New Yorkers will get a clearer view than ever of how their state and local tax dollars are being spent, thanks to a new transparency website launched today by the Empire Center for Public Policy.

The website – www.SeeThroughNY.net – initially offers searchable databases of the following public information:

• the entire payroll of more than 263,000 state government employees, cross-referenced by name, title, branch of government and agency;
• current teachers’ union contracts and superintendent of schools’ contracts for nearly all of New York State’s 733 school and BOCES districts;
• operating expenditures by both houses of the New York State Legislature; and
• the Legislature’s pork-barrel “member items” spending for 2008-09.

The site will expand in the near future to include more payrolls, expenditures, contracts and other information from a variety of New York government entities, according to Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center.

“SeeThroughNY is designed to become the hub of a statewide network through which taxpayers can share, analyze and compare data from local governments and school districts throughout New York,” McMahon said.

McMahon noted that 2008 already has seen the launching of two government-run transparency websites in New York.  Project Sunlight (www.sunlightny.com), sponsored by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, includes information related to campaign finance, legislation, lobbying activity, and recipients of state government contracts.  Open Book New York (www.osc.state.ny.us/openbook/index.htm), launched in June by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, provides an up-to-date listing of state vendor contracts, along with expenditure summaries for state agencies.

“Project Sunlight and Open Book were significant steps forward for transparency and accountability in New York, but we still have a long way to go,” McMahon said.

SeeThroughNY is the first state and local transparency site to be independently sponsored and maintained by a private, non-partisan organization.  The payroll, school district contract, and legislative expenditure data on SeeThroughNY has never before been available to New Yorkers in a searchable format on the Internet.

The Empire Center is a project of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, one of the nation’s leading non-profit think tanks, which supports all of the Center’s work.