unnamed-4679178

This summer, the Empire Center for Public Policy celebrated nine years of successful work by SeeThroughNY.net, our groundbreaking government transparency website.

In just the past year, SeeThroughNY has let New Yorkers know about:

Today, SeeThroughNY’s searchable databases include:

  • payrolls dating back to 2008 for every level of government—state, county, city, town and village—as well as every school district, special district and public authority in New York;
  • names and maximum benefits for all state, local government and school district pension recipients;
  • copies of all teacher, police and firefighter union contracts, as well as the employment contracts of all school superintendents;
  • BenchmarkingNY, a unique online tool allowing taxpayers to compare spending and tax levels among local governments and school districts;
  • a New York State Budget app, allowing users to search and compare “Where the Money Comes From” and “Where the Money Goes,” as well as historic and tax trends, for fiscal years stretching back to 2012 through projected amounts for fiscal 2021;
  • a breakdown of thousands of individual line items of state government pork barrel expenditures allocated through two dozen different program accounts;
  • the names of retired New York state and local employees who are not yet 65 and have applied for or received a waiver allowing them to earn a salary as a public employee while also collecting a full pension; and
  • teachers salary data, showing the median and statistical breakdown in each school district.

We’re happy to report that—strongly encouraged by our efforts, and those of other civic and community groups—local officials have begun to post significant amounts of data on government websites. New York City now posts its payroll online (though New York State has yet to follow suit). More and more newspapers are also periodically updating data for their coverage areas on their websites.

But SeeThroughNY remains, by far, the largest single government information depository of its kind in New York—bringing together, on one website, up-to-date searchable databases that give New Yorkers a better view of how their money is being spent, of how their localities stack up, and of where the state budget is headed.

In the past 12 months, SeeThrough averaged nearly 200,000 visitors and almost 600,000 page views a month—both of which are high numbers for good-government websites.  At its busiest point of the day, SeeThroughNY averages 43 visits per minute.

Latest releases

This year’s new data releases have included:

Forthcoming Releases

  • Local government 2016 payrolls
  • Legislative Expenditures reports, detailing more than $100 million in costs
  • Public authority 2016 payrolls

You may also like

97 NYSLRS Retirees Eligible for Pensions Over $200K in FY2025

A total of 97 retirees from the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) were eligible for pensions of $200,000 or more during the 2025 fiscal year, according to , the Empire Center’s government transparency website. Among the 97 retirees Read More

How Washington’s Budget Bill Will Affect Health Care in New York

UPDATE: The final version of the federal budget bill omitted a handful of provisions that had been included in earlier drafts. One would have penalized states that use their own money to provide coverage for undocumente Read More

Kathy Hochul’s ambition cancels out claims of coming ‘climate disaster’

New York politicians are extremely worried about the threat of global climate change. Their only bigger worry is that the voters will learn what they plan to do about it. More than one year past Albany’s self-imposed deadline to make rules for maj Read More

Albany’s Looming Energy Shock

For all Governor Hochul’s talk about “affordability”, it seems electricity prices have not received that memo. Recent from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show New York househo Read More

Cuomo’s suspect COVID statistics

Five years after the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo is still gaslighting New Yorkers about how many people died in nursing homes. The latest example came . When challenged about his handling of COVID in nursing homes, Cuomo cited what has become his favorite Read More

Push for electric school buses seems to be losing power

Last month’s local school district votes were notable for what was missing from most ballots — propositions to purchase zero-emission school buses.  Cost may be a factor. Bethl Read More

NYC Employee Pension Payments Cross $6 billion; 70 Members Collect $200k+

The pension plan covering most New York City government agencies, including the City’s subway system, had 70 members with pension payments of at least $200,000 last year, almost quadrupling 2019’s tally of 19, according to new , the Read More

New York’s K-12 Problem

New York has an education problem that no one really likes to talk about: it spends more than any other state or country in the world yet achieves mediocre results at best. This might come as a surprise, especially since some politicians and pundits tout Read More