In 2014, the Empire Center created guidelines for what information local governments and school districts should make available on their websites—and found that most of the state’s 500 largest municipalities and districts were not meeting that standard.
The SeeThroughNY Local Government Website Report Card, which flunked 85 percent of the websites it scored, began a conversation about local government transparency in the Internet era. Sixteen months later, we’re continuing to hear from local officials who are using the Report Card to improve their websites; good news for sure.
In a follow-up last year, we highlighted five entities that had already improved their websites. And we’ve since heard from more than 20 municipalities and school districts that are using the Report Card to improve their websites.
Kudos to each and every one of them for taking the initiative. There isn’t a category of the Report Card that at least one municipality hasn’t improved upon. The categories dealing with Contact Information, Public Information (FOIL), Budgets, Financial Reports and Contracts were the most substantially improved among those that reported changes.
Six municipalities reported launching new websites since the report card was first released. Five of those are total redesigns. The Village of Ballston Spa launched its website after our 2014 study reported the village didn’t have one.
Because they deserve acknowledgement for their commitment to transparency, here’s a breakdown of those entities that responded to our request for updates on work being done to improve local websites:
The full payroll records of more than 2,400 de facto state employees are available to the public for the first time after being released by Health Research Inc. Read More
Every year for over a decade, the Empire Center has submitted Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the payrolls of MTA corporate subsidiaries. And in almost every one o Read More
New enrollment numbers from the state-run health insurance exchange confirm a trend relevant to budget talks in Albany: The role of local governments in signing people up for Medicaid is smaller than ever. Read More
The new state budget will fund a 35 percent expansion of a murky $1.1 billion pork-barrel slush fund controlled by Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers. Read More
Three years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo blew a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform one of the most costly provisions of the New York State law regulating public-sector collective bargaining.
Now he's about to blow it again. Read More
New York’s Legislature has been exempt from many provisions of the state Freedom of Information Law since FOIL was first enacted in 1974. The Assembly and Senate ultimately decide how much legislative information to make public. This makes about as much sense as putting Cookie Monster in charge of security at the Chips Ahoy factory.
As a result, a lot of information on legislative matters ranging from individual employee timesheets to a billion-dollar slush fund has been concealed from taxpayers.
But if Governor Cuomo has his way, that could soon change. Read More