What does the New York State Legislature actually do?
Very few New Yorkers can tell you. Unless you work in politics or journalism, Albany usually enters your life only in passing: a headline, a viral clip, a scandal. Yet the Legislature shapes huge parts of daily life: jail time, taxes, housing, and health care. It is one of the most powerful bodies, operating behind legal language and procedure that few outsiders can follow.
That opacity comes from centuries of rules and processes. But the state now publishes legislative data through a public application programming interface — essentially the tool that lets apps talk to each other. Every bill, amendment, vote, and committee action is available. The barrier is no longer access. It is usability. The information exists, but it is scattered, jargon-heavy, and hard to interpret unless you already understand how Albany works.
Over the last year, we used AI to solve that problem.
We built SmithMoses.com, a free AI tool that tracks the Legislature and explains what is happening in plain English.
It took a year to build, but our partnership goes back to the early days of Uber New York, where we saw how a new tool, social media, could shape political outcomes when we used it to amplify voices and stop the City from capping Uber’s vehicles. Since then, we have both kept experimenting. Josh built Wave AI, an AI-powered transcription and analysis platform. Matt produces unconventional videos explaining New York government programs.
Smith & Moses recombines those experiences with a question we have both been stuck on for years: how do you tell what government is actually doing?
The name honors Gov. Al Smith, who as a young assemblyman stayed up late reading bills by candlelight to understand how the government worked. As governor, he relied on his aide Robert Moses to quickly explain what new legislation did and who supported it. Even then, the Legislature produced more information than any one person could absorb.
Smith & Moses aims to put those two skills at people’s fingertips. When a bill is introduced, the system generates a plain-English summary, tracks its movement through committees, and flags notable stakeholders likely to support or oppose it.
But summaries were not enough. We also wanted to help people judge whether a bill matters and whether it is likely to pass. Every bill receives two scores: an impact score estimating how much it would affect New Yorkers if enacted, and a passage probability estimating how likely it is to become law. These scores draw on interviews with Albany experts and public signals like sponsorship, committee assignment, leadership involvement, and bill type. It is a work in progress.
Finally, we tried to answer a harder question: how do you evaluate whether a state legislator is good at their job?
In most fields, performance is measurable. In politics, evaluation usually rests on messaging and election results that often have little to do with day-to-day legislating. Smith & Moses takes a different approach. A legislator who introduces hundreds of bills that never move will score poorly. One who passes symbolic resolutions with little real-world effect will also score poorly. But someone who passes even a small number of high-impact laws will score highly. The metric is effectiveness.
Smith & Moses is free. We are not monetizing it. We built it because the Legislature should feel knowable to everyone, for all New Yorkers.
If you spend a few minutes and learn about one bill you did not know existed, we will consider it a win.
Wing is the founder of the political marketing firm Wingspan. Mohrer is the founder and CEO of Wave AI.
