Ben Kallos, Re-Elect to New York City Council in 2017 - Good Government

Gotham Gazette City Council Passes 'Open Budget' Bill Mayor Has Yet to Support by Samar Khurshid

Feed — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 16:12:15 +0000

Gotham Gazette

City Council Passes 'Open Budget' Bill Mayor Has Yet to Support

http://www.gothamgazette.com/city/7287-new-york-city-council-passes-open-budget-...

Samar Khurshid

10/31/2017

The New York City Council passed legislation on Tuesday mandating that the government agency that oversees the city’s $85.2 billion annual budget provide all budget documents to the public in an easily accessible and machine-readable format.

The legislation, sponsored by Council Member Ben Kallos, chair of the governmental operations committee, requires the Office of Management and Budget to post documents released in the annual budget process to the city’s open data portalwithin 10 days of posting them on their website. OMB produces multiple iterations of the city’s budget each year as the annual expenditure plan is negotiated between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council. These include the preliminary budget proposal, the executive budget proposal and the final adopted budget, each of which contain hundreds of pages with detailed breakdowns of agency spending and city revenues. The agency also issues a budget modification document in November.

“I want to know where every single penny in the budget is,” said Kallos. “We’ve already got a lot of this implemented, but the parts of the budget that matter are still hidden behind thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of pdfs that can’t be searched, let alone analyzed.”

Kallos’ bill would make reams of expenditure and revenue reports searchable online and downloadable in bulk, providing an added level of transparency to city budgeting, he says. “With this legislation, whether it’s a member of the City Council, City Council staff or any resident will be able to actually see where the dollars are being spent and really hold the administration accountable.”

An ardent advocate of government reform and a software developer himself, Kallos has consistently pushed the de Blasio’s administration to increase the amount of data available on the open data portal. The administration, for its part, has made significant progress since the city’s open data initiative was first launched in 2012 by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Kallos believes this latest bill will build on that effort. “We spent years working with the administration, working with the existing financial management system to ensure that it could be done,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of the budget up.”

It’s unclear whether the mayor will sign the bill into law, although he has yet to veto a single bill passed by the City Council. “We look forward to reviewing the legislation,” said Freddi Goldstein, a mayoral spokesperson on budget matters, in an email.

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Open Budget Legislation Authored by Council Member Kallos Passes City Council

Feed — Tue, 31 Oct 2017 15:24:50 +0000

Good Government

Open Budget Legislation Authored by Council Member Kallos Passes City Council

Searchable and Computer Readable Budget Will Open Up $85 Billion in Spending for Public Review

“New Yorkers should be able to search the city’s budget to see how every penny of their tax dollars is being spent,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, a software developer, and open data advocate. “Thank you to Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland for their partnership in advocacy for an Open Budget.”

New York, NY – How New York City spends $85 billion just got more transparent with the passing of legislation from Council Member Ben Kallos that requires all budget documents released by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to be publicly released on its website and the Open Data Portal in a searchable and computer readable format, instead of only printed or in lengthy PDFs.

“New Yorkers should be able to search the city’s budget to see how every penny of their tax dollars is being spent,” said Council Member Ben Kallos, a software developer, and open data advocate. “Thank you to Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito and Finance Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland for their partnership in advocacy for an Open Budget.” “Under my tenure as Finance Chair, we were able to provide New Yorkers with online access to our $85.2 billion budget. To expand on our existing efforts, we will now provide constituents a more convenient way to find this information. I want to commend Council Member Kallos for proposing this legislation that I’m proudly co-sponsoring. With its passing, we are showing once again our commitment to openness and transparency, said Finance Committee Chair Julissa Ferreras-Copeland.”

Council Member Kallos began advocating for the budget to be published online in 2014. The City Council advocated for an Open Budget in the City Council Budget Response sent to the administration on April 4, 2016: “The budget is the most important public policy the City regularly makes. As such its transparency is crucial to helping New Yorkers understand how the City spends and raises funding. While OMB publically provides many budget documents, all of them are in portable document format (pdf), making an analysis of them cumbersome at best and impossible at worst. Like other agencies, OMB should publish excel files of its documents such as the supporting schedules, departmental estimates, and other applicable documents.”

On May 5, 2016, Council Member Kallos introduced the Open Budget bill, following which the administration announced that it would begin voluntarily publishing certain major budget documents online.

Intro 1176, which passed the Council today, requires that practice to continue, requires budget documents that were previously excluded to be published online, and requires all online documents to be published in human and computer readable formats, as well as on the Open Data Portal.

The bill also requires documents submitted to the City Council for review during the budget negotiation process to be provided in human and computer readable formats for more effective review by the Council.

“Citizens Budget Commission supports the passage of Intro 1176 of 2016, to amend the city charter to require that the Office of Management and Budget make budget documents available in formats that permit automated processing. Having budget documents in 'open' formats will significantly increase the speed and ease with which interested taxpayers can analyze how the City is spending their money. This is a critical step in strengthening transparency and accountability in the budget process," said Carol Kellermann, President of the Citizens Budget Commission. “Democracy can only work if the government is open and transparent about its activities in service of the public,” said Andrew Rasiej, Founder and CEO of Civic Hall, “With this Open Budget legislation the New York City Council is once again reaffirming its commitment to a working democracy by making sure that city’s expenditures and finances are open and transparent as well”

“A big thank you to the City Council for passing the Open Budget Bill. New York City has been a world leader in open data --- except strangely for budget data, which is not open and spreadsheet readable. The budget is probably the single most important data set produced by city government. It tells the public what our government is spending our money on, and what its priorities are. New York State and leading world cities publish their budgets in useful, machine-readable formats --- so should New York City. We urge Mayor de Blasio to sign this important open government bill," said John Kaehny, co-chair of the NYC Transparency Working Group and executive director of Reinvent Albany.

"This is a great leap forward into the 21st century for our antiquated government administration. Public information should be digital, searchable, and accessible so New Yorkers know exactly how their money is being spent," said Susan Lerner, Executive Director of Common Cause/NY.

“The Open Budget Bill is long overdue, and we are pleased to see the City Council pass it today. New Yorkers deserve to have an accessible, searchable budget that allows them to truly see how 85 billion tax dollars are spent. Transparency isn’t very meaningful if the data made available isn’t searchable or otherwise accessible to every day New Yorkers, let alone researchers, watchdogs, and advocates. Making New York City’s budget truly accessible is a cornerstone of an open and more democratic city government,” said Rachel Bloom, Director of Public Policy and Programs, Citizens Union.

As Chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, Council Member Ben Kallos, oversees the Financial Information Services Agency (FISA) which operates software from CGI Group by the name of the Financial Management System (FMS) that manages the city budget. Council Member Ben Kallos identified areas where the budget is only available in print or PDF and found that FMS could easily make the budget information available in open searchable formats online.

The Open Budget bill was introduced in the Council on May 5, 2016, and received a public hearing in the Committee on Finance on June 12, 2017.

lester shane

lester shane — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 23:59:08 +0000

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Gotham Gazette City Council Members Still Navigating Outside Income Divestment Ahead of Deadline by Rachel Silberstein

Feed — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 08:32:15 +0000

Gotham Gazette

City Council Members Still Navigating Outside Income Divestment Ahead of Deadline

http://www.gothamgazette.com/state/7234-city-council-members-still-navigating-ou...

Rachel Silberstein

10/05/2017

There were and continue to be criticisms about the requirement that City Council members relinquish virtually all outside income. Some stemmed from concerns that an outright ban on outside income could discourage small business owners from running for office, according to Council Member Ben Kallos, who co-sponsored the legislation and chairs the governmental operations committee. The bill was tweaked to make allowances for passive income and would not force electeds to dissolve their business entities completely.

“It’s just what we could reasonably expect from people. So, if somebody has spent their career as a small business person, and brought that small business experience to the City Council, which can be invaluable…,” said Kallos. “After four years or eight years, [that person] could return to their community, and continue doing what they did to begin with.”

Rather than stripping a small number of elected officials of their non-governmental livelihoods, the goal was to ensure that Council members focus on their districts full-time, and to avoid any real or apparent conflicts of interest.

“It is a concern for me that someone with business before the city could hire a member of the City Council in the hopes of gaining influence,” said Kallos, who represents Manhattan’s 5th Council District.

Kallos said that before taking office in 2014, he personally retired from the practice of law in three states and dissolved LLCs for companies he had started. He said he is still in the process of dissolving several non-profits he created.

“All of them have had, literally had no business since I got elected. But, it can be a complicated and weird, long process,” he said.

While dissolving these entities is not required by the bill, Kallos said, “I felt that as the author of the law in question, I have to set a good example and go one step further than the law requires.”

Legislation barring City Council members from making outside income will go into effect on January 1, forcing several sitting and incoming Council members to make tough decisions about their side jobs.

The regulations, which were linked to a significant pay increase for all city elected officials, including a salary bump from $112,500 to $148,000 for City Council members, were approved by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council last year. Only three current City Council members, two of whom voted against the new restrictions, continue to be involved in their private sector businesses, and each is still in the process of figuring out divestment as mandated by the new law.

Council Members Peter Koo, Chaim Deutsch, and Paul Vallone -- all still in the process of being reelected to another term -- were required to submit letters to City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito by March 1, 2016 indicating whether or not they intended to continue earning outside income and stating an intention to comply with the rules by the January deadline -- in time for the 2018-2021 Council session.

When reached by Gotham Gazette, each of the three Council members or a representative described legal and logistical complexities in divesting from or dissolving a limited liability company (LLC), resigning from a job, or recusing oneself from duties in anticipation of the deadline.

Meanwhile, some still question whether the Council should have gone to a near-complete ban on outside income (small allowances are provided for members who teach a college course, for example), or if the model should have been akin to the cap on what members of Congress are allowed to make outside of their governmental duty -- a small percentage of their salaries.

Vallone, a Democrat who represents District 19 in Eastern Queens, reported earning between $5,000 and $47,999 from his family’s law practice on his 2016 financial disclosure forms. In opposing the new outside income restrictions on Council members, he introduced a last-ditch amendment -- citing a statement made by good government group Citizens Union -- that Council members’ outside income should be capped at 15 percent of their Council salaries rather than eliminated. The amendment did not pass, and a spokesperson for Vallone said he is working with his lawyers to figure out how the rules apply to the family’s legal firm, which was founded by his grandfather Judge Charles J. Vallone in 1932, and where three generations of Vallones have since practiced.

As managing Partner of Vallone & Vallone, the Council member oversees the company’s day-to-day operations and serves as general counsel for corporate clients, according to the firm’s website. The firm also handles estate law, real estate transactions, civil and personal injury litigation, and criminal law.

Also a Democrat, Deutsch represents the 48th Council District, in Southern Brooklyn, and currently makes between $100,000 and $250,000 a year through a real estate management company he owns. He said he intends to shut down the business by January, but has not yet determined the process for doing so.

“It’s going to take some time to shut down the corporation. I don’t know exactly what the process is,” said Deutsch, who voted against the bills. “What I do know, is that I’m not accepting any more managing fees. I could keep the corporation open for the next five years, and maybe reopen it after term limits. But I will not be receiving the outside income.”

Deutsch, like Vallone and Koo, will be term-limited out of office at the end of 2021 if successful on Election Day this year, which each is expected to be.

Koo is a Democrat who owns a chain of pharmacies and represents the 20th Council District in Queens. He reported making between $60,000 and $99,999 as the president of a pharmacy, and another $5,000 to $47,999 at another pharmacy. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but he was the only one of the three who voted in favor of the legislation.

Other newly elected Democratic nominees for the City Council said that they had already quit their jobs to focus on their campaigns and that they have no intentions to returning to work before January.

“I quit in 2017 in April to be a full-time candidate,” said Keith Powers, who won a crowded District 4 Democratic primary and is the favorite to win the seat in November. “No matter what job I had at the time, I would have given it up; you want to make sure you have all the time to talk to voters.”

Like Powers, most candidates for City Council either leave their jobs entirely or take a leave of absence for the key months of the campaign.

Powers, a former government aide and, more recently, lobbyist who ran partly on a reform and transparency platform, said he hopes that the City Council rules can be a model for the state Legislature, where the salaries are far lower but the outside income restrictions are minimal and the job is considered part-time.

“You should be fully committed to the job that you’ve been elected to for the district. In the district that I am in, I don’t know how you would even have time to do both,” Powers said.

State government appeared to be moving toward pay raises for state legislators and others in government last year, but the process was stalled amid disagreements among Governor Andrew Cuomo, members of the Legislature, and appointees to a special panel tasked with determining pay raises and, potentially, other reforms to the relevant jobs. Legislators haven’t had a salary increase in nearly 20 years, with base pay stuck at $79,000, though many legislators receive additional bonuses as well as per diem payouts for trips to Albany.

“All of them have had, literally had no business since I got elected. But, it can be a complicated and weird, long process,” he said.

Certain passive income, such as interest, dividends, rent, annuities, capital gains, copyright royalties, or retirement payouts are acceptable under the new rules. Council members may also accept compensation for speaking engagements or artistic performances, with advance approval by the Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB), and income for teaching an accredited college course, “so long as such compensation does not exceed that normally received by others at the institution for a comparable type and amount of instruction.”

The language also leaves room for jobs drawing “minimal income, involving a limited time commitment,” with advance approval by the Office of General Counsel, as long as the role does not interfere with the member’s official duties.

The pay raise at the City Council may have helped attract a number of candidates from state government, where legislative salaries have been frozen since 1999. But, the new city guidelines can also create complications for an Assembly member and state senator earning outside income on the verge of election to the City Council. Three state lawmakers won Democratic City Council primaries in September and are either heavily favored or guaranteed to win the seat in November.

State Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., who won the primary for Council District 18 in the Bronx, earns between $5,000 and $20,000 for his role as pastor at the Christian Community Neighborhood Church, which he founded, according to his most recent financial disclosure forms. Diaz Sr. could not be reached for comment.

Assemblymember Mark Gjonaj, who won the primary for Council District 13 in the Bronx, has earned between $75,000 and $100,000 from a real estate brokerage firm he owns with a family member. A spokesperson for Gjonai said he has started the process with his lawyers and accountants to take the necessary steps to comply with city law.

“It's difficult for him to comment, because he's learning himself about that process,” said Jennifer Blatus, a spokesperson for Gjonaj. “I can say that it’s something the Assemblyman is happy to do in order to better serve his constituents.”

Assemblymember Francisco Moya, who won the primary in Queen’s 21st Council District, receives between $5,000 and $20,000 in rental income, according to his state disclosure filings, and will not be obligated to give up the income.

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Good Government

NBC News 4 New York Free Babysitting Could Come to NYC by Rana Novini

Feed — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 18:12:15 +0000

NBC News 4 New York

Free Babysitting Could Come to NYC

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Free-Babysitting-Could-Come-to-NYC_N...

Rana Novini

09/20/2017

Free babysitting could come to New York City's public meetings. Rana Novini reports.

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Good Government

City and State RANKING THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ON ATTENDANCE by Jon Lentz

Feed — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:52:16 +0000

City and State

RANKING THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ON ATTENDANCE

http://cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/new-york-city-council-...

Jon Lentz

08/15/2017

Just behind Mark-Viverito and Matteo was City Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who missed just one of his 83 meetings last year; City Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal, who missed only two of 115 meetings; and City Councilman Ben Kallos, who was absent from two of 105 meetings.

To track attendance, we counted all the meetings that each member was obligated to attend in calendar year 2016, including committee and subcommittee meetings, and then determined how many he or she missed. (City Councilman Bill Perkins was left out of the analysis since much of the data we used is from 2016, when Inez Dickens still held his Harlem seat.)

Any time a member had two meetings scheduled at the same time, we didn’t count the conflict as an absence. But other absences – for medical reasons, jury duty or funerals – were included.

This may strike some as unfair, but an extended absence can affect performance – and in some cases, it appeared to correlate with lower scores on other measures, like introducing and passing bills.

Yet one representative who missed substantial time due to medical leave nonetheless performed well on the other measures. City Councilman Jumaane Williams missed 15 days for medical reasons, but came in at No. 2 in our overall rankings.

https://csny-iglusjax.stackpathdns.com/assets/_img/article_images/_polit...

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City and State Ranking The New York City Council Members on Attendance by Jon Lentz

Feed — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:52:16 +0000

City and State

Ranking The New York City Council Members on Attendance

http://cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/new-york-city-council-...

Jon Lentz

08/15/2017

Any time a member had two meetings scheduled at the same time, we didn’t count the conflict as an absence. But other absences – for medical reasons, jury duty or funerals – were included.

This may strike some as unfair, but an extended absence can affect performance – and in some cases, it appeared to correlate with lower scores on other measures, like introducing and passing bills.

https://csny-iglusjax.stackpathdns.com/assets/_img/article_images/_polit...

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Good Government

City and State Ranking The New York City Council Based on Bills Introduced and Enacted by Editorial Board

Feed — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:52:15 +0000

City and State

Ranking The New York City Council Based on Bills Introduced and Enacted

http://cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/new-york-city-council-...

Editorial Board

08/17/2017

There’s a reason they’re called lawmakers.

As we continue our breakdown of the best and worst New York City Council members, one of the most obvious factors in assessing each lawmaker’s performance is the number of bills they’ve had signed into law.

To measure this, we tallied bill introductions but left out resolutions, which have little real weight. Only a lawmaker who was the prime sponsor of a bill qualified in this analysis. To reward effort, one criterion was the number of bills introduced. And to reward effectiveness, the other legislative criterion was the number of bills signed into law. For these criteria, we used data from calendar year 2016.

https://csny-iglusjax.stackpathdns.com/assets/image-cache/_img/article_i...

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Good Government

City and State RANKING THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ON ATTENDANCE by Jon Lentz

Feed — Sat, 19 Aug 2017 16:52:15 +0000

City and State

RANKING THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS ON ATTENDANCE

http://cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/new-york-city/new-york-city-council-...

Jon Lentz

08/15/2017

Any time a member had two meetings scheduled at the same time, we didn’t count the conflict as an absence. But other absences – for medical reasons, jury duty or funerals – were included.

This may strike some as unfair, but an extended absence can affect performance – and in some cases, it appeared to correlate with lower scores on other measures, like introducing and passing bills.

https://csny-iglusjax.stackpathdns.com/assets/_img/article_images/_polit...

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Good Government

sandra forman

sandra forman — Fri, 18 Aug 2017 00:57:26 +0000

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