Friday, August 01, 2008
8:34 AM
Wow!That’s the only way to describe the work the Empire Center has done on behalf of your right to know.During a press conference I attended earlier today in Albany, the non-partisan government think tank unveiled a new Web site that shines the light on New York government and schools in a way that hasn’t been done before.The site, www.SeeThroughNY.net, offers databases of the entire state payroll of 263,000 government employees in a way that can easily be cross-referenced by state department, agency and the individual’s name. The site also lists 10,000 legislative member items. More interesting to local residents, perhaps, is that the site also contains the electronic versions of union contracts and superintendent of schools’ contracts for virtually all 733 school and BOCES districts in the state — including all of those districts in our area. Anyone who’s ever tried to pry this information from a local school district through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests knows what a chore it can usually be, both in terms of time and in terms of frustration and aggravation dealing with school officials who don’t want to release the information. Now, that information is available for any resident of the state to peruse, simply by clicking on this site. So if you want to look up what your school district is paying its teachers or superintendents, and what benefits they might be getting, you don’t have to FOIL the information yourself any longer. The exhaustive work has been done for you.“Government is not transparent,” Empire Center Director E.J. McMahon said during the press conference. “It’s opaque. It’s dark and dim. … Knowledge is power, and this empowers average New Yorkers.”
Full article <http://poststar.com/wordpress/?p=5878&cat=50>
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