Blair Horner, special adviser on policy & public integrity to New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, will speak at Wagner College on Monday, Oct. 1 at 5 p.m. in Spiro Hall, Room 4.
Horner, former legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group, will deliver the 2007 Al and Frances Hochman Memorial Lecture, “A Look at the Nexus of Power and Money in Albany — and What You Can Do About It,” for Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform.
In his address, Horner is expected to discuss hotly debated reforms as well as the attorney general's proposed “Project Sunlight.” Project Sunlight is to be a comprehensive Internet database that will provide voters and public officials with ready access to public information on elected officials, lobbyists, special interests, contracts and donors. It will be available online for use by the public later in the fall.
Blair Horner has long been one of New York State’s most widely respected watchdogs on issues of public accountability and transparency in state government.
As legislative director of NYPIRG — the New York State Public Interest Research Group — for nearly 25 years, Horner was a close observer and actor on Albany’s political scene.
A leading advocate for campaign finance reform, nonpartisan legislative redistricting, and ethics reform, Horner was frequently quoted in the state’s leading newspapers, and was a familiar presence and voice at legislative hearings.
Then, earlier this year, Horner switched sides.
Now, instead of criticizing Albany’s arcane folkways from the outside, Blair Horner has an inside seat. Upon taking office in January 2007, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo appointed Horner to serve as his special adviser on policy and public integrity.
Horner’s primary mandate since taking his new position has been implementation of “Project Sunlight,” whose centerpiece is creating comprehensive Internet database for public information on elected officials, lobbyists, special interests, contracts and donors.
Ten months later, is Albany more open, more transparent, more accessible and responsive to New Yorkers? What — in addition to good ideas and good intentions — does it take for a reformer to reform Albany?
These are among the issues Blair Horner will address in this inaugural lecture of the Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform. Reform is arguably the founding tradition of American society. Our nation, from the establishment of the Plymouth Bay Colony in the 17th century through the “Reagan Revolution” of the late 20th century, has always been open — if not welcoming — to proposals for perfecting government’s responsiveness to change and changing conditions.
Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Center for Government Reform honors New York’s 55th governor, whose two terms as its chief executive embodied the state’s history as a laboratory and incubator of ideas for reform that have often been adopted by other states — and the nation, as well.
