NY law will needlessly delay release of public records

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law an anti-transparency and anti-accountability bill that will compound existing problems with New York’s Freedom of Information Law, further delaying the release of important public records.

By doing so, Hochul ignored a memo of opposition from 10 open-government and free speech organizations, including Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF).

The bill requires the government to inform employees (possibly including former employees) when their disciplinary records are requested. Don’t be fooled by the bill’s proponents – it has nothing to do with personal privacy and everything to do with government secrecy.

As Reinvent Albany – which led opposition to the bill – explained in a statement, “FOIL processes are grossly underfunded, understaffed, politicized, and overwhelmed by the volume of requests.” That means compliance with legitimate public records requests for important, newsworthy documents can take months or years.

Now, short-staffed agencies will have to track down employees’ contact information before complying with public records requests. In some cases where the requester names a specific employee, that might be relatively simple. But most requests are far broader than that.

Let’s say a reporter were to request, for example, all disciplinary records involving state police accused of mistreating journalists and protesters during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Who knows how many officers would need to be notified?

A similar proposal in California failed earlier this year, thanks to the work of advocates from the First Amendment Coalition and several other organizations.

While fast-tracking a bill to needlessly delay FOIL compliance, New York’s legislature ignored four bills that would have strengthened the state’s public records laws, also supported by FPF.

Among other things, these bills would have allowed requesters to quickly appeal “constructive denials” when agencies ignore their requests, increased transparency about how agencies handle requests they received, made it easier for people whose requests were baselessly denied to recover attorney’s fees, and limited businesses’ ability to shield information from disclosure that they submit to the government.

Public records laws aren’t working at either the state or federal levels. Instead of attempting to fix the problem, New York officials are inventing new ways to sabotage transparency, at a time when many media outlets can hardly afford litigation to recover public records.

Bills bolstering transparency are difficult to advance for obvious reasons — government officials have every incentive not to pass them, especially when they don’t anticipate much political cost.

We commend outlets like the Niagara Gazette, The Buffalo News, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, The Daily Gazette, and Newsday for urging lawmakers to do the right thing. We can’t help but wonder if this story would’ve ended differently had some of the state’s largest newspapers also used their news and editorial pages to stand up for transparency and accountability.