Two New York Counties Proceed With Unburdening Themselves of Nursing Homes

by John W Rodat on March 22, 2013

Yesterday, the Committee that reviews certificate-of-need applications for the NYS Public Health and Health Planning Council approved the applications that would move two county nursing homes to private ownership.

Alice Hyde Hospital, in Malone will be building a new larger nursing home combining their current capacity with that of the Franklin County Nursing Home, which will close. Alice Hyde will also be adding assisted living capacity, of which there is currently none in Franklin County. The County will be paying Alice Hyde $1 million per year for ten years. The County will convert its building to office space, consolidating staff and reducing rental costs. The State will be assisting with a HEAL grant.

Ulster County, which had already transferred Golden Hill, its nursing home to a local development corporation (LDC) to facilitate this process will complete the process by having the LDC sell to a private operator.

Both applications were approved unanimously. There were only one or two questions and they had to do with the physical design of the new Alice Hyde facility.

Both counties brought a full contingent of everyone involved, prepared to answer questions. Both had been advised that applications involving county nursing homes used to be pretty much pro forma, but that Albany County had made everyone nuts with its ultimately failed application to build a new, very expensive, facility. Recently, the PHHPC deferred action on Suffolk County’s proposed sale. Evidently, no one from the County was at the Committee meeting when questions or challenges arose. That deal may now be at risk.

Tagged as: Albany County, Alice Hyde Hospital, County, Deficit, Nursing Home

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Quick Count of New York’s Muni’s in Fiscal Distress

by John W Rodat on February 5, 2013

Based on the Governor’s tentative list, I just did a quick count of New York’s municipalities listed as being fiscally distressed and those not.

  • Fiscally distressed: 437
  • Not fiscally distressed: 1,169
  • No data in the file (which I’ll check): 2
  • Total: 1,606
  • Percentage fiscally distressed: 27.2%

Note, there are no school districts in this list. It includes, counties, cities, towns, and villages.

More later.

Tagged as: Arbitration, Collective Bargaining, Fiscal Stress, New York

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More Measures of Muni Fiscal Stress

by John W Rodat on February 5, 2013

Yesterday, the Budget Division of New York’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo, released a list of municipalities indicating at least one form of fiscal distress. While the list and measures are preliminary (for information only), they are evidently precursors of more definitive measures that would enable municipal governments to benefit from capped binding arbitration decisions in labor disputes that the Governor proposed in his budget.

Here’s Casey Seiler’s story in the Albany Times-Union.

And here’s the list of municipalities with the risk measures. The data are downloadable.

A very quick scan of the data triggered a lot of questions. I’ll get into those in a later post.

Tagged as: Arbitration, Collective Bargaining, Fiscal Stress, New York

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Enhancing Our NYS Interactive Budget Visualization

by John W Rodat on January 28, 2013

We’ve added some new screens to our interactive visualization of the New York State Budget.

You’ll find two new screens showing historical change by functions and a screen that shows the estimated current and proposed levels of full-time equivalent employees.

Next up? Adding receipts/revenues and some other functionality.

And most important, from time-to-time, we’ll actually look at the data ourselves and makes some observations.

As usual, feel free to comment and make suggestions.

Tagged as: Budget, New York, Open Data, Open Government, Tableau

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Jorgen Randers in Albany to Discuss 40 Year Global Forecast

by John W Rodat on January 25, 2013

Jorgen Randers is coauthor of the classic, The Limits to Growth (1972) and also of The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (2004).

In early February, Randers will be in Albany, discussing his new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.

I’ve never heard him speak, but I’ve read the first two books and this event is in my calendar. The earlier books, especially the original, did generate controversy, but they still make you think, the methodology for thinking about such issues is powerful, and much of what they wrote is now mainstream.

  • Sponsor: NYS Writer’s Institute
  • When: February 6, 2013 Wednesday
  • Time: 7:30 PM
  • Where: Lecture Center 7, Academic Podium, Uptown Campus
    University at Albany
    1400 Washington Ave., ·
    Albany, NY 12222

For more information, click Randers Event in Albany

Tagged as: Energy, Environment, System Dynamics

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Empire Center’s Tool on the NYS Budget

by John W Rodat on January 25, 2013

The Empire Center‘s SeeThroughNY has created and put online a new tool for examining New York’s Budget.

It features:

  • A nice, clean interface
  • Ability to download the data into Excel files
  • Trendline graphics
  • Popup explanations and definitions of some terms and titles, e.g., the difference between “All Funds” and “State Operating” funds.
  • “Special Features,” which include such things as caseload data associated with programs like Tuition Assistance, Medicaid, OMH community beds, prison population, active and retired employees associated with the State’s employee health insurance plan and so on. This is a very nice addition and suggest a lot of pre-planning and effort.
  • Historical data going back to 1976 for revenue and 1984 for summary disbursements, in both nominal and inflation adjusted (real) terms.

Well before Governor Cuomo’s announcement that they would make Budget data more transparent, Empire Center staff were hard at work pulling the data together and creating and testing their tools. It paid off.

Nice job!

Tagged as: Budget, Data, Kudos, New York

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Government Technology Notices Us

by John W Rodat on January 24, 2013

Government Technology ran a story this morning, Transparency: New York State Reveals All (Its Numbers) on the Governor’s budget transparency initiative.

And they even mentioned the interactive visualizations that we put online. Who knows how they found us so quickly, but thanks.

Tagged as: New York, Open Data, Open Government

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Opening New York’s Budget

by John W Rodat on January 24, 2013

We recently congratulated Governor Cuomo for his promoting data transparency in his State of the State message.

Little did we know how quickly his administration was moving to actually take concrete steps to make it so. Yesterday’s Budget showed us not only that his commitment was serious, but that the staff of the State Division of the Budget must have been working pretty hard to make it happen.

Here’s the result of that commitment and effort in OpenBudgetNY. In particular, note on these pages, Budget and Actuals, Appropriations, Capital Appropriations and Archives that you can select the items of interest and download machine-readable data (in Excel format). So you can then do you own calculations or whatever.

Let me show you an example of the practical implications of automatically putting the data out in public, in a form that enables you to not only read it, but to take even more active steps like calculate with it. That capability is the foundation for even more, like creating interactive online visualizations.

I had earlier submitted a FOIL request for these data. As is often the case, the FOIL process was dragging. Others were seeking the same or similar data. Operationally, was any good served by the practice of requiring each who might be interested in the data to file a separate (and perhaps slightly different) request that then had to be processed by public employees? The answer to that is, no, not if the data already exist.

Just put it all out there. In some cases, automatically putting such data online will actually reduce the workload of public employees.

Secondly, everything moves faster. Reinvent Albany’s John Kaehny gave me the heads up around 4:00 PM on Tuesday, the day the Budget was released. By mid-day today, I had downloaded the first set of data and created the files visualizations on a new page that you can now find here.

I haven’t finished testing and tweaking the first set of visualizations so I haven’t embedded them to operate directly here yet. But the links are active.

If nothing else, it’s an indicator of what can be done quickly by making the raw data available. For that I am very appreciative.

For convenience, they’re also here and your comments and suggestions will be welcome:

Entry Page. Note that you can also navigate using the tabs at the top of each page.

Overall Summary Dollars

Overall Summary Percentages

Summary by Category of Spending

Summary by Agency

History

Interactive Budget Explorer. This one is the geekiest. It will take a bit more effort on your part, but that’s because it leaves most of the choices to the user. So if you want to explore detail, this is where you can do it.

The Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY has become a repository for a lot of New York data. They started working on their own interface for budget data months ago and they’re clearly getting better at it. Early, test versions of the budget interface were nicely laid out and convenient to use. Now that the Budget data has been released, they should be online very quickly with their own tools.

And this brings me to another point. Even though they work with the same data, all of these efforts are not competitive. With different emphases, and different interfaces, they will all contribute to better understanding. Indeed, libraries and other interested organizations should make it policy and habit to themselves become mirror repositories.

So congratulations are in order to the Governor, to the Division of the Budget and any other staff that helped make this happen. (Geez, I must be getting soft: two consecutive congratulatory posts to an elected official and public employees.)

______________________
Note that this page has been updated since originally published to reflect the addition of a link to the Entry Page of the Budget visualization.

Tagged as: Budget, FOIL, Kudos, New York, Open Data, Open Government, Tableau, UTDD, Visualization

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Making the Public’s Data Public – Cuomo Edition

by John W Rodat on January 9, 2013

Well, this seems an especially appropriate topic with which to kick off our 2013 posts.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2013 State-of-the-State address’s includes an entire section on using technology to promote “transparency.” Among other things, the Governor has now committed to providing online copies of the State budget in “machine-readable” form. That means you can not only read it, you can put the numbers into a spreadsheet or other program and do your own calculations.

We need to credit Reinvent Albany, which started nagging the Governor’s people about this in 2010. (Full disclosure: Reinvent Albany is a client.)

Funny thing is that as recently as last week, we were still pushing to get the Division of the Budget to fulfill a Freedom of Information request for budget data. But, as a policy statement, it is a substantial step forward.

Several of the details suggest a deeper than average sense of how to do this and its potentials. For example, it starts with a central portal. That suggests standardized formats. It includes references to graphic displays and maps. And so on.

Congratulations to the Governor and his staff and to Reinvent Albany.

Starting at page 201 of the text of the Governor’s Address is this section:

Create OPEN NY: Using Technology to Promote Transparency, Improve Government Performance, and Enhance Citizen Engagement

To increase transparency and make government work better, Governor Cuomo will implement Open
New York, a transparency initiative he outlined during his campaign for Governor, which will harness technology to show how taxpayer money is being spent, showcase the great resources of the state, and foster productive engagement with government.

As Attorney General, Governor Cuomo used technology to provide unprecedented transparency and accountability in government through Project Sunlight, the State’s first-ever online database of information related to campaign finance, lobbying activity, state spending, and State contracts.

Governor Cuomo has continued his commitment to government transparency and performance. His CitizenConnects website has served as an “online town hall” to promote public engagement and provides access to schedules and public meeting information. The comprehensive Tappan Zee Bridge website
provides access to all prior project reports along with up-to-date construction information that complements unprecedented in-person outreach, “TheNewNY.com” provides comprehensive and easy-to-navigate information on starting and maintaining a business in New York State, and the Regional Council website makes public detailed information on economic development projects. This administration uses Twitter, Facebook, and livestreaming video to innovatively and consistently communicate with New Yorkers, something which became invaluable during storm recovery as people who had lost power relied on social media on mobile devices. State agencies are doing their part as well. And of course, historic steps have been taken to increase government transparency beyond the use of technology.

The rise of the Internet, social media, crowd sourcing, and powerful search engines has dramatically changed the way we do business and the way the public looks for and expects information. These tools have unlimited potential to get better, easier-to-understand information to the public faster and more efficiently, allowing the public to make better use of government information in private sector projects and in government collaborations, and to hold government accountable.

Open New York, a coordinated, technology-based initiative, will harness this potential to use technology to increase government efficiency, performance and collaboration as we enter a new era of public participation in government. Our state government possesses vast treasure troves of valuable information and reports: from health, business and public safety data to information on parks, recreation, labor, and transportation. Too often, this information is in government file cabinets, or in documents that aren’t electronically searchable, or scatted throughout state agencies and their websites.

Open New York will provide easy, single-stop access to statewide and agency-level data, reports,
statistics, compilations and information. Data will be presented in a common, downloadable, easy-to-access format, and will be searchable and mappable. The Open New York web portal will allow researchers, citizens, business and the media direct access to high-value data, which will be continually added to and expanded, so these groups can use the data to innovate for the benefit of all New Yorkers. “App competitions” will enlist the collective genius of our state’s students and tech community by asking them to develop practical uses for state data. Budget data, which is already posted online, will be posted in machine readable and graphical formats, making access easier and more impactful for citizens and researchers alike. Through Open New York, technology will bring government a New New York.

Open New York will reap substantial benefits, both through cost savings and improvements in government accountability and collaboration. Providing detailed spending and budget information allows government employees and the public to locate inefficiencies and duplicate expenses. Putting government data online also reduces the expenses associated with producing paper documents in response to Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”) requests.Benefits come not only from direct use of the data, but also from the return on investment that comes when private citizens and journalists use data to generate useful apps and to evaluate government performance. Quick and efficient data access can also be useful in disaster response and preparation. The benefits of increased online transparency significantly outweigh the costs of putting information online.

New Yorkers want to know their government is investing taxpayer money efficiently in programs and services that are performing for all New Yorkers. It is government’s responsibility to provide information to the people it serves through affirmative disclosures. This initiative will build the trust between state government and New Yorkers. Transparency can be driven through technical solutions that the State is committed to deploying with the resources available through the Internet. Above all, Open New York will put a powerful tool for transparency, accountability, and innovation in the hands of New Yorkers and people all around the world through a centralized user-friendly interface.

Kudos!

Tagged as: Data, Kudos, Open Data, Open Government, Use the Damn Data, UTDD

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Happy New Year

by John W Rodat on December 31, 2012

Got an email earlier today noting (complaining?) that I’d been offline for about a month. Apologies to all. Was initially caught up in work.

Then came the shooting of children in Connecticut …

Everything else instantly seemed to become too small to publish on and I wasn’t ready to say anything about the shooting. Not that I didn’t have a reaction; I did. But whatever I might have added at the time would have been loaded with emotion and not have been what the topic deserves. So while I’ve started thinking it out, I’m not ready to publish yet. Admittedly, my current thinking on the topic is pretty dark and not just on the shooting itself, but also on many responses. So it’ll be a while longer.

The most recent 10 days or so, I’ve been concentrating on family, mostly grandchildren, who always brighten one’s mood.

And now, Ms. R and I are in NH, pretty much without the benefits – and intrusions – of electronic comunications technology. (This posting is being written at the local library.) No landline, which is a story in itself, no Internet, intermittent cell phone reception: what a throwback. It’s a throwback, but for the moment, a good one. As the year ends and as elected officials in Washington, DC stumble over themselves and one another to save us and themselves from a crisis of their creation, it’s probably better that we spend the last of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, shoveling snow and watching the wood stove.

So we’re making the new year’s transition a quiet one.

However you celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next, we wish you and yours a safe, happy holiday, and a very good 2013.

JWR

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