Online access to state Legislature favors paying clients

PHOTOGRAPHER: David Lombardo

A website created by the New York State Legislature, which sells lobbyists public information about the legislative process, creates a system of information haves and have-nots, its critics say.

New Yorkers who want to influence legislation, or even those who simply want to know more about what their lawmakers are doing, have two online options to guide their efforts: a free site providing basic information and a paid site for more influential users at costs starting around $2,000 a year.

And this tiered system has continued despite an increasing emphasis on the importance of transparency as a means of restoring public confidence in government.

A citizen can use the state’s public information site, which provides most of the same bill information as the paid site, but the presentation makes it hard to follow a bill’s development — or even find out if a specific bill exists.

This is in sharp contrast to the paid site, called the Legislative Retrieval System; it provides simple keyword searches for bills, offers e-mail alerts on bill progress, allows for customizing lists of tracked bills, highlights bills that will be on the floor of either house on that day and allows you to see changes in bills.

Essentially, the average New Yorker gets a glimpse around the curtain, while those on the premium site — mainly lobbyists and state agencies — get a tour behind the scenes, for a price.

Offering opinions

Andrew Hoppin, the chief information officer for the state Senate, said LRS is for people in the know, such as lobbyists who can impact the course of legislation. “LRS serves the information haves,” he said.

Susan Lerner, the executive director of the government watchdog Common Cause, said LRS is the product of an outdated mindset. Lerner said the Legislature’s leadership has no desire to let the public know about their operations, which is why they rely on the shroud of the paid site. An Assembly spokesman denied this allegation and said the public site is constantly being considered for improvement.

Blair Horner, the legislative director for the nonprofit New York Public Interest Research Group, characterized LRS as a money-maker for the Legislature and said it should instead be free. “LRS is purely viewed as a revenue raiser,” he said.

The revenue generated by LRS is supposed to defray the costs of packaging information, but the people running the site are paid with general fund tax dollars and some of the revenue can be allocated towards other legislative priorities at the discretion of the speaker of the Assembly and the temporary president of the Senate.

Hoppin, the Senate spokesman, said that the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission, which runs both LRS and the public site, doesn’t want to make the pay site obsolete by improving the services of the public site.

“They sell their LRS service . . . so they may have some concerns about cannibalizing that business by putting too much information on the public site,” said Hoppin.

Randall Bluth, the Assembly’s co-commissioner of the Legislative Bill Drafting Commission, disagreed with Hoppin and said there are no competing interests. The sites have the same raw data and both operate in real time. He added that the pay site was founded to serve legislative staffers who, by extension, serve the public.

Meeting a need

John Faso, a former assemblyman who was the co-commissioner of the unit overseeing the creation of LRS in 1984-85, said, “We were responding to a demand that was out there.”

The resulting product was a paid site that is in hot demand by lobbyists, government agencies, law firms, associations and not-for-profits.

Horner contends that NYPIRG couldn’t represent the public interest without the bill-tracking tools of LRS and its research capabilities. The tools offered by LRS are so important, he said, that his small advocacy group made a point to raise the money needed to pay the annual cost.

The pay site in its own promotional materials even flaunts its value: “LRS provides clients with the insight, strategy and tools necessary to succeed in today’s complex legislative environment. . . . unique in its ability to offer . . . options necessary for effective legislative lobbying.”

Bluth said LRS primarily serves the Legislature, but based on a report from the state comptroller’s office more than 75 percent of the site’s revenue is derived from private interests.

LRS subscriptions are approximately $2,000 to $2,750 annually. A contract from LRS stated that additional users on an account could be added for $2,000 apiece.

For a state agency like the Office of Children and Family Services, a subscription for three users costs $6,250 annually, which is paid with public money.

Alex Camarda, director of public policy and advocacy for Citizens Union, a governmental reform group, said his agency and many small organizations can’t afford the subscriptions to the pay site and are consequently at a disadvantage when it comes to monitoring the passage of legislation.

Tough to track

It is challenging to track bills on the public site, where you need to know specific bill numbers or sponsors, because keyword searches are almost useless.

In contrast, LRS provides search tools and results based on status tracking.

These status tracking features let LRS users know when they can try to change a bill’s language or influence a representative’s vote. Lerner said that the public site is not designed to allow people to track legislation as it is being shepherded toward a chamber vote.

Additionally, LRS is the only online source for the “active lists” or “debate lists,” which tell what bills could be up for debate or a vote that day. Hoppin said this discrepancy was “not democratic.”

Bluth’s advice for those unable to afford the LRS subscription: Call your state legislator. He suggested that concerned citizens could call their representatives, whose staffers would then fill the gaps with their access to LRS.

“I’d like to think . . . they do a tremendous job providing these services,” said Bluth.

Pledge lost

In 2006, then-candidate for state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo pledged that the opening of public information under his proposed Project Sunlight would end the fees on LRS, opening the premium site to the public. “Right now we know lobbyists have special access to politicians; they shouldn’t have special access to legislative information as well,” read the 2006 release.

Cuomo never followed through on this facet of his pledge and the proposed agenda released by his gubernatorial campaign ignored the issue. His campaign staff did not return calls regarding LRS for this story.

Bluth said in the future there could be improvements to the public site but couldn’t identify one that was even being considered. Recent upgrades have included faster access to information but the public site and Assembly’s site have not kept up with an array of improvements on the Senate site.

Most notably on the Senate site is the availability of detailed bill search options and interactive features. Bluth said he isn’t familiar with the Senate site and Hoppin said no one has approached him about replicating the improvements of his site.

While LRS has upgraded its features over the years, the public site has lagged behind and failed to adapt with evolving openness standards across the country.

Other states now offer services similar to LRS for free or at reduced costs. In Oklahoma, for example, residents have free access to bill tracking and other useful search engines, and Lerner cited California as an example of a large state that offers more free information and in a better package.

Horner labeled New York’s antiquated approach to disclosure as a “stone age approach to public information.”

Lerner said, “It is a misuse of public money to advantage lobbyists [this] way.

“It is a system that should be scrapped,” she concluded.

(Editor’s Note: David Lombardo previously worked for New York StateWatch, a non-partisan company that offers comparable services to the Legislature’s pay site.)