Down the memory hole

State government officials are all about transparency, except when they’re not. Tuesday, City & State reported that, despite running for office three times since 2018, Bronx Assemblywoman Amanda Septimo hasn’t filed campaign finance reports since her first campaign. And no one at the state Board of Elections, whose job it is to enforce the rules, flagged her.

It’s not only elected officials and the BOE flouting their responsibilities. The state Authorities Budget Office just put out a list of state and local entities that have failed to produce disclosures required of them under law. State and local authorities must file annual reports and budget reports within 90 days of the end of the fiscal year; local authorities must also file budget reports 60 days before the start of the fiscal year.

Among the many scofflaws who’ve blown past their mandatory 2022 deadlines and are past due are the Agriculture and New York State Horse Breeding Development Fund, the Nassau Health Care Corp., the Mount Vernon Urban Renewal Agency, the

Yonkers Joint Schools Construction Board, the Finger Lakes Regional Telecommunications Development Corp., the Hoosick Local Development Corp., the Catskill Local Development Corp., the Sleepy Hollow Local Development Corp., the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, the New York City Educational Construction Fund, the New York City Land Development Corp., the New York City School Bus Umbrella Services, Inc., the NYC Neighborhood Capital Corp., and the New York City Energy Efficiency Corp. (It’s not as though energy efficiency is very important to anyone these days anyway.)

We counted 147 negligent entities, all of which (wink wink, nod nod) are undeniably essential to the people of the state. All told in New York, there are more than 1,000 state and local public authorities that spend more than $78 billion per year, bureaucratic labyrinths that even the most sophisticated modern GPS app couldn’t navigate its way around.

Is it too much to ask that they keep the public that pays their bills apprised of their activities once a year?