The Problem

Rockland County has 330,000 residents, a $900 million county budget, five towns, and eight school districts. The information about how all of this works — budgets, contracts, development applications, campaign donations, legislative votes — is technically public. But it's scattered across dozens of websites, buried in PDFs, and written in jargon designed for insiders.

The result is an information asymmetry: the people making decisions know far more than the people affected by those decisions. That gap isn't a bug — it's a feature that protects the status quo.

What We Do

We close the gap. Our automated systems collect public data from 15+ government sources every week — budgets, meeting agendas, campaign filings, vendor contracts, school district reports, and development applications. We cross-reference it, analyze the patterns, and publish what we find in plain language.

Every claim is sourced. Every number is traceable to a page in a public record. We don't do anonymous tips or unverified rumors. We do data.

Editorial Principles

Evidence first. Every factual claim is sourced to a public record. We distinguish clearly between reporting and analysis.

Systems over villains. When something isn't working, we ask "what incentive structure produced this outcome?" before asking "who's to blame?"

Nonpartisan. We never endorse or oppose candidates or parties. We follow the evidence, not a narrative.

Equal rigor, every town. Clarkstown, Ramapo, Haverstraw, Orangetown, and Stony Point all get the same standards of coverage.

Accessible. Government jargon is defined on first use. If a resident can't understand what we wrote, we failed.

Who We Are

rockland.news is built by Current Creative, an AI consulting firm based in Rockland County. We live here. Our kids go to school here. We pay property taxes here. This isn't an outside project — it's a neighbor reading the budget and telling you what's in it.

Our Bet

If Rockland County residents have access to the same quality of government data and analysis that insiders take for granted, they'll make better demands of their government. That's it. That's the theory of change.