It’s not transparency if it’s not public. Without a public database of LLC owners, the public will never know if LLC owners are following the law or the state of New York is enforcing it.
Unfortunately, Governor Hochul used a “chapter amendment” to strip-out the public database at the heart of the LLC Transparency Act (S995-B (Hoylman-Sigal) / A3484-A (Gallagher) and the legislature acquiesced. Reinvent Albany would have preferred to see the bill vetoed to make it clear to the public what happened here.
We want to believe that the new LLC Disclosure law is a real step forward. Reinvent Albany hugely appreciates the energy, leadership and idealism of Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, AM Emily Gallagher and their staff, the district attorneys of Brooklyn, Bronx and Manhattan and the big coalition of tenants rights, social justice, labor unions and watchdog groups calling for real LLC Transparency.
Reinvent Albany has learned from dozens of meetings and interviews with state, city and federal anti-corruption investigators that enforcement actions are overwhelmingly the result of complaints and press coverage. Real life government investigators in New York do not have much in the way of advanced computer analytics automatically detecting and flagging money laundering and misbehaving shell companies.
Reinvent Albany has also learned from years of working with state and city campaign finance, lobbying and spending and contracting databases that the public must aggressively prod government officials to keep public data accurate and up to date — and that’s data the public can see and use. The LLC ownership database created by the governor and legislature will be secret and watchdogs and journalists will have zero idea if it is a big success or total failure.
It will be up to Governor Hochul, the Senate and the Assembly to honor their compromise agreement to make LLC owners report their identities to the state and ensure this data is accurate and easily accessible to the Attorney General and other New York State corruption fighters.