Attorney General Cuomo Shines Light on Corrupt Rats (MORE, CLICK HERE)

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's "Project Sunlight" is a very welcomed event in the Empire State. Check out www.sunlightny.com and see the following New York Times editorial:

Editorial
New York Times
December 6, 2007

There’s Sunlight in Albany?

So seldom is there good news out of New York’s state capital that when something like the new Project Sunlight Web site emerges, the instinct is to wonder how soon before the forces of darkness will try to kill it. Until they do, the new site from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office gives ordinary New Yorkers the ability to see information about their state that should have been easily accessible in the first place.

Over the years, New York’s lawmakers have found increasingly artful ways to make it hard for anybody outside the capital to know what they’re doing. Campaign records were kept in different counties. One governor listed donors by their first names. More recently, data about which legislator doled out which goodie to the home district — from a ball field to a cheese museum — was given out strictly on a need-to-know basis. And when journalists finally took legislative leaders to court to get these lists of “member items” the information was released in ways that blocked most computers from using it. The rule was that any “public information” had to be extremely difficult for the public to get — in most cases, one had to file a Freedom of Information request and start knitting a very large sweater.

If that changes with this new Sunlight Web site, it is because Mr. Cuomo had the foresight to pick Blair Horner, one of Albany’s best activists, to take on the project. Mr. Horner and his team have attempted to knit campaign finance data to lobbying data to legislative data. They have included information about contracts and corporations and charities. In theory, that means a member of the public could look up a bill or a contract, and see which lawmaker pushed it, which lobbying firm helped and how much campaign money was involved.

At this point, the site is just a start. The public is invited to ask for more data, and already we can see that it should include information from authorities, those quasi-public agencies that work quasi-underground. The ethics filings of state legislators should be on the site, as should the comptroller’s payouts for management fees for the state pension.

More transparency can only help, although the old guard won’t see it that way. As Mr. Cuomo argues correctly, it is only by revealing “the good, the bad and the ugly” that New Yorkers will start believing that somebody is telling them the truth about how their state really works. Project Sunlight is at: www.sunlightny.com.