Good Government

New York City's crime map can tell you where a burglary or assault occurred, but a bill being introduced today would make the city plot traffic tickets and summonses as well, the legislation's author, Councilmen Ben Kallos told amNY.

Kallos' bill requires noncriminal violations to be posted on the city's crime map along with dates, times and location information down to the longitude and latitude coordinates, if possible.

He said this level of detail would bolster the city's Vision Zero pedestrian safety effort by providing more exact locations of incidents and traffic violations.

Council Member Ben Kallos and the government operations committee he chairs are set to hold two interesting hearings on Monday. First, at 10 a.m., the committee will look at the issue of extending community board eligibility to 16 and 17-year-olds, considering a resolution recommending passage of a bill in Albany that would allow such an extension.

Then, the highly-anticipated Open FOIL bill will get its first hearing at 1 p.m. The bill, introduced by Kallos, would create an online portal allowing people to see the status of FOIL requests. One of the issues expected to be be brought up is whether the name and organization of the person submitting the request would be published. For the average citizen looking to obtain records, having their name on the portal will likely not be a big deal. But for journalists having their name and type of information they are requesting in an online portal could tip off their competition and jeopardize a story.

The government ops committee will be meeting along with the technology committee, chaired by CM Jimmy Vacca, and council members will be discussing Open FOIL and two other open gov bills.

As part of a raft of bills on government data and transparency, Council Member Ben Kallos has introduced legislation that would require the city to release and map data about where NYPD issues moving violations, among other things. The bill would open up new traffic enforcement information to the public...