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Who cares
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Sponsors
No co-sponsors yet.
History
- Reported and committed to finance
- Referred to investigations and government operations
- Referred to investigations and government operations
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the public officers law, in relation to access to agency records
Purpose
To facilitate greater access to public documents by ensuring greater responsiveness to misdirected requests.
Summary of provisions
Section 1 adds a new paragraph to subdivision 4 of Section 87 of Public Officers Law requiring that within 5 days, any FOIL requests which are misdirected to the Executive Chamber shall be redirected to the appropriate executive agency; such agency upon receipt shall handle the request as it does any other FOIL request. Section 2 contains the effective date.
Justification
With the difficulty often faced by members of the public in attempting to identify the correct agency to which to direct a FOIL request, requests are often simply directed to the Executive Chamber. Rather than such requests being denied out of hand, this bill would require that requests for records not maintained by the Executive Chamber, but potentially maintained by an agency subordinate to the Executive Chamber, shall be redirected to the appropriate agency by the Chamber's records access officer. In so requiring, this bill recognizes the top down nature of the executive branch, and utilizes that structure to make New York State government more open and more responsive to the citizens of New York. It should also be noted that in his report following the investigation of former Governor Eliot Spitzer's alleged misuse of the State Police, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo offers support for such a policy.
Legislative history
2007: S.6476- Committed to Investigations and Governments Operations 2008: S.6476- Passed Senate
Fiscal implications
None.
Local fiscal implications
None.
Effective date
Immediate.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.