Tagged: new york state senate

With less than two weeks left in the legislative session, Senate Democrats are staging a renewed push to pass a collection of 11 bills they claim will create thousands of jobs.

But the package would cost the state more than $100 million.

When New York Republicans regained control of the state Senate after last November’s election, a small subset of political observers suspected it meant one thing: The Senate’s first ever Chief Information Officer (CIO) was on his way out of Albany.

Andrew Hoppin - the former rocket scientist turned NASA web guru - was brought on as Senate CIO by a newly empowered Democratic majority in 2009. Hoppin was charged with overhauling a then-clunky nysenate.gov, and making public data more widely accessible.

Some of Hoppin's accomplishments include powering the Senate website with open source software, allowing for online public comment on Senate legislation and even rolling out the country’s first legislative iPhone app.

The Innovation Trail profiled Hoppin (with both radio and television pieces) last summer. So when we saw that he was on his way out of Albany, we thought we’d ask him a few questions.