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Tracking NY's Stimulus Spending Online

by Andrea Bernstein

NEW YORK, NY July 02, 2009 —As of Wednesday, all three statewide elected officials have websites that help track stimulus funding, but none make New York's stimulus spending completely transparent. WNYC's Andrea Bernstein has more.

The newest addition to the transparency canon comes from Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, whose www.openbooknewyork.com site allows users to track stimulus spending down to the name of the contractor -- but there's a hitch, where money passes through local goverments -- and billions of dollars do -- the money trail stops at the name of the city or county. Governor Paterson's site, www.recovery.ny.gov/, gives a visual map of projects, but provides less information on contract details. And Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's www.sunlightny.com gives lots of data on campaign contributions, lobbying, and contracts, but doesn't specifically tag stimulus spending. And there's one more website for those seeking data. Mayor Bloomberg's site, called NYCStat. Many of the sites still have sparse information -- while a great deal of stimulus funding has been allocated, only a fraction has been actually contracted out.

For WNYC I'm Andrea Bernstein.


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