AMY PAULIN IN THE NEWS
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Light of Day
[The Journal News]
New York state's roughly 30-year-old Freedom of Information Law is in desperate need of updating. Fortunately, a collection of bills that would bring the law into the information age and further its purpose of ensuring that government is clear and accessible to the governed has been passed by the state Legislature and is awaiting Gov. David Paterson's signature. The governor, who has said he is a proponent of open government, should waste no time in signing the bevy of bills into law.
As Cara Matthews of the Albany Bureau reported, the bills are far-ranging and diverse, as were their sponsors, who hail from a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers throughout the state.
One bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Scarsdale, and state Sen. Steve Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, would require the offending agency or government to pay attorney fees to a litigant who successfully sues for violation of the Open Meeting laws.
"I think it will encourage better compliance through better knowledge of the law," said Robert Freeman, executive director of the state's Committee on Open Government.
Another bill, sponsored by the new Senate Majority Leader, Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, and upstate Assemblywoman RoAnn Destito, D-Rome, would permit the public to ask for documents in a form other than paper, such as electronically. This is not only keeping up with the times - of course records should be made available electronically in this day and age - it also will prohibit agencies from using an old standby excuse that keep some records hidden because they are "too voluminous and burdensome" to copy.
Paulin, along with Long Island lawmaker Sen. John Flanagan, R-Suffolk County, sponsored a bill requiring agencies to make government records available online. Other bills include one that would require that agencies post on their Web sites regularly updated lists of the kinds of records they keep. Whenever possible, agencies would have to design information-retrieval methods so it is easy to provide documents with private information, such as names and Social Security numbers, deleted. One bill, which is an obvious fix to a simple problem, would ensure that written material being considered by legislators be made available to the public at least 72 hours before a public meeting. It's hard to follow the complicated workings of government if you don't have the playbook.
Taken together, the pending legislation would not only strengthen existing law but bring New York's open-government laws into the 21st century and make it easier for regular folks to get access to essential government information. The provision for attorney's fees would put more muscle behind the law, making nonwealthy individuals more likely to pursue violations in court and reluctant officials more likely to comply with records requests.
There is no need to delay in turning these bills into law.