CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Project Sunlight is an effort by my office to promote your right to know and to monitor governmental decision-making. This website - the first of its kind in New York - allows you to easily access statewide government information that until now has been scattered and difficult to retrieve.

Of course, Project Sunlight would not be available without the support of the Governor and legislative leaders. Their agreement - and the support of the entire legislature - ensured that start-up funding for Project Sunlight was included in the state budget.

Currently, we are working on the first phase of this project: collecting and standardizing different data and making it available to you on a comprehensive, easy-to-search website. During this initial phase, you have the ability to search the Project Sunlight website to examine information related to campaign finance, legislation, lobbying activity, and recipients of state government contracts.

Our goal is to promote disclosure as well as to increase government's transparency and accountability to you. As James Madison, the Founding Father of the Bill of Rights observed, "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

We look forward to receiving your comments or suggestions, and any requests for additional information you would like to see made publicly available. We will incorporate your ideas into a more robust version in 2008.

We hope this website is helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo