A New York nonprofit is trying to change the way people can access public government documents by compiling them in an online database.
Reclaim New York, a nonpartisan organization that launched a campaign called the New York Transparency Project in May, has been calling for the release of public records statewide.
Doug Kellogg, communications director for Reclaim New York, said the long term aim of the project is to provide a way of “citizen oversight” that will hold government accountable.
“It’s meant to deal with the corruption, the waste, the patronage, those types of headlines that are way too common,” Kellogg said.
The organization recently filed a lawsuit against the Manhasset Board of Education for denying their request to financial records.
Reclaim New York attorney Dennis Saffran said the Manhasset school was one of “the three worst actors” of about 50 that did not complete or comply with Reclaim New York’s requests for spending and contract records under the state Freedom of Information Law.
The lawsuit filed in Nassau County Supreme Court asks a judge to order the Town of Oyster Bay and the Manhasset and Elmont school districts to produce records and asserts that they either ignored or wrongly denied the nonprofit group’s requests.
The group asked for vendor payment records from the Manhasset school board under Freedom of Information Law, but the board said the request wasn’t specific enough and couldn’t reasonably format the records in a way that would protect the information of private individuals.
“They use redactions as an excuse,” Kellogg said in an e-mail. “Having to redact information is common, that isn’t a viable reason to not provide a public record.”
Kellogg said government bodies that don’t comply with Freedom of Information requests aren’t providing answers the public has the right to know. A court date has been set for July 22.
In an email earlier this month, Manhasset school Superintendent Charles Cardillo said the district determined the “blanket request” for all payments to vendors was too ambiguous after consulting legal counsel and the state’s Committee on Open Government.
Because the district does not keep separate lists of large payments to contractors and smaller payments to individuals, the district would have to produce a new set of records to fill the request, which the law does not require, Cardillo said.
“The district’s payment records may contain personal identifying information such as a payee’s social security number or home address,” Cardillo wrote. “If so, revealing such information would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy and would have to be redacted prior to disclosure.”
But court decisions going back to 2001 have rejected arguments like the school district’s, said Robert Freeman, executive director of the Committee on Open Government.
Reclaim New York hopes to crowdsource input from residents who use the database, Kellogg said.
“The volume of information makes it so we can’t comprehensively go through it, and that’s why we’re building the database,” Kellogg said.
People on the village level with a better understanding of how their communities operate can provide extra support in looking through the documents, he said. The group plans to make the website interactive to users as well, allowing them to contribute documents to the database, Kellogg said.
Kellogg recalled a story from a resident who demonstrated the type of proactive involvement his organization is trying to instill. He said the man attended a town meeting, and when the topic of the village website was mentioned by the board, the man suggested they post the town budget online.
“These are the steps that need to get taken,” Kellogg said.
In addition to providing the tools for residents to access documents through their database, Reclaim New York also aims to educate so people know how to find information on their own.
“It’s really important that we do that part of it, because otherwise in the future people won’t be involved with what’s going on in government,” he said. “It’s better coming from them than from us anyway.”
One of the subjects the group’s website teaches residents what their rights under the Freedom of Information Law are, and how they can request records from government bodies.
Kellogg said people need to pay attention to the way their governments operate in order to make sure they follow the rules.
Another one of Reclaim New York’s focuses is affordability. Long Island was the first area of the state the group compiled a report on, detailing the growing economic responsibilities of the average New York resident.
“It’s unfortunately the case that Long Island has challenges in both of the areas that we have projects in so far,” Kellogg said. “I think that you’ll see that the affordability [issue] is more straightforward downstate because the cost of living is clearly so high.”
The report addresses what the group calls “wake-up costs,” or how much it costs a New York resident to just wake up in the morning. According to the report, the average annual expenditures is $76,989 for a four-person family in Brookhaven, Suffolk County with a median income of $82,557.
Kellogg said the day-to-day costs for Long Island residents is preventing them from being able to save.
These efforts by Reclaim New York are a few of the steps the group is taking to change the environment of the state, according to Kellogg.
“We’re building with grassroot ties and we’re working with people face to face,” he said. “We’re happy to do our part, and happy to give people the tools.”
