New York’s City Spending Goes Online

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 10:56 AM by Renae Bartusch

The New York City Comptroller has unveiled a new transparency website that just went live earlier this month. CheckbookNYC looks exactly like what the URL hints at—a checkbook.  Visitors to the site can look up expenditures by department, category, transaction, payee, or contact. The database is updated everyday and looks like what your checkbook might look like if you wrote over $60 billion dollars worth of checks a year.

At first glance, this site seems like a great tool to get information on detailed state spending but there are limitations.  There isn’t a purpose explanation offered for transactions and payroll information is aggregated.  New York City Comptroller John Liu defends this downside by saying “It’s not just about satiating people’s curiosity.  It is also about sending a very strong message to everybody in city government—myself included—that the public will be able to scrutinize, very carefully, how we’re spending their money.”

While the site is a work in progress, Liu views the system as a success.  CFA applauds this effort as a good first step.  Visitors to the site are encouraged to leave feedback on CheckbookNYC and weigh in on what could be improved for the site.  While the state legislature continues to let transparency legislation linger, constitutional officers have made a great push for transparency in New York and this latest effort by the city Comptroller highlights the impact one person can have to improve accountability. We look forward to improvements on the site, and hope state lawmakers will take note of the growing desire for state spending transparency in the Empire State.

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