FOIL-AO-16162

September 19, 2006

The staff of the Committee on Open Government is authorized to issue advisory opinions. The ensuing staff advisory opinion is based solely upon the facts presented in your correspondence.

Dear

We are in receipt of your request for an advisory opinion concerning application of the Freedom of Information Law to requests made to the Town of Mamakating. You sought copies of minutes of meetings of the Town Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals and were provided some but not others. You indicated your frustration with the Town’s "record of likely noncompliance with the Freedom of Information Law and Open Meetings Law" and inquired whether, short of filing a lawsuit, there are courses of action to take to force the Town to comply with the law.

While the Committee on Open Government is authorized to issue advisory opinions concerning application of the Freedom of Information and Open Meetings Laws, this office has no authority to enforce the law or compel an entity to comply with the statutory provisions. It is our hope that these opinions are educational and persuasive, and that they serve to resolve problems and promote understanding of and compliance with the law. In this regard, we offer the following comments.

First, the Open Meetings Law requires that minutes of meetings be prepared and made available in accordance with §106 of that statute. That section states that:

"1. Minutes shall be taken at all open meetings of a public body which shall consist of a record or summary of all motions, proposals, resolutions and any other matter formally voted upon and the vote thereon.

2. Minutes shall be taken at executive sessions of any action that is taken by formal vote which shall consist of a record or summary of the final determination of such action, and the date and vote thereon; provided, however, that such summary need not include any matter which is not required to be made public by the freedom of information law as added by article six of this chapter.

3. Minutes of meetings of all public bodies shall be available to the public in accordance with the provisions of the freedom of information law within two weeks from the date of such meetings except that minutes taken pursuant to subdivision two hereof shall be available to the public within one week from the date of the executive session."

In view of the foregoing, it is clear that minutes must be prepared and made available within two weeks of the meetings to which they pertain.

We point out that there is nothing in the Open Meetings Law or any other statute of which we are aware that requires that minutes be approved. Nevertheless, as a matter of practice or policy, many public bodies approve minutes of their meetings. In the event that minutes have been approved, to comply with the Open Meetings Law, it has consistently been advised that minutes be prepared and made available within two weeks, and that if the minutes have not been approved, they may be marked "unapproved", "draft" or "non-final", for example. By so doing within the requisite time limitations, the public can generally know what transpired at a meeting; concurrently, the public is effectively notified that the minutes are subject to change. If minutes have been prepared within less than two weeks, we believe that those unapproved minutes would be available as soon as they exist, and that they may be marked in the manner described above.

Second, the Freedom of Information Law provides direction concerning the time and manner in which agencies must respond to requests. Specifically, §89(3) of the Freedom of Information Law states in part that:

"Each entity subject to the provisions of this article, within five business days of the receipt of a written request for a record reasonably described, shall make such record available to the person requesting it, deny such request in writing or furnish a written acknowledgement of the receipt of such request and a statement of the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied..."

It is noted that new language was added to that provision on May 3, 2005 (Chapter 22, Laws of 2005) stating that:

"If circumstances prevent disclosure to the person requesting the record or records within twenty business days from the date of the acknowledgement of the receipt of the request, the agency shall state, in writing, both the reason for the inability to grant the request within twenty business days and a date certain within a reasonable period, depending on the circumstances, when the request will be granted in whole or in part."

Based on the foregoing, an agency must grant access to records, deny access in writing, or acknowledge the receipt of a request within five business days of receipt of a request. When an acknowledgement is given, it must include an approximate date within twenty business days indicating when it can be anticipated that a request will be granted or denied. If it is known that circumstances prevent the agency from granting access within twenty business days, or if the agency cannot grant access by the approximate date given and needs more than twenty business days to grant access, however, it must provide a written explanation of its inability to do so and a specific date by which it will grant access. That date must be reasonable in consideration of the circumstances of the request.

The amendments clearly are intended to prohibit agencies from unnecessarily delaying disclosure. They are not intended to permit agencies to wait until the fifth business day following the receipt of a request and then twenty additional business days to determine rights of access, unless it is reasonable to do so based upon "the circumstances of the request." It is our perspective that every law must be implemented in a manner that gives reasonable effect to its intent, and we point out that in its statement of legislative intent, §84 of the Freedom of Information Law states that "it is incumbent upon the state and its localities to extend public accountability wherever and whenever feasible." Therefore, when records are clearly available to the public under the Freedom of Information Law, or if they are readily retrievable, there may be no basis for a delay in disclosure. As the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, has asserted:

"...the successful implementation of the policies motivating the enactment of the Freedom of Information Law centers on goals as broad as the achievement of a more informed electorate and a more responsible and responsive officialdom. By their very nature such objectives cannot hope to be attained unless the measures taken to bring them about permeate the body politic to a point where they become the rule rather than the exception. The phrase 'public accountability wherever and whenever feasible' therefore merely punctuates with explicitness what in any event is implicit" [Westchester News v. Kimball, 50 NY2d 575, 579 (1980)].

In a judicial decision concerning the reasonableness of a delay in disclosure that cited and confirmed the advice rendered by this office concerning reasonable grounds for delaying disclosure, it was held that:

"The determination of whether a period is reasonable must be made on a case by case basis taking into account the volume of documents requested, the time involved in locating the material, and the complexity of the issues involved in determining whether the materials fall within one of the exceptions to disclosure. Such a standard is consistent with some of the language in the opinions, submitted by petitioners in this case, of the Committee on Open Government, the agency charged with issuing advisory opinions on FOIL"(Linz v. The Police Department of the City of New York, Supreme Court, New York County, NYLJ, December 17, 2001).

If neither a response to a request nor an acknowledgement of the receipt of a request is given within five business days, if an agency delays responding for an unreasonable time beyond the approximate date of less than twenty business days given in its acknowledgement, if it acknowledges that a request has been received, but has failed to grant access by the specific date given beyond twenty business days, or if the specific date given is unreasonable, a request may be considered to have been constructively denied [see §89(4)(a)]. In such a circumstance, the denial may be appealed in accordance with §89(4)(a), which states in relevant part that:

"...any person denied access to a record may within thirty days appeal in writing such denial to the head, chief executive, or governing body, who shall within ten business days of the receipt of such appeal fully explain in writing to the person requesting the record the reasons for further denial, or provide access to the record sought."

Section 89(4)(b) was also amended, and it states that a failure to determine an appeal within ten business days of the receipt of an appeal constitutes a denial of the appeal. In that circumstance, the appellant has exhausted his or her administrative remedies and may initiate a challenge to a constructive denial of access under Article 78 of the Civil Practice Rules.

Further, in a related vein, on August 16, 2006, Governor Pataki signed into law, effective immediately, legislation that broadens the authority of the courts to award attorney’s fees when government agencies fail to comply with the Freedom of Information Law (S.7011-A, Chapter 492). Under the amendments, when a person initiates a judicial proceeding under the Freedom of Information Law and substantially prevails, a court has the discretionary authority to award costs and reasonable attorney’s fees when the agency had no reasonable basis for denying access to records, or when the agency failed to comply with the time limits for responding to a request.

Finally, from our perspective, insofar as the requested records exist, they must be disclosed. If the Town does not maintain minutes of meetings of the Town Board or the Zoning Board of Appeals, a court could compel those boards to perform functions that are mandated by law.

With respect to the enforcement of the Open Meetings Law, §107(1) of the Law states in part that:

"Any aggrieved person shall have standing to enforce the provisions of this article against a public body by the commencement of a proceeding pursuant to article seventy-eight of the civil practice law and rules, and/or an action for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. In any such action or proceeding, the court shall have the power, in its discretion, upon good cause shown, to declare any action or part thereof taken in violation of this article void in whole or in part."

Lastly, since its enactment in 1974, the Freedom of Information Law has included an "open vote" requirement. Section 87(3)(a) states that "[e]ach agency shall maintain a record of the final vote of each member in every agency proceeding in which the member votes." Therefore, in each instance in which a public body, such as the Town Board or the Zoning Board of Appeals, takes action, a record must be prepared specifying the manner in which each member cast his or her vote. Typically, the record of votes appears in minutes of meetings.

On behalf of the Committee on Open Government we hope this is helpful to you.

Sincerely,

Camille S. Jobin-Davis
Assistant Director

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