Reining in Public Authorities: A Critical Analysis of the Public Authorities Accountability Act and Public Authorities Reform Act

The influence of public authorities in New York State extends into virtually every sphere of government provision of public service. For over 100 years authorities have planned, built, and maintained our highways, managed our ports, and undertaken some of the world's most ambitious projects in planning.;There can be no argument against the fact that public authorities have played a vital role in forging the identity of today's New York. Indeed, they have become so engrained as a part of the modus operandi through which state government gets things done, that while individual authorities have come under public scrutiny from time to time, until the passage of the Public Authority Accountability Act of 2005 (PAAA) and the Public Authority Reform Act of 2009 (PARA), the authority system itself had become relatively insulated from the critical lens. In an era in which public demand for transparency in government and a stricter accounting of the public coffers is reaching a pinnacle, it is ironic that the authorities, which own 73 percent of the state's publicly backed debt, have received so little scrutiny.;PAAA and PARA have sought to usher in a new era of transparency for public authorities in New York State. While the acts have implemented some important reforms, among which is the creation of an environment in which authorities are more accountable to the public, and through the implementation of measures that help to ensure that authorities are operating ethically, there are still areas of need that the laws fail to address. The laws do little to impart change on the authority system itself. There are no measures that limit the ability of authorities to amass debt, nor are there any that serve to meaningfully curb the growth and expansion of the system as a whole. In addition, neither of the laws introduces measures for evaluating authority performance, nor do they force authorities to prove their worth to the public and justify their existence. There is no doubt that both the PAAA and PARA do a great job of ensuring that authorities are operating in an ethical manner within the system as it is currently constituted, but in terms of meaningful, structural reform, the laws come up short.