The Fund for Public Advocacy

Statement of Purpose

The Office of the Public Advocate was created by the City Charter to make local government more open and responsive to the needs of citizens. The Public Advocate, known as the city’s “ombudsman”, achieves these goals by assisting with individual complaints and acting as the citizen’s watchdog by investigating large-scale problems.

Betsy Gotbaum has created the not-for-profit Fund for Public Advocacy to greatly expand the reach of the Public Advocate’s office in a time of budget cutbacks. The Fund will strengthen the ombudsman’s function of the Public Advocate’s office, make city government more accessible, implement innovative programs to increase government responsiveness, and expand the existing child advocacy program:

Supporting the core mission of the Public Advocate
The core function of the office is the ombudsman’s unit, which helps individual New Yorkers with problems resulting from government red tape and bureaucracy. The ombudsman staff is small and computer and telephone systems need to be upgraded. Private funding will assist with speedy modernization and expansion, increasing the quality of service and the number of constituents assisted.

Making city government more accessible
A priority of the Public Advocate is helping New Yorkers to “connect the dots” through an often confusing array of government services. The Fund plans to publish a guide to public schools and make it easier for parents to make informed choices about the school and services available to them. In the more immediate future, the Fund will be publishing a guide to terrorism preparedness. Other potential projects include a seniors’ guide to benefits and a patients’ guide to health care services.

Supporting innovation in government
The fund for Public Advocacy will attempt to make city government more responsive to the needs of citizens. This will range from offering small grants to volunteer groups working in neighborhood parks and senior centers to raising funds to support large-scale projects, such as updating text books in the public school and in increasing funding for mammogram training.

 

 

 

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Contact Information:

Office of the Public Advocate

1 Centre St., 15th Floor New York, NY 10007