Good Government

The good news is that 10 members flat-out refused the money: Brad Lander, Alan Maisel, Carlos Menchaca and Mark Treyger of Brooklyn; Andy Cohen of the Bronx; Dan Garodnick, Ben Kallos, Mark Levine and Helen Rosenthal of Manhattan; and Steve Matteo of Staten Island.

Not only did they say no, but Mark-Viverito gave all 10 the option to beg off for the three-and-a-half years left in their terms. All 10 did.

Garodnick and Lander are turning down $15,000 yearly, Matteo is declining $5,000 and the rest, $8,000. They believe that all Council members should be paid the same and put principle before personal interest. Salute their integrity.

New York City Council Member Ben Kallos uses GitHub to collect public commentary on much of his technology-related legislation. Kallos finds crowdsourcing as an empowering tool that creates a different sense of democracy, he told Government Technology.

Open-government advocates and local officials in five major U.S. cities announced the formation of a new coalition, the Free Law Founders, on Wednesday, launching a partnership to create new tools, data standards and processes for state and local governments to make public information and data better accessible to the public.

The FLF, led by New York City Councilmember Ben Kallos, San Francisco Supervisor Mark Farrell and OpenGov Foundation Executive Director Seamus Kraft, also includes officials in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Boston.

“Laws and legislative information are often overlooked as open data, and I believe laws and legislative information are one of, if not the, most important data sets government keep,” Farrell, who led the charge to make San Francisco the nation’s first “open legislation” city, said in a statement. “As legislators we should do everything in our power to ensure laws, codes, and policies are free and easily accessible to our residents.”

Kallos, who chairs his city’s Governmental Operations Committee, said it’s important for local governments to make their respective law and regulatory codes plus legislation more accessible to the public. “Millennia ago, Hammurabi codified law and displayed it publicly for the people to see,” Kallos said in the FLF’s announcement. “Today, public means free and online, not behind a license or paywall.”

The New York City Council called on the New York State Public Service Commission to expand access to affordable broadband and close the digital divide. In testimony on the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger, the Council also spoke of the critical need to protect Net Neutrality.

New York City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who chairs his city’s Governmental Operations Committee and has been an open-data leader in the nation’s largest city, said in an interview that any open-data project that makes the lives of local government officials and employees easier shouldn’t be a tough sell.

Officials “just want to see something that works,” Kallos said. “It’s easier to put it on the Internet and let other people do the heavy lifting to make government information more accessible and usable.” He has been actively pushing an open-data and transparency legislative package in the New York City Council.

Currently, it is not possible for New Yorkers to easily sign up to track updates on City Council meetings and legislative activities. But in fact, there could be an easy fix for the problem that could help transform how members of the public engage with their government. That is what emerged from a #PDF14 workshop that illustrated how the realization of visions for open government in New York often comes down to wonky nuts and bolts issues related to government web platforms, procurement and access to open data.

City Council member Ben Kallos, chair of the Government Operations Committee, hosted the session together with Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer in the spirit of "bringing government to the people." Also in the name of transparency, he arranged for a recording of the session.

El Concejo Municipal también evalúa una propuesta de ley del Concejal Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), que busca centralizar el proceso.

Actualmente las solicitudes FOIL son dirigidas por escrito a cada agencia municipal.

La iniciativa de Kallos está inspirada en un portal central, conocido como RecordTrac, que actualmente usa la ciudad de Oakland en California para procesar pedidos FOIL de todas sus agencias.

 “Cuando los neoyorquinos no pueden acceder a los documentos comúnmente solicitados a través de una búsqueda simple, eso es un problema”, expresó Kallos en un comunicado.

If the City Hall FOIL tracker was unveiled as a way to quell the call for legislation, it didn't work. Gotham Gazette reached out to the stakeholders behind the bill and found unanimous support for the legislation and an unfettered desire to continue to push for it.

"This legislation is here to stay," Council Member Ben Kallos, who is one of three lead sponsors on the bill, said following the hearing June 9. "It is here to be passed. It is here to become law. It is just a matter of time."

"The mayor's office has a good start, as far as their tracker, but I still support our legislation," Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, another lead sponsor, said June 11 at City Hall. She added she is open to meeting with the mayor's office to discuss their concerns and changes needed to get the bill passed. Kallos expressed a similar desire to work with City Hall on the bill.

Having a municipality’s laws online and easily available would seem to be a common first step for cities concerned with improving transparency. But Kallos said the issue of laws being inaccessible is more common in the U.S. than most people realize.

Kallos felt it has taken a long time for cities to address the issue, perhaps due to the revenue generated from selling publication of the laws to private companies.

“In my few months so far in office, I’ve stumbled across numerous places where the laws aren’t necessarily there to protect or serve the public, but a subset of the public,” Kallos said. “Often a special or corporate interest. And the legal publishing industry is huge.”

Looking ahead, Kallos noted that NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Administration was “incredibly friendly” to what Int. 149 was trying to achieve, and was confident that the ideals in the legislation will at some point get codified and serve as a model for the country.

New York City spends $20 million a year on responding to Freedom of Information Law requests from the public, but it can save up to $13 million by centralizing all of the requests on a single website, according to a report released on June 6 by Reinvent Albany, a non-profit promoting government openness and transparency. The report was released in advance of a City Council hearing on a bill that would create a centralized FOIL website for New York City...

Kaehny was involved in drafting the bill, which is sponsored and by Council members Ben Kallos and James Vacca, and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.