Archive for March, 2009

Posted on March 19, 2009 - by Z.L.R. Stavis

MTA, NY State Senate, open doors to transparency

For citizens concerned about the MTA bailout, don’t be. The Senate is aware of your concerns, and is actively providing ways for you to voice them.

The public has made their opinion and their voice very clear to us that they were not comfortable with the MTA’s transparency, nor are they comfortable with how they have basically spent their tax dollars that they’ve given to the MTA. Also, we are looking for oversight for the Controller. of the STate of New York so that he has the ability to do a further investigation into the way that the MTA is dealing with their resources. Also…we will come up with a capital plan, and in that capital plan, Long Island and upstate bridges and tolls, bridges and roads [sic] will be part of that plan. And finally, and this one is where we have to do more work on our part, but we do know the stimulus package has money for shovel ready projects, some of which the MTA may be willing to put forward, but we do know that the shovel-ready projects have additional implementation for members of our congress in addition to the public.

-Malcom A. Smith, New York State Senate Democratic Majority Leader in video the video Senate Majority Leader announces plan to addresses MTA operating budget shortfall, prevents dramatic fare increases and service reductions, available on his site.

At nymtasolutions.org you can view the above speech, read the MTA’s budget, and the full Senate proposal for the MTA and share your MTA budget ideas.

They want to share budget concerns and ideas here and MTA budget concerns and ideas here.

They are also looking for a taskforce to be established on transparency and public communication.

Their Temporary Committee on Rules Reform has also launched a new youtube channel [NYSenateRulesReform] for greater transparency and to hear your concerns.

Watch the State Senate from your computer.

The New york State Tri-Level Legislative Task Force has also released a report on their plan on Improving Public Confidence in Law Enforcement and our Criminal Justice System which you can read and comment upon here.

With all this information, maybe you’ll actually be informed enough to be brave enough to make a comment on one of their pages Great!

Let me know if you’ve found any more that I’ve missed (there are a lot of ways the government has provided for communication and transparency) and what you think of the MTA’s move for new media transparency.