Reforming Government

As a former president of the League of Women Voters of Westchester, Amy Paulin believes government should be open and accountable to the people. That’s why she has sponsored numerous bills to improve the operation of state and local governments.

This past year alone, Amy authored and passed three pieces of legislation to ensure transparency in government:

• To prevent legitimate Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests from being denied Amy wrote the law which requires government agencies designing information systems to do so in a manner that separates public information from non-public data, such as personal health data or social security numbers. This important new law will allow for maximum access to public records.
  
  
• To fully enforce the Open Meetings Law, Amy authored legislation, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, which will reimburse attorneys' fees to successful petitioners when a violation of the Open Meetings Law is alleged.
  
  
• To assist property owners who seek to challenge their assessments and assure a more accurate tax roll, Amy passed legislation requiring that property assessment data, consisting of the physical characteristics of a property, be made available for public inspection and copying.

Amy Paulin supported a series of rule changes to make the Assembly more open and accountable. Among these were to require open and public conference committee meetings and cable television coverage of state government proceedings.

Amy has consistently worked with her colleagues to turn around the practice of late state budgets. She knows that on time budgets restore rational planning to the school districts and local governments as well as to the non-profit agencies that provide social services through contracts with the state. Amy was the only Westchester legislator to sit on the Education Conference Committee and was instrumental in helping to pass a nearly on time budget even in the wake of the shocking and chaotic resignation of former Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Amy also believes in creating a more responsive state government, and wrote the law allowing New York State unemployment insurance recipients to withhold 10% of their weekly unemployment benefits for state income tax purposes to help achieve this goal.  This will allow taxpayers to avoid a large and sometimes unexpected payment when their state income taxes are due.