Document Dump - State Senate Pork
From Capitol Confidential:
Senate $ On The Web
The Senate majority has posted (on the day before Thanksgiving, no less) its Community Projects Fund Grants, (AKA Pork), on the Web.
Go to www.senate.state.ny.us. There you can look up projects from 2003-04 and 2004-05 that senators obtained funding for, be it Little League ballfield improvements, road projects etc.
Each project has a form which is signed by the requesting senator.
The information is listed under the Senate Reports link.
A note: The Times Union, joined by other media outlets, recently won a court fight to get details on these spending items.
The Senate stresses in a news release that the information has long been available through various state agencies, but reporters wanted to be able to trace spending items to individual lawmakers. Until now, that was no easy task.
Spending items for more recent years should be up soon, according to the Senate.
One warning, the listing is VERY big and will take your computer a long time to open, if it can open it all. Also, because it was scanned, it isn’t really searchable and requires patient scrolling to find the item, senator or dollar amount you may be seeking.
I've spent the past hour even trying to open this pile o' pork with no luck. It's a mess and I have no doubt that it's a mess by design. I mean, we wouldn't want anyone to actually be able to use any of this information, now would we?
As someone in the comments at CC said, which media outlet will be the first (if any) to compile the heap of data into something more useful and user friendly? It's not like our employees in the state Senate are going to do it for us. No, they'd rather insult their employers for daring to even ask about what they are doing with our money.
So, who is going to make this pile of crap something that is even the least bit useful? If that sounds like a challenge, that's because, you know, it is.
Get to it.
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