Government Technology

Site Reveals Salaries of New York State Employees, Other State Financial Data


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August 3, 2008 By

On Thursday the Empire Center for New York State Policy launched a Web site that reveals everything financial about New York State government including:

  • Complete list of state government employees, job titles and salaries.
  • Teachers' union and superintendent contracts for nearly every school district in New York State.
  • What the Empire Center terms the Legislature's "pork-barrel community projects" spending for 2008-09.
  • Internal operations expenditures by the state Assembly and Senate.

The site SeeThroughNY.net may soon add local government financial data as well.

The Empire Center is a project of the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and the site is bound to be controversial as most public employees feel publishing their salaries by name is an invasion of privacy. However, the state's Freedom of Information Law states: "The people's right to know the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statistics leading to determinations is basic to our society. Access to such information should not be thwarted by shrouding it with the cloak of secrecy or confidentiality. The Legislature therefore declares that government is the public's business and that the public, individually and collectively and represented by a free press, should have access to the records of government in accordance with the provisions of this article."


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