AGENCY TESTIMONY
Steven Romalewski's Testimony on CUNY Mapping Service and Civic Engagement Tools
0:28:07
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4 min
Steven Romalewski, Director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research, testifies about their work in helping New Yorkers understand and interact with government, particularly through their "Who Represents Me" online tool. He explains how this tool aids civic engagement by providing easy access to information about elected representatives at all levels of government.
- The "Who Represents Me" tool (mygovnyc.org) offers comprehensive information about elected officials for any location in NYC, including contact details and district maps.
- The service is widely used by various organizations, including NYC's 311 system, and has been updated with features like language translation.
- CUNY Mapping Service also works on other civic projects such as census support, redistricting analysis, and voter data analysis.
Steven Romalewski
0:28:07
Thank you so much.
0:28:08
I'm honored to be here.
0:28:09
My name is Steven Romolesky, and I direct the Kinney mapping service, which is a project of the Center for Urban Research based at Kinney's Graduate Center.
0:28:18
Our center is directed by distinguished professor John Molokov.
0:28:22
We work on a variety of different projects But much of our work focuses on helping New Yorkers understand government, interact with their government, and participate and be counted as part of civic society, such as our work helping to ensure a fair and accurate census.
0:28:38
Understanding, redistricting changes at the local, state, and federal level.
0:28:42
We partner with the New York City campaign finance board to analyze and map campaign contributions in municipal elections, and we regularly analyze voter registration and turnout data demographic trends and election outcomes, all of that information and and data is publicly accessible, widely reported in the media.
0:29:03
1 of our most helpful services as vice chancellor highlighted is called who represents me.
0:29:10
It's an online freely accessible website at mygovnyc.org.
0:29:15
That's mygovnyc.org.
0:29:20
And we've partnered with the legalament voters of New York City for the past 10 years and more to provide this service in part with generous support from the New York Community Trust And the idea is a simple one to make it easy for anyone to identify all of their elected representatives for any location or street address in New York City.
0:29:43
This includes community board, city council, of course, all of those city wide and Burrow wide officials, state legislature and statewide office holders, congress, you have sent it all the way to president and vice president.
0:29:55
And we don't just provide a list, and, of course, you can access it on your computers now, on your phone, You could see it here on my phone as well.
0:30:05
We don't just provide a list, but we provide detailed information for each representative, including local district office, as well as the city hall Albany or Washington DC office, email and phone numbers, social media handles a map of the district so you can see where you are in relation to the district as well as the overlap with other districts.
0:30:28
And you could easily share the information on social media or email.
0:30:32
Even the mayor and his office did this last year, urging New Yorkers to use who represents me to support to reach out to elected officials and support his housing reform policies.
0:30:45
We have updated and enhanced the website, including in part, by incorporating the translate feature.
0:30:53
So now you can see the information on the website in any of dozens of different languages.
0:30:57
And importantly, the information needs to be kept up to date because if it's not up to date, people are not gonna wanna use the service.
0:31:05
The league of women voters excels at that, and they provide ongoing updates for the website and the league and Quni also promote the availability of the service at the Quni votes website during trainings and presentations and like elected officials themselves.
0:31:23
You may all have used the website to help constituents Other organizations provide links to who represents me service as diverse as DC 37, partnership for New York City, formerly the Rent Stabilization Association, now the New York Apartment Association, transportation alternatives, and many others.
0:31:42
And even New York City's 311 system uses who represents me internally to help callers reach out to the to the right elected officials to help solve local problems.
0:31:53
So I hope this information is helpful.
0:31:55
I'd be glad to answer any questions and talk about the service.
0:31:58
We welcome feedback on how it can be improved, and we hope it supports what you're looking at today as far as civic engagement and civic mobility that Q And A provides throughout the city.
0:32:09
Thank you.