Encouraging Government Innovation

Along with our core initiatives, Reinvent Albany encourages a small number of innovative programs and policies that we believe are especially effective or creative and help highlight non-traditional ways of solving complex problems.

Projects

Expanding Statewide Multi-Use Path Network
Spotlights: Low cost/high return public infrastructure as an alternatives to wasteful, ineffective corporate subsidies.
NYS state and local governments spend $12 billion a year on corporate subsidies, many of which produce few jobs or sustained economic development. In early 2026, we revealed that JP Morgan was getting an astonishing $77 million in NY tax breaks to create one job at a data center in Rockland County. Meanwhile, a recent report by Parks & Trails New York found that the Empire State Trail generates $206 million in state and local taxes, and every off-road mile produces 20 jobs and $430,000 in state and local taxes.

Expanding MTA/NYC Hospitals SCOUT Pilot Project
Spotlights: Smart policies and programs carefully constructed to address long-standing social problems. An usually effective collaboration between very large state and city agencies, in this case, the State’s MTA and NYC Health and Hospitals.
Subway Co-Response Outreach Teams (SCOUT) is an MTA-managed project that sends teams of NYC Health and Hospital clinicians and social workers, plus MTA police, into the subways to help people suffering from a severe mental health crises.

Sustaining the NYC Citizens Air Complaint Program / Truck Idling
Spotlights: Extraordinarily innovative policy that should serve as a model for how all levels of government can vastly increase the enforcement of environmental laws at very low cost to taxpayers without diminishing the rights and protections afforded to violators.
In 2019, NYC passed a law creating the Citizens Air Complaint Program, which allows the average person to enforce truck idling violations by submitting video documentation to the City in return for a portion of the penalty. This innovation has led to a huge increase in idling penalties and what many observers believe is a big reduction in truck idling. Trucking companies have lobbied hard to undermine the program in City Council and mounted a long-term smear campaign against the idea of incentivizing the public to document and report violations.