Chair Krishnan on impact of funding cuts on public reports
Krishnan asks whether funding cuts will affect DOI's public reports, citing the helpful sanctuary compliance report. Shahada affirms public reports are integral to transparency and she intends to prioritize them, but acknowledges they are time-intensive and budget cuts reduce staff capacity to produce them.
And my last two questions are.
DOI publishes excellent reports that uncover a lot of issues when it comes to corruption or accountability or compliance with the laws that we have.
As we had a hearing earlier this year, your sanctuary report on the compliance of city agencies with sanctuary laws and YPD and DOC was very helpful.
I imagine that you coming in as a new commissioner will want to continue publishing reports, publish more reports perhaps.
Do you see that being affected by the lack of funding?
If funding continues at this level and you don't receive an increase, do you all see an ability to be able to continue to increase the number of the amount of reporting you all are doing?
Well, first, I agree that public reports are incredibly important, and I think overall transparency by DOI is incredibly important.
I think it's integral for us to be letting the public know what it is we're working on,
what our investigations have found, and to make policy and procedure recommendations to improve the functioning of city government.
I do intend to prioritize the publication of public reports, but as with everything else DOI does, it is affected by the budget and the funding we receive.
Public reports in particular are time-intensive efforts.
And when our staff is cut, again, that provides less staff to work on everything, including issuing public reports.