http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/403990.html
Huge :tup: to them for doing this.
Quoted because Buffalo News archives their stories after a week or so.
EDIT:
The site is getting slammed right now.
ALBANY – Ever wonder how much those state road workers filling potholes make in salary? Confused about why things are run a certain way at your local school? Want to see who are the kings and queens of pork in the state Legislature – and the beneficiaries of the annual giveaway process each year?
Head to the most comprehensive Web site around for tracking government spending – www.SeeThroughNY.net – for a look at information deemed by law to be public but never made easy for the public to obtain.
The new site, begun Thursday by the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative think tank, will satisfy any government watcher’s dream for seeing how taxpayer money is spent. And its operators say the site will grow even more in the months and years ahead.
The site includes the entire payroll – more than 263,000 names – of the workers in the executive branch, Legislature and judiciary. Information on local government workers will be coming later. The site allows users to search by name or agency or branch of government. Information can then be sorted to see, for example, who is the highest paid worker in an agency.
Some of the most significant entries on the site are the teacher union contracts for all but a few of the state’s 700 school districts. The few that didn’t comply with the group’s Freedom of Information Law quest for the contracts will be facing lawsuits if the information is not turned over.
Moreover, the employment contract for every school superintendent in the state is posted on the site.
As for the Legislature, the site includes the operating expenses of both houses. Such information is now put out in book form every six months by the Legislature, but getting a hold of those books is hardly an easy task for the public. The new Web site allows users to search and sort information so that they can see how much each legislator spends on travel, mailings or leases for their district offices.
The site also includes pork barrel spending – known less derisively by legislators as “member items” – for all 212 state lawmakers.
“This information appropriately belongs to everybody,” said E.J. McMahon, director of the group funding the site.