Today, Assemblyman Ken Blankenbush (R,C,I-Black River) and his Assembly Minority colleagues released their plan to bring transparency and ethical reforms to the state’s economic development programs. This legislation (A.10531) is made up of six components that will address contributions to development reports and oversight of taxpayer-funded plans.

These components include:

• Creating a three-member board to oversee lump sum budget appropriations worth over $1 million;
• Identifying the individual in charge of each large lump sum appropriation;
• The withholding of salaries for the governor, the agency’s commissioner and deputy commissioners for late disclosure of agency reports;
• Creating a simplified version of the Personal Income Tax and Corporate Finance Tax;
• Auditing all state economic programs to determine the efficiency of any publicly-funded programs; and
• Prohibiting appointees charged with spending discretionary funds from making political contributions to their appointing authority.

“All of these proposals have been introduced to create more transparency within the economic portion of the state’s spending,” said Blankenbush. “The money being used for these programs is from taxpayers and they have the right to see exactly where and how their money is being spent. There is far too much secrecy involved in the process of dispensing funds and that has created a breeding ground for corruption, as we see with the investigation of the Buffalo Billion and SUNY Polytechnic.

“The people of New York deserve the ability to track how their money is spent and this legislation will do exactly that. I am hopeful this legislation will be taken up in the next few days before session concludes, but based upon other recently introduced legislation, the Assembly Majority seems to have their concerns elsewhere,” said Blankenbush.