Int. No. 508
By Council Members Moskowitz, Brewer, Comrie, Gennaro, Gerson, McMahon, Nelson, Recchia, Sears, Boyland, Weprin, Serrano, Martinez, Koppell and Katz
A Local Law to amend the Charter of the City of New York to provide the City Council with electronic access to the budget data used by the Office of Management and Budget to plan, track, and account for capital projects in the City of New York.
Be it enacted by the Council as follows:
Section 1. Legislative findings. Pursuant to the Charter, the Council is responsible for the adoption and amendment of the City’s Capital Budget as well as for oversight of its implementation. The Office of the Mayor and, in particular, the Office of Management and Budget, are required by Section 219 of the City Charter to provide capital project information to the City Council on a regular basis, so that the Council can carry out its Charter-mandated functions. Such information is, in the format currently provided to the Council, incomplete, untimely, and lacking in the specificity that the Council requires to perform its legislative and oversight functions. Accordingly, the Council hereby enacts the following procedure for obtaining information from the Office of the Mayor and, specifically, the Office of Management and Budget.
§2. Section 219 of the Charter of the City of New York is hereby amended to include a new subsection (g) to read as follows:
g. The Office of the Mayor shall provide the City Council with unrestricted access to view and retrieve information from any financial management system used by the Office of Management and Budget to plan, track, and account for capital project estimates, appropriations and expenditures. The Office of the Mayor shall cooperate with the Finance Division of the Council to allow the Finance Division to access all modules and screens of the financial management system relating to capital project estimates, appropriations and expenditures, using computer equipment located in the Finance Division offices. Nothing in this subsection shall be deemed to limit the duties of the Financial Information Services Agency set forth in Section 861 of this Charter.
§3. If any subsection, sentence, clause, phrase or other portion of this local law is, for any reason, declared unconstitutional or invalid, in whole or in part, by any court of competent jurisdiction, such portion shall be deemed severable and such unconstitutionality or invalidity shall not affect the validity of the remaining portions of the local law that added this section, which remaining portions shall remain in full force and effect.
§4. This local law shall take effect immediately.