Today, New York City took a very important step towards getting more government digital data online when the NYC City Council passed Council Member Gale Brewer’s NYC Open Data Bill, Intro 29-A. The new law creates a process for putting truly massive amounts of city data online. Reinvent Albany congratulates Council Member Brewer, Council Speaker […]
Sometimes we forget that Planet Albany isn’t alone in the universe. There are other states plagued by corruption, undemocratic, secretive and unfair governance. So we were glad to learn that a coalition of major U.S. philanthropies have joined with national civil society groups together to launch a significant new, internet based, effort to take on […]
Richard Brodsky, formally a powerful Assemblymember, and long-time inhabitant of Planet Albany, has a provocative essay in City and State comparing Governor Andrew Cuomo to Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Brodsky’s piece includes the incisive paragraph below which lays out the massive potential power given to the governor by the state constitution. Join me, for a moment, […]
Along with being a planet and a state of mind, Albany is the capital of fiscal shell games, back-door borrowing, and cost-shifting rip-offs. These scams are used to mask the fact that the state spends more money than it makes. The state does this by finding numerous ways to borrow to pay for current operations. […]
