About
What this platform is, where the data comes from, and what to keep in mind when using it.
What is The Commons Gallery?
The Commons Gallery is an independent legislative intelligence platform for the New York State Senate. It aggregates public records — floor transcripts, committee hearings, campaign finance filings, lobbying disclosures, and district demographics — into a single searchable interface.
It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the New York State Senate or any government agency. All underlying data comes from official public sources.
Data sources
| Data | Source |
|---|---|
| Floor transcripts, hearings, senator roster, bill votes | NYS Open Legislation API |
| Campaign finance contributions | New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) — covers NYC-based contributions only; senators representing districts outside New York City may have significant fundraising activity not reflected here |
| Lobbying contacts and disclosures | NY Ethics Commission (JCOPE) via data.ny.gov |
| District demographics (population, income, housing, etc.) | U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS) — a rolling average of five years of survey data, used for statistical reliability at the district level |
| Election results (general, primary, and special elections) | New York State Board of Elections — certified results |
| Voter enrollment by district | New York State Board of Elections |
| "Find your senator" address lookup | U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder + OpenStreetMap / Nominatim |
How it works
The New York State Legislature meets in formal floor sessions to debate and vote on legislation, and in committee hearings to receive public testimony. Transcripts of both are published through the Open Legislation API and processed here by Claude (Anthropic's AI) to extract structured data: which senators spoke on which bills, what positions they took, which witnesses testified at hearings, and what topics were debated. This extracted data is stored in a local database and served through this web interface.
Senator profiles are built from the aggregated output — combining floor speech activity, hearing engagement, roll call votes, campaign contributions, lobbying contacts, and district data into a single view.
Coverage
New York State legislative sessions run on two-year cycles. The current session began in January 2025 and runs through December 2026.
- 2023–2024 session — Full backfill: floor transcripts and committee hearings processed
- 2025–2026 session — Ongoing: new transcripts and hearings added as they are published
- Lobbying data — 2023, 2024, and 2025 disclosure years loaded
- Search index — Full-text search across floor actions and hearing testimony
- Note on scope — The homepage summary stats (bills passed, votes recorded) span all available sessions. The Analytics dashboard filters to the current session only. Senator votes recorded (24,979) is a cumulative total across all sessions in the database.
Limitations
- AI-generated summaries — Debate positions, topic tags, and testimony summaries are extracted by an AI model. They may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the original transcript before citing.
- Name matching — Senator names in raw transcripts are matched to profiles using pattern rules. A small number of mentions (particularly for senators with similar last names or accented characters) may be missed or misattributed.
- Electoral vulnerability — Vulnerability scores are modeled estimates that blend voter registration data with recent election results. "Generic ballot" refers to national partisan polling used to simulate favorable or unfavorable cycle environments. These scores are not predictions of election outcomes.