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Senate Republicans propose government transparency bill
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Bob Conner at 462-2499 or bconner@dailygazette.net.

    Senate Republicans on Wednesday announced a package of measures they called an “accountability in government spending” plan, which they said would reduce spending and enhance public disclosure.
    The measures would require state agencies and authorities, including the judiciary, to release public expenditure reports detailing their spending, as the Legislature has done for its spending for more than a decade. Other measures would let the public better monitor spending by state government, including creation of a new Web site “that would enable the public to review the performance of government programs to see how effectively agencies are spending tax dollars,” a Senate statement said.
    Also included in the package is a previously passed one-house bill to institute a constitutional spending cap on the state, limiting budget increases to 4 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less.
    Blair Horner, legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said after the news conference that the Web site and disclosure requirements sound like good ideas that should help improve government performance — although NYPIRG does not support the spending cap.
    Democrats were noncommittal in their responses.
    “We’re reviewing the Senate’s proposal,” said Errol Cockfield, press secretary for Gov. David Paterson.
    Dan Weiller, communications director for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, also said the Senate plan would be reviewed. Asked about the claim by Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, that the Assembly last year failed to take up the public expenditure report bill, Weiller said, “I can’t speak for last year.”
    Weiller said, “The Assembly majority has long taken the lead in increasing government accountability and transparency.”
    At the Senate news conference, Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, said the legislation would help get the state budget under control by helping eliminate “inefficiency, waste, unnecessary expenditures, some fraud.”
    Although the Senate and Assembly pass the budget every year, normally after fighting for higher expenditures than the governor has proposed, Bruno sounded like a rebel rather than one of the three most powerful leaders in state government.
    “There’s no accountability, there’s no transparency,” he complained. “Where does the money go?”
    He bridled when asked about that record, saying, “Don’t tell me what we haven’t done,” and that the focus needs to be on going forward with what should be done. Bruno said state spending would have been much lower had he had his way, but that politics and government involve taking into account all 212 members of the Legislature along with the executive branch.