(The Center Square) — Good government groups are urging the New York City Council to swiftly approve legislation to ease a backlog of public records requests to the NYPD, the mayor’s office and other city agencies.
In a letter to Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, the coalition of groups, including Reinvent Albany, Common Cause, the New York Coalition for Open Government and Freedom of the Press Foundation called on the board to approve Intro 1235 of 2025, which would overhaul the way New York City agencies respond to Freedom of Information Law requests.
“There are numerous news stories and government reports about how city agencies routinely violate the Freedom of Information Law by taking months, sometimes years, to respond to public records requests,” they wrote.
The groups said the legislation would help spur reforms by requiring all agencies to report basic information like how many requests they’re receiving, how long it has taken to respond, the status of requests, and much more.
“Crucially, the legislation requires that public records that are released through FOIL be published online, eliminating the need for duplicative requests,” they wrote.
The proposal, filed by Council member Gale Brewer, will require all city agencies to use the OpenRecords portal, improving the amount of information available to the public about how agencies respond to requests. It would also require that once a public record is released on the portal, all New Yorkers are able to see it.
Brewer said news organizations, special interest groups and citizens routinely file records requests to the city, but often end up waiting months in some cases years for the information. She said the bill will bring transparency and reform to NYC’s FOIL process.
A recent Reinvent Albany report, “NYC Government Flouting Freedom of Information Law,” found that 16% of FOIL requests were still open a year later. Some agencies such as the NYPD, Department of Education, and Mayor’s Office have huge backlogs of requests that remain open for years.
“Our office is still waiting for records we requested more than four years ago,” Laura Motaff, staff attorney from The Legal Aid Society, said in a recent statement. “When it takes longer to get a response to a FOIL request than it does to get a law degree, that’s a sign that the system is broken.”
