Requires all agencies to submit to the committee on open government a log of all freedom of information law requests for each year in which they received or have pending a request for records; requires the committee on open government to publish, on one webpage, all freedom of information law request logs it receives.
This bill would create a new reporting requirement for state agencies subject to the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). For each year in which an agency receives or has pending FOIL requests, the agency would have to submit a detailed log of those requests to the Committee on Open Government. The log would need to be provided in a machine-readable spreadsheet format and include extensive information about each request, such as the requester’s name and affiliation, the subject of the request, dates of receipt and response, extensions, disposition, exemptions cited, appeal status, fees collected, documents and pages produced, redactions, and any related Article 78 litigation outcomes.
The bill also imposes a more limited annual reporting requirement on municipal agencies, which would have to report only the total number of FOIL requests received and closed during a twelve-month period beginning no earlier than January 1, 2027. The Committee on Open Government would then be required to publish all submitted logs and municipal reports on a single webpage in machine-readable form, preserve the data, and include summary analysis in its annual report. The committee would also have to issue a later report, by January 1, 2028, evaluating whether it is feasible to require municipal agencies to submit the same kind of detailed logs as state agencies.
In practical terms, the bill would expand transparency and data collection around FOIL administration and likely increase administrative recordkeeping obligations for agencies. It would affect the Public Officers Law by adding a new section 90 and renumbering the existing section 90 as section 90-a. It would also create a public-facing statewide repository of FOIL request data and authorize broader analysis of request processing, denials, appeals, fees, and litigation.
There is no recorded committee debate or vote history provided, so no direct evidence of support or opposition appears in the materials. Based on the bill text, the general policy direction is strongly pro-transparency and pro-disclosure, with an emphasis on standardized reporting and public access to government records administration data.
The main likely point of contention is the scope of the reporting burden, especially for state agencies required to disclose highly detailed request-level information and for municipal agencies that may later be asked to do the same. Privacy concerns may also arise from requiring requester names, affiliations, and litigation-related information to be reported and published, even though the bill is framed as an open-government measure.
The bill would amend the Public Officers Law by adding a new FOIL reporting section and renumbering existing section 90 as section 90-a. It would require state agencies performing governmental or proprietary functions to compile and submit detailed annual FOIL request logs, and it would require certain municipal agencies to submit annual totals of requests received and closed. The Committee on Open Government and the Office of Information Technology Services would be tasked with publishing the data on a public webpage and on data.ny.gov or a successor state data site, thereby creating a centralized public database of FOIL activity and related outcomes.
The bill’s overall sentiment is favorable toward transparency, accountability, and open-government oversight. The text suggests a policy goal of making FOIL administration more measurable and publicly visible, and the absence of recorded opposition or vote history means there is no documented legislative controversy in the provided materials. The measure appears designed to support public scrutiny of agency response times, denials, appeals, and litigation outcomes.
The most notable potential contention is the administrative and compliance burden on agencies, particularly the requirement for state agencies to report detailed request-level data in a standardized machine-readable format and to publish it publicly. Another likely concern is privacy and sensitivity, since the required data includes requester names, affiliations, exemptions cited, appeal status, and Article 78 litigation details. Municipal agencies are subject to a narrower initial reporting requirement, and the bill explicitly directs the Committee on Open Government to study whether more detailed municipal reporting would be feasible, suggesting that expanding the mandate to local governments may be controversial.