Check out the updated SunlightNY.com Web site.

No, it’s not as danceable as the soundtrack from the musical Hair, but it marks another step in NYS efforts to make public information more accessible to everyone.

You can search for records on all kinds of public things.

Click here to see information about Mayor Brown’s Fund to Advance Buffalo, for example. That’s the 501c3 funded by proceeds from tickets sold to the State of the City address.

From there, you can click on the original source link, where you gain access to more than just the tax forms for the organization. Did you know, for example, that they received a notice of incomplete filing from the Charities Bureau of the NYS Office of the Attorney General dated July 18, 2008? Or that they do their banking with Greater Buffalo Savings Bank?

You could call for further comment from them if you like. If you look through the documents, you’ll discover that one contact number for the organization is Mayor Brown’s office, one number is Dana Bobinchek’s cell phone, still another puts you through to the offices of Hodgson Russ.

Hmm. I wonder why the Buffalo Public Schools Foundation doesn’t turn up in a records search of the Charities Bureau of the NYS Office of the Attorney General?

Brian Meyer of the Buffalo News reports that Mayor Byron Brown has relented: The public does not have to pay $35 to hear his State of the City speech on Thursday. Those who wish to attend need only pay if they want to be served lunch, and if they do, about a third of the price of their ticket will benefit something called Mayor Brown’s Fund to Advance Buffalo.

We first wrote about this practice—turning a civic event into a fundraiser for a private charity controlled by the mayor—in 2007, when Brown delivered his first annual State of the City address. (It’s worth clicking the link for the quotes from the late Jimmy Griffin at the end.) Back then, we had a hard time discovering what it is Mayor Brown’s Fund to Advance Buffalo intended to do. Last week, AV editor Buck Quigley looked through the not-for-profit’s paperwork and discovered it has not put a lot of money on the streets—just $8,500 by the end of 2007, when it sat on assets of $60,000. Quigley estimated the mayor’s fund will raise another $20,000 on Thursday afternoon.

Seems almost like wonder if Mayor Brown’s Fund to Advance Buffalo is saving up for a rainy day. I wonder if the folks who control that fund—Brown stalwarts like Steve Casey, Mike Seaman, Dana Bobinchek, and Alisa Lukasiewicz—will find more ways to spend that money this summer, when the mayoral election will be looming?

Last week attorney Peter Reese protested the mayor’s use of the City of Buffalo and CitiStat seals on invitations for what he said amounts to a private fundraiser. The mayor’s spokesperson, Peter Cutler, denied to the Buffalo News that Reese’s protest influenced the mayor’s decision to open a limited number of seats to the public free of charge.