Among the state’s biggest cities, several Dallas-area suburbs tallied the highest rate of requests to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last year to keep government information secret, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation.

Lawmakers say they want transparency and that the public should be able to see their finances. But state requirements allow officeholders to report their financial interests vaguely enough to hide conflicts.

As it has since the Trib's launch in 2009, data continued to reign supreme on the site in 2011. Today, we take a look at the 10 most-visited data apps since Jan. 1.

Aaronson on Rick Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund, Aguliar on the DOJ's Joe Arpaio problem, Galbraith on the uncertainty about Texas' electric grid, Grissom and Schwartz of The New York Times on the latest in the Michael Morton case, Hamilton on the first leg of Perry's Iowa bus tour, Murphy and McLain unveil our new campaign finance database, Ramsey et al. go live with the first round of our 2012 election brackets, Root on a GOP rival's queries about Perry's pension play, M. Smith contrasts the various school finance lawsuits and Tan, Dehn and Murphy on a shortage of mental health professionals: The best of our best content from December 19-23, 2011.

The engine is primed to rev up the national economy, but businesses aren’t putting the pedal to the metal, Richard W. Fisher, the president and CEO of the Dallas Federal Reserve, said today.

The Sunlight Foundation released an update to the interactive Capitol Words on Monday. The application allows users to search and compare words spoken by federal legislators using data from the Congressional Record.

At last Thursday's TribLive conversation, Comptroller Susan Combs talked about the health of the Texas economy, her agency's data breach, her shifting position on abortion and more.

At this morning's TribLive conversation, Comptroller Susan Combs talked about the data breach on her agency's web site that inadvertently exposed the personal information of 3.5 million state employees and retirees.

Mitt Romney says Rick Perry has "substantially underperformed his predecessors on job creation” and that the state's unemployment rate has doubled on his watch. Is Romney right?

As wildfires continue to sweep across the state, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has authorized seven more grants to help Texas manage the flames. Although the figures for the grants given to Texas after June are not yet available, the Tribune has a look at the $3.8 billion FEMA has given Texas to mitigate disasters.

About two dozen candidates and political action committees have more than $1 million in their accounts, some of them much more, according to our analysis of midyear filings with the Texas Ethics Commission.

About two dozen candidates and political action committees have more than $1 million in their accounts, some of them much more, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of midyear filings with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Comptroller Susan Combs, on her agency's data breach, her changed position on abortion, andher political future.

Texans are already opening their pocketbooks to show support for their favorite presidential candidates. The Tribune’s visualizations of data from federal campaign finance reports reveal who has collected and spent the most in Texas.

New Texas Workforce Commission stats show that Texas has gained more than 220,000 jobs since last year. Check out this visualization of unemployment rates broken down by city for June 2010 and June 2011. 

A new data visualization tool, the Tweet Topic Explorer, makes analyzing a user’s Twitter feed quick, painless and beautiful. Check out what Gov. Rick Perry tweets about most on his personal twitter feed, and see how his tweets compare to others.

In the wake of high-profile data breaches that left the personal information of millions of state workers exposed, state lawmakers are trying to strike a balance between promoting transparency and protecting records.

We have a special update to the Tribune's government employee salary database, adding recently acquired salary data from the last six agencies missing from the the University of Texas System, Texas Woman's University and the Sabine River Authority.