Nassau Legislature stops posting county contracts online

The Nassau Legislature has ended its practice of posting county contracts online. The county began posting the documents in an attempt to offer greater transparency after it came under fire for how

News 12 Staff

Mar 25, 2016, 1:29 AM

Updated 3,100 days ago

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The Nassau Legislature has ended its practice of posting county contracts online.
The county began posting the documents in an attempt to offer greater transparency after it came under fire for how it selects vendors to perform service contracts.
Now, the Republican-led county Legislature has stopped the practice. Presiding Officer Norma Gonsalves says the change was made to protect the private information of vendors.
Democratic Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton says it's a disgrace.
"It's cutting back information, it's completely the wrong step," she says.
To view county contracts in the past, one would to go to the "Clerk of the Legislature's" portion of Nassau's website. The link now redirects residents to the county comptroller's website. Instead of seeing full contracts when clicking "Contracts and Claims," it now shows names of companies along with numbers and totals - but never actually the full documents.
Gonsalves released a statement that read in part, "The clerk's office is determining a way to post the contracts with this personal information redacted. In the meantime, as always, any contract may be obtained through the FOIL process."