In scoping
Legislative Bodies
State assemblies. State senates. City councils that write law. The U.S. Congress. These are the bodies that draft, debate, and enact the rules everyone else is supposed to follow. When they fail, they fail quietly — and the failure is invisible until you measure the gap between what was said and what got voted.
Common accountability gaps in this area
- Bills can die in committee with no public record of why. Multiple New York condominium ombudsman bills in recent years have not reached a floor vote.
- Sponsors sometimes introduce legislation that does not advance out of committee.
- Disclosure requirements on outside income, gifts, and travel are sometimes filed late or incompletely, with minimal consequence.
- Hearing scheduling can limit public attendance.
- Floor votes can contradict stated positions, and those contradictions are not always aggregated or published.
What TASFGA will track
- Bill lifecycle — every bill TASFGA supports or opposes, from drafting to enactment to enforcement
- Sponsor scorecards — stated position, vote record, follow-through
- Committee ledger — what got heard, what got buried, and who buried it
- Disclosure compliance — financial, gift, travel filings — on time, accurate, or neither
- Promise vs. vote index — aggregated contradictions between public statements and legislative votes
Why this matters
A legislature that does not meet its own published rules erodes public trust. Accountability here is not partisan. It is arithmetic. Was the bill filed? Did it get a hearing? Did the vote match the speech? The answers exist in the record. TASFGA aims to put them in one place and keep them there.