Sunlight on the Spending: SBISD’s Check Register, Now Searchable

Public business should be done in public. That is not a slogan. It is the reason this site exists.

Today matthewtcone.com adds the page the district never built for you: a citizen’s edition of the official check register. Search it. Filter it. Total it by fiscal year. Download the CSVs. Read the methodology. Then decide for yourself.

Go there: matthewtcone.com/sbisd-check-register.html — also in the nav as Spending.

Sunlight, not spin. Documented facts — not anonymous garbage.

What changed on this site

The Official Desk of Matt Cone is the permanent record of the fight for honest elections, transparent governance, and schools that put kids first. The archive of open letters stays. The case facts on The Record stay. What was missing was the money — in a form a parent can actually use.

The district already posts a check register at checkregister.springbranchisd.com. Month by month. Vendor, date, amount, void flag. That is the source. We did not invent the payments. We pulled sixty-one months of them, put them in one place, and stopped pretending a month-by-month scavenger hunt is transparency.

If they take the official register down tomorrow, this snapshot still stands: July 2021 through July 2026. That is the archive. That is the point.

The numbers — from their own file

Net of voids, Spring Branch ISD’s published vendor payments over that stretch:

• 97,561 transactions (96,326 non-void; 1,235 voids)
• $1.953 billion net · 9,896 vendor names
• FY2022 $356.0M · FY2023 $395.2M · FY2024 $373.2M · FY2025 $382.1M · FY2026 $414.5M
• Largest construction name on the file: Durotech, $209.0 million
• TRS-Health insurance premiums: $324.1 million
• IRS remittances: $153.4 million

Fiscal years here run July–June, same as the district. FY2027 on the page is July 2026 only. Partial, and labeled that way.

What this page is — and what it is not

It is a vendor check register. Cash out the door to named payees. You can search DUROTECH. You can search Alonti Catering. You can search a trustee’s name. You can download every row as CSV.

It is not payroll. Teacher paychecks, most direct deposit, and the TRS pension match live in Skyward and in the ACFR — not as a vendor row you can Google. Instruction in the FY2024 ACFR was about $246.4 million (TEA function 11, all governmental funds). That iceberg is salaries. This page is everything around it.

It is not an accusation of fraud. Heuristic flags — large payments, one-time vendors, catering, travel, year-over-year spikes — are tools for public review. They do not allege a crime. A clean opinion from Whitley Penn means the statements are fairly presented under GAAP. It does not mean every catering invoice was wise, or that $147,876 in HCTRA-Violations over five years is how a serious district runs a fleet.

Flags are automated. They will catch Nothing Bundt Cakes and they will also catch a person-name pattern that is actually PPG Paints. Read the methodology on the page. Then open the invoice.

How to use it in five minutes

1. Open Spending.
2. Read the totals. Then scroll to Items for further public review — 488 flags, 36 labeled high.
3. Search a vendor. Filter a fiscal year. Sort by amount.
4. Download the CSVs. They are yours. The underlying payments are public.
5. If a line does not make sense, email the Board. Demand the contract, the bid tab, and the invoice.

The administration reports to the Board of Trustees. The Board represents you. A register nobody can search is not representation. It is a filing cabinet.

What belongs in the same sunlight

Bond programs, recapture, and a looming structural gap do not get lighter because the check register is now searchable. They get heavier. Christine Porter has already told this Board, on the record, that bond money moved before formal approval. Jeannette Muecke sat on Bond Oversight while her husband ran an unregistered political operation. Whitley Penn signed unmodified opinions. Those letters are already on The Desk. The register is the missing exhibit.

Use it. Share it. Do not wait for the next bond brochure to tell you how careful they were.

If you want the official month-by-month source, it is still checkregister.springbranchisd.com. If you want it in one place, with totals, charts, flags, and downloads, it is here.

God bless America, and God bless Spring Branch.

In the fight for transparency and accountability,
Matthew Cone
August 20, 2026
Matt@MatthewTCone.com · matthewtcone.com