When the state Department of Environmental Conservation has a filing cabinet full of records, who owns them?
When a state Assembly member uses his or her state-provided email, who owns the inbox and the sent items?
When the state Department of Transportation maintains an electronic database, who owns the data?
The answer is a no-brainer: We own the information. The taxpayers.
Elected state officials simply are visitors in Albany until they lose an election, quit, die or head to prison for corruption. The state bureaucrats who show up to work in Albany and elsewhere every day are our employees, no one else’s. And when they retire, it is us, those who pay taxes, who fund their highly lucrative pensions.