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Technology and Government: The Rise of the E-Citizen


 

This week the City Council is very proud to announce the launching of our new Website www.nyccouncil.info, a tool that we hope will promote both greater transparency and greater citizen participation in city government. Building a stronger city in the 21st century means taking advantage of the technology that can bring more people into the governing process. It also means that we have to work to bridge the “digital divide” and ensure that everyone has access to the advantages that the web provides.

This is the latest City Council effort to utilize new technologies in the service of better government. We started two years ago by putting the current voting record of each council member on-line and, since then, we’ve partnered with NYC.gov to broadcast Stated Council Meetings and show council votes on crucial legislation live through the web. We’ve launched advocacy initiatives that allow New Yorkers to speak out on behalf of New York City to federal and state elected officials on issues like fair funding for our schools and homeland defense. We’ve secured millions in funding to give every New Yorker better access to the Internet at schools, libraries and community center

And New Yorkers are responding enthusiastically – last year we received 12,000 emails in just two weeks calling on the City Council to restore funding to keep city zoos open in Brooklyn and Queens. Every week I receive more than 5,000 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. on subjects varying from laws governing sidewalk cafes to the allocation of New York City’s $46 billion budget. Web organizing and email have empowered small community groups, neighborhood associations, and volunteer organizations to raise their voices and fight for their causes.

As more and more New Yorkers gain access to the web, they will take advantage of the high-tech tools that enable them to play a more active role in civic affairs.

This week the City Council is taking another big step forward in providing New Yorkers with those tools. While www.nyc.gov has become a great resources for information about city agencies and resolving constituent problems, I want to provide New Yorkers with the ability to pro-actively have input into the city’s policies and guidelines.

The City Council is launching www.nyccouncil.info to replace our old web site, www.council.nyc.ny.us. In addition to the new easy-to-remember name, our new site allows users to:

1. Speak out with the click of a mouse by emailing every sponsor of a bill or resolution.
2. Receive weekly emails on the location and topics of City Council hearings, meetings and events, and on "hot topics" on the council side of City Hall.
3. Use the council member finder to find out who their council member is and how to contact them.
4. Navigate to the information they want easily and intuitively, with improved accessibility for disabled users.
5. Access constituent resources in Spanish.

And we won’t stop there.

In addition, the Council is finding ways to apply technology to make government more efficient and cost-effective, measures which benefit every New Yorker by allowing us to do more with less.

We are investigating how technology can make our schools better, both through providing computers and resources in our schools and ensuring our kids get the technology skills they need to succeed. Also, by investing in programs like “HIP (Helping Involve Parents)Schools”, a program that provides state-of-the-art. 24 hour communication between parents, teachers and students via Internet or telephone, we are bringing the same kinds of accountability and participation to our education system that www.nyccouncil.info brings to municipal government.

We are bringing competitive online bidding to the procurement process, which both allows the city to purchase services and goods in a more cost-effective and timely manner, but also allows locally-owned small businesses to compete for city contracts. We are investing in facilities like the Biotech center at State University of New York downstate. By encouraging the growth of emerging technologies, we are seeding a field whose benefits we will reap for years to come.

This week, on the “Speakers Page” at www.nyccouncil.info, I will have information about these technology-related achievements and proposals for our online users. I invite all New Yorkers to use our new website and, of course, to provide me with the feedback, comments and suggestions that our new website is designed to facilitate.

Gifford Miller is the Speaker of the New York City Council.

 

City Council Stated Meeting - December 7, 2004


Every two weeks the New York City Council meets for its Stated Meeting to introduce and pass legislation. As a regular feature, Searchlight covers these meetings and posts a summary of the bills passed.

Quote of the Day:
"You are not a real Staten Islander unless you’ve experienced the mad dash [for the ferry] and had those doors close on you as it pulls away. It’s sounds something like this `Aaaghhhhh, Wait for me!’” – Staten Island Councilmember James Oddo.

Meeting Summary:
On December 7, the New York City Council overrode Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto of a bill (Intro 207-A) that would require one nurse or health worker for every private and public school with more than 200 students.

The mayor argues that school health programs are adequate, and he recently allocated an additional $8 million to fund additional school nurses. The council says that the mayor’s action does not go far enough, and that nurses will be threatened in future budget negotiations.

In 2002, the Bloomberg administration cut funding for nurses in private schools. Last year, the mayor proposed eliminating nurses from summer schools as a way to help close a budget deficit. Currently, some nurses now travel between various small schools.

"This is a matter of principal: Should every child have a nurse or not?” said Council Speaker Gifford Miller.

The council’s proposal would cost $3 million more than what Bloomberg has proposed and would add about 80 nurses to serve private and parochial schools. State law requires that the city supply nurses to private schools, but does not mandate the ratio of nurses to students.

The council also passed a bill (Intro 94-A) that sets a minimum schedule of service for the Staten Island Ferry. The measure requires that the ferry run at least every 30 minutes on weekdays.

A recent council report (available in pdf format) argues that the area’s population has grown by 30 percent in last quarter century, but ferry service has not kept pace. Staten Island officials are worried that service could be cut as the city looks to cut a close a $3 billion budget deficit next year.

The council also approved new business improvement districts in Queens Plaza and on Fordham Road in the Bronx and renamed 83 streets, many for firefighters and police officers who died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

All of the bills passed by a vote of 46 to 0.

The next Stated Meeting is scheduled for December 15, 2004.

For an archive of past meetings and council votes, visit Gotham Gazette's Searchlight.

 

New Principles, Common Goals


The national election results this year are a reflection of what happened in New York about a dozen years ago, when New Yorkers chose a Republican governor and a Republican mayor. Since then, we have reelected the governor twice, and elected a second Republican mayor.

Why has this happened? I believe it is because the people of New York fundamentally support the core Republican principles of keeping crime down, keeping welfare in check, and of course creating a good fiscal climate to attract and keep businesses here. We have had enough of a failed way of thinking, and have embraced new leadership.

I think this change has worked to the benefit of New York, and now we are witnessing a similar reaction across the country. As long as those true governing principles stay in place I think you'll see those same benefits nationally.

But what the people of New York really want are officials working for the public good, in a collective and bipartisan manner when possible. What happened three years ago on September 11 proved the point that while we may belong to different parties and have subtly different beliefs from time to time, at the end of the day we are really all Americans and all New Yorkers.

Much of what my Democratic colleagues want for New York, I'm sure I would agree with.

MAINTAINING A HEALTHY BUSINESS CLIMATE

We should be focused on maintaining New York as a viable place to do business -- not just to keep businesses here, but also to attract businesses from around the country and from around the world. And to a large extent we have succeeded, and much of that is a credit to those in the private sector. I say that as someone who came out of the private sector, who was born and raised in Staten Island, who has worked both downtown and in Midtown, and knows what it is like to commute, knows what it is like to miss an express bus, knows what it is like to work late if I have to. That is the heart and soul of New York City: the vibrant private sector based on the premise that if you can do it here you can do it anywhere.

My priorities as a Member of Congress - and I guess these were somewhat validated at the national level - is the notion that we are the engine of the world, and that when we provide the right incentives and the right beliefs, like the belief in opportunity - New York is, after all, the place where you can secure your dream wherever you come from - if you give those incentives, anything is possible. That means keeping taxes lower to provide the incentives for growth.

I think one of the orders of business we have is to make the federal tax reductions permanent to remove the uncertainty, whether it comes to savings, investment, or the reallocation of capital. We should move towards tax simplification that truly encourages growth and transparency and becomes the envy of the world.

HOMELAND SECURITY

Above all, without the notion of national and personal security, everything else is subordinate. We can have all the economic security we want, but without a strong, prosperous and free nation, we're nothing. The chaos that surrounded September 11 proved that everything else is irrelevant.

Homeland security will be an ongoing debate, with Secretary Tom Ridge stepping down and a new leader coming to replace him. That's still a work in progress. But one issue we must work together on is making sure that New York City gets the federal homeland security funding it needs and deserves. New York City is still Exhibit A when it comes to being a terrorist target -- not the middle of Montana -- with all due respect to the people there. We need to work to ensure that the funding flows through to the state and the city and our first responders who are working 24 hours a day to protect us have the tools and resources they need.

As far as homeland security, we are committed in a bipartisan way to ensure that the funding is distributed based on threat -- not on a per capita basis. We are seeing progress in that direction. Initially, it was almost a grab bag of money, with some of it allocated based on threat and the majority distributed to every state regardless of risk. We would like to see it all threat-based.

The President and secretary Ridge have embraced that formula, and we have a bill moving through Congress now to achieve our goal. We're working with the mayor, the governor, and of course the entire Congressional delegation.

TRANSPORTATION

Another thing we can agree on as Democrats and Republicans is the importance of not changing the funding formula as it relates to transit needs. Fifty years ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower had this vision to construct the federal highway system. I think we need a new vision as to how this funding formula should work, because for the most part that highway system has been built up. There are hundreds of billions of dollars that flow into this fund, and we have to start thinking about what the most effective way of using that fund is, as opposed to it serving as a grab bag for projects across the country.

There is an effort to shift funding away from mass transit - which we greatly rely upon here in New York - towards highway construction, which doesn't benefit New York. We have to ensure that the percentage dedicated to mass transit remains high. There's a good coalition of Democrats and Republicans who are working to do just that.

At the end of the day, there are no guarantees, but this is one issue where there is no Republican or Democratic label. We need to be working together, as well as working with the two senators from New York to ensure New York City gets its fair share.

That bill will be coming up in the next several months and it is our responsibility to fight and make sure New York gets the resources it needs.

Congressman Vito Fossella, who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, is the only Republican in the 13-member congressional delegation for New York City. This article was adapted from comments he made at a breakfast forum sponsored by Crain's New York Business on December 2, 2004.

 



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