July 1, 2010

A New Web Site Aims to Track the Use of Taxpayer Money in New York

By STEPHEN CEASAR

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office spent a total of $5,500 on three alcohol purchases at a liquor store on the Upper East Side. The New York City Board of Elections spent more than $472,000 on car service over five months.
As of July 1, the city has spent in this calendar year exactly $40,733,960,217.46.
That is just a sample of the spending details that can be found on a new Web site unveiled on Thursday by John C. Liu, the city comptroller. Mr. Liu said he wanted to make it easier for New Yorkers to find out how taxpayer money is spent, or perhaps misspent.
More transparency, Mr. Liu added, could lead to more responsible spending by all city agencies, including his own.
“It’s about open government, intrinsic accountability and creating strong incentives towards saving taxpayer money,” he said at a news conference in Manhattan. Mr. Liu’s office, for example, has so far this year spent $200,000 on postage. That might seem high, but a spokeswoman said that was reasonable since the office produced reams of paperwork.
The online database, named Checkbook NYC, allows users to search and download expenditures by agency, the name of a payee, the purpose and the amount. The database will be updated daily and uses the city’s financial management system to record all city expenditures, Mr. Liu said.
The database cost about $320,000 to produce and will cost $70,000 a year to maintain, Mr. Liu said — those costs can also be found in the database.
Not everything can be found there. The names of some individual payees are left out because the payments involve salary or expense reimbursements. Depending on legal concerns, the office hopes in the future to be able to disclose the names of every city worker and the gross amount of his or her paycheck, Mr. Liu said.
Mr. Bloomberg’s office spent about $2,000 on each of the three purchases at K & D Liquors on Madison Avenue near 96th Street this year. The alcohol, as with most food purchased by the office, is for various events held by different groups at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, said Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg. The mayor does not live at the mansion.
Though the bills were paid using taxpayer money, most of it was reimbursed by the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, a nonprofit that uses private money to support public programs, according to the mayor’s Web site. Sometimes the group involved in hosting the event will pick up part of the cost, Mr. LaVorgna said.
The bill paid by the Board of Elections to two car service companies is a result of an agency policy to provide workers with car service home if they work more than 12 hours a day, said Valerie Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the board. Car service is provided so that workers can get home safely, Ms. Vazquez said.
Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a government watchdog, praised the new database, saying that agencies are more likely to pay greater attention to the way they spend money if more eyes are watching them.
“Once it becomes a matter of course,” she said, “it does exactly what it’s supposed to do.”