Transparency advocates are pushing two new bills in Albany that would make government records in New York more accessible to the public.
One of the bills would require agencies to report all records requests, while the other would reduce the time they have to respond to requests.
“Right now, you can get endless extensions from agencies, when in the end they may just deny your request, and you’ve been waiting for six months, a year or even more,” said Rachel Fauss, a policy adviser for good-government group Reinvent Albany, in a phone interview.
The legislation would bar agencies from taking more than 60 days to fulfill requests for records and require any denials to be rendered within 30 days after a request is made.
The second proposal would require the government to report how quickly state agencies respond to requests. New York’s Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL, is meant to empower members of the public to access documents that could shed light on how agencies are performing and taxpayer dollars are being spent. The law also mandates timely access to public records, though agencies routinely claim exemptions to disclosure and push back the dates by when they say they will answer requests.
Fauss said the bills would apply to all governments in New York, including small villages, fire departments and water districts.
“The compliance rates at the local level are actually quite bad,” she said. “Often, FOIL requests are ignored altogether at the local level.”
New York’s Association of Towns did not respond to requests for comment about the proposals, which the state Legislature is still considering.
Avi Small, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, wrote in an email that the governor would review the legislation if it passes both the state Senate and Assembly.
The bills join two others that were approved by the state Senate last year but not taken up by the Assembly. Those measures would allow requesters to more easily recoup attorney fees in lawsuits to…
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