The education department is among the least responsive agencies in New York City when it comes to public records requests.
Worse than the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Environmental Protection, the Administration for Children’s Services — and far worse than the NYPD. That’s according to an analysis of a year’s worth of open records requests initially gathered by the Village Voice and subsequently provided to Chalkbeat.
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Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to increase transparency at New York City Hall, but his actions on a number of fronts this year have drawn criticism from government watchdogs and fellow Democrats.
Mr. de Blasio is now involved in two court fights to keep emails under wraps, and his administration has adopted a policy that shields police disciplinary records from the public.
The mayor has also reduced the number of news conferences in which journalists can question him and failed to fulfill a promise to disclose when top officials meet with lobbyists.
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Read More… from Bill de Blasio’s Record on Transparency Brings Criticism
New York City might never tell the public if the police officer at the center of the Eric Garner chokehold death case is disciplined, the mayor and police commissioner indicated this week after reaching a new interpretation of a 40-year-old state civil rights law.
The New York Police Department recently ended a longstanding practice of letting reporters see a rundown of disciplinary actions, saying officials had concluded it violated the law.
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Read More… from NYPD might not say if officer in chokehold death is punished
A year after updating its open data policy, New York City is pushing ahead with plans to automatically refresh more of its data sets and tie public records requests to the open data process — moves hailed by open government advocates, even as some worry about the data’s quality.
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Read More… from A year after a policy update, NYC grapples with ‘the next level’ of open data
