s not that state spending isn’t already public information, but digging it out in meaningful detail is enough to tax the skills and patience of most of us. In bill form, for example, the state budget is hundreds of pages long, and finding anything specific means poring over documents compiled and maintained by agencies and the Legislature.

A searchable Web site would bring all that information together, preferably in standardized format, and put it online where an interested resident could get speedy answers to plain-language questions.

No need to understand the intricacies of the legislative process. No need to speak the insiders’ jargon.

The Washington Policy Center, a conservative, Seattle-based think tank and an outspoken advocate of the idea, notes that the Legislature will be spending some $71 billion over the current biennium.

Breaking that down into chunks that mean something to the average resident is possible, but only if lawmakers take advantage of available technology.

It helps, in this case, that software giant Microsoft is nearby, in Redmond, eager to get its foot in the door that rival Google has commanded at the federal level and in those other pioneering states. Microsoft has declared its willingness to help out.

As a practical matter, members of the general public may turn out to be the biggest users of this resource, once it’s in place. It’s bound to be highly popular among government workers, journalists, political campaigns, lobbyists, even legislators. All the more reason to make sure private individuals have the same access to information they need to be effective citizen-overseers.

Missouri’s Gov. Blunt obviously saw the Missouri Accountability Portal as an accomplishment worth promoting to grateful constituents.

Washington residents deserve the same consideration from their government.