Efficiency? In Government?!?!
The New York State website has a page dedicated to educating people on the rules for residency in the state and the implications this has for taxing. Because New York City and Yonkers both impose additional income taxes based on residency, the website also addresses those rules. It does so by stating the following:
“For the definition of a New York City or Yonkers resident, nonresident, and part-year resident, see the definitions of a New York State resident, nonresident, and part-year resident above and substitute New York City or Yonkers in place of New York State.”
Maybe I’m being overly cynical, but I feel like most websites or other such informational sources — be they government or otherwise — would usually go through the needless hassle of regurgitating the same rules with the substitutions in place. But not this one.
Well done, New York. You have trumped my home town’s website (which had a “Local Laws” page that was left entirely blank for several years) as my favorite government website.
I’m just going to leave this right here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2014/03/24/a-sinkhole-of-federal-bureaucracy-in-pennsylvania/Report
That seems way more confusing to me, actually. Were they at risk of running out of internet, so they had to be concise?Report
It does? Re-typing it out is certainly more “idiot proof”. I tend to have high — often too-high — expectations for my fellow humans. But it doesn’t seem unreasonable to me to expect people to apply the same definition across different contexts.Report
It wouldn’t have been hard to write a script that read the other page, did the substitutions, and displayed the result. No hand-copying required.Report
Oh, no doubt. But to me, there is a certain beauty in saying, “The answer is the same as the one I just gave you… just sub X for Y.” That is how most normal, quasi-intelligent people would respond if they were involved in a verbal exchange and were asked such questions. It is explicitly not appealing to the lowest common denominator. And it’s efficient.Report
Trust me Kazzy, even if you expect the worst, you’ll always find someone to break the “idiot proof” ness.
I used to work for a billion dollar company getting Operating companie’s financial forecasts for the next 5 years-full balance sheet, income statement, etc. Every year, my group of 5 would rewrite the instructions, review it, get it peer reviewed, boss reviewed, vp reviewed to ensure it was CLEAR TO ALL WHAT TO DO. 48 hours after sending it out we’d get a question. Most were of the “didn’t read it”, but there were a few so that reflected such a dense mind that you wondered how they were able to function. Yah, I was sending these requests for info to VPs of Finance in operating compaies that were 500M to 1B plus in revenues–people alledgedly competetent, and well versed in finance….
Right……Report
Damon,
“You, you’re the CFO now!”
“What does the CFO do?”
“he writes reports to our investors! We’ve got one due tommorrow.”
…
the SEC (who mandates the filings) was not
amused to find a few pages of literally “blah blah blah” in the middle.Report