I would like to publicly thank New York State Senator James Skoufis for the recently enacted legislation (S03353A) requiring New York municipalities to maintain public websites with up-to-date essential government documents and notices. “Government transparency” is not an empty catchphrase.
This legislation enables people to petition government on many matters that will affect them far into the future, in advance of officials’ passing local laws, adopting budgets, and committing to employee and service-provider contracts – among other actions. And, it helps enormously to communicate day-to-day mundane but important practicalities.
It means, in part, that by December 2025, anyone can look up a New York government website to learn the local rules for street parking during snowstorms, get accurate, explicit answers, and know whatever data brokering the municipality is doing. Hopefully, that brokering will protect individuals from their “.gov” search transactions being algorithmically scraped, and then from being followed in forever subjugation to the tech giants “personalized preference” marketing. The bombardment of ads might be for snow shovels and snow blowers. But, perhaps, some people might want to buy gloves, scarves, hats, or boots warmed by lithium-ion batteries? Just supposing...
Millicent Treloar
Highland Mills