State of New York
FOIL-AO-19034
May 6, 2013
TO:
FROM: Camille S. Jobin-Davis, Assistant Director
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,
This is in response to your request for an advisory opinion regarding application of the Freedom of Information Law to records requested from the State Liquor Authority. Specifically, you question whether the Authority’s auto-generated emails, sent in response to every electronic FOIL request, indicating that a response will be forthcoming within 20 business days, are sufficient to meet the time limits for responses required by law. You note that until the automatic email system was implemented, your requests for copies of liquor license applications and any disciplinary actions related to the applicant were typically filled within a few days. A review of all the requests you made in 2012 (18) shows that the Authority granted access to a majority of the requested records the day of the request (8) or the following day (5). In 2012, the longest the Authority took to grant one of your requests that year was 4 days. This is in contrast to this year’s experience; while you now receive an automated response within seconds of sending a request, records are provided 18 days later.
As you know, the Freedom of Information Law provides direction concerning the time and manner in which agencies must respond to requests. Specifically, §89(3)(a) 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 in 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. However, 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, 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.” From our perspective, 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 Law and Rules.
Accordingly, in our opinion, while an immediate automated response would fulfill the legal requirement to acknowledge the receipt of a request within five business days, it may be unreasonable to delay the more substantive response for as long a time as you indicated. We reiterate, when a record is clearly public and readily available, there may be no basis for a delay in providing access. Having received no response to our notification regarding any particular changes in the Authority’s ability to respond within time frames previously demonstrated, we are left to surmise that there may be none.
We hope that this is helpful.
CSJ:mm