NY Bill Would Require Online State Records

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Micah Kellner, the New York State assemblyman who last year submitted a bill to provide a tax credit to open source developers, has now proposed the 'Open New York Act,' a law that would make it mandatory for state agencies to put almost all of their public records on the Internet. According to Kellner's office, the law would 'revolutionize the relationship between New Yorkers and their state government, requiring all state agencies to make their records available through a central website — where the data can be used by activists, entrepreneurs, and others to create a host of applications useful in everyday life.' The Open Government Foundation, Citizens Union, and New York Public Interest Research Group all support the bill."

Comments

well, why not?

[girlintraining]

We fund so-called 'sustainable energy' projects and other such things that aren't economically viable without government funding. Why not software too? And the return on investment is a lot better than a pile of wind mills, and no zoning laws or environmental impact studies to worry about.

Re:well, why not?

[AnonymousClown]

We fund so-called 'sustainable energy' projects and other such things that aren't economically viable without government funding.

You do realize that the oil industry has quite a few tax subsidies also, don't you? They've been getting them for years.

And the proposed plan is to grant public access to the data. Have you ever gone down to a government office and tried to get information on anything? A government clerk does the search. Sometimes, when they say they don't find anything, you just have to wonder how hard did they look. Especially some of those old crones that have been there for decades and short of going on a shooting spree, have absolutely no worry of being fired.

Re:well, why not?

[Bigjeff5]

You do realize that the oil industry [reuters.com] has quite a few tax subsidies [rff.org] also, don't you? They've been getting them for years.

Sorry, but $2-36 billion in subsidies for the entire oil industry (from both links, the first I'm pretty sure is extremely inflated given the fact that even Greenpeace gives $35 billion as their highest estimate) doesn't seem that significant, considering Exxon alone paid $30 billion in taxes in 2007. Also, the oil industry pays a 4-5% higher tax rate than the rest of the market, so a 1-2% break doesn't seem all that bad, considering they already pay more than everybody else.

Add to that state and local taxes and you're looking at half of all revenues from the oil industry going to either a state or federal government.

If you bring the taxes more in line with the rest of the market and drop the subsidies, the oil industry is definitely economically viable. Do the same with nuclear, solar, or wind and the same is not true.

Anyway, back on topic, I'm all for putting public records online. Public records should be public, and since we have the technology to make public records easily accessible, we should do so.

If making a particular type of public record easily accessible causes significant harm, then we should be debating whether or not such records should be public in the first place, not whether or not they should be easily accessible.

Some more background

[oldhack]

Who's this crazy loon? I wanna send some campaign donation.

The Albany Handshake

[Anonymous Coward]

Harper's had an article on the NY Legislature in this month's issue which can shed some light on this. It turns out that New York has one of the worst and most corrupt legislatures in the nation. The leadership controls everything and ordinary members are free to introduce popular legislation knowing full well it has no chance of passing. New York introduces more legislation than any other state and passes them in the single digits percentage-wise.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/05/0082944

Re:It's a Bad Idea

[daemonenwind]

Prevalence of cell phone ownership.
Understanding of property ownership.
Unlisted numbers.
Non-automated nature of phone records.
Limited name information in phone records. (A B Smith? Really?)

Getting government, online records faces none of these data quality issues.