Listening to FOIL 2026 Report: Big Gaps Between Best/Worst of 11 NYS Agencies

Reinvent Albany advocates for transparent and accountable New York government, including strengthening the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). In our new report, “Listening to FOIL 2026: Lessons from 11 New York State Agencies,” we analyzed 16,000 FOIL requests made in 2024 to evaluate response times, backlogs, requester types, and use of FOIL processing software. Unfortunately, New York State does not track FOIL and has a haphazard approach to managing and funding the most important transparency tool New Yorkers have to keep their government working for them. (Note: agencies have five business days to acknowledge a FOIL request and another twenty business days to provide the requested records, unless “circumstances prevent disclosure.”)

Key Findings from 11-Agency Sample 

1. Agencies are failing to publish commonly requested records. These include contracts, bill jackets, and more timely updates of the Governor’s schedules.
   • The Governor’s schedules currently published online are 15 months out of date, and some FOIL requests for schedules have been denied, per NY Focus.
2. Most agencies are not using all the features of FOIL processing software the state is already paying $650,000 a year for (see the state’s GovQA contract): electronic acceptance of appeals and FOIL archives that publish frequently requested records. 
3. Most FOILs are from businesses and law firms in this agency sampling. The Executive Chamber is an outlier with 40% of requests from the press. 
4. FOIL volumes vary dramatically across agencies. Caseloads ranged from fewer than 100 requests at the Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) to over 13,000 requests at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
5. High FOIL volumes don’t have to mean long delays. Across all 11 agencies, the  average closure time was 34 days. This was largely driven by DEC, which closed requests in 18 days, on average. 
6. Requests taking more than 60 days to close (9%) account for a disproportionate share of total waiting time (26%). These requests accumulated 115,016 days of waiting time, equivalent to 315 years wasted by people waiting for records.
   • The Governor vetoed a bill in October 2025 that would have capped response times at 60 days, saving New Yorkers time and effort.
7. Most closed requests took 60 days or less – even at high-volume agencies like DEC (93% took 60 days or less). The notable exception was the Office of Cannabis Management: Only 7% of closed requests took 60 days or less, suggesting chronic dysfunction.
   • This shows that most state agencies could implement the bill vetoed by the Governor with only modest additional effort.
8. Across all 11 agencies, 90% of FOIL requests created in 2024 were closed by year’s end. However, some agencies had backlogs:
   • The Office of Cannabis Management closed only 14% of 2024 requests within that same year. 
   • The Executive Chamber closed 80%, meaning the 20% remaining made up the next largest backlog.
9. The FOIL logs received by Reinvent Albany varied in quality and usefulness. Some agencies sent detailed XLS files, and others sent blurry PDFs that we could not analyze.
   • One agency, SUNY, said it does not maintain a FOIL log at its headquarters.
   • Ten agencies (50% of the 20 we examined) require appeals to be submitted by hard-copy mail. Only two agencies used GovQA’s built-in appeals feature.

Report Recommendations
We recommend that the Legislature pass, and the Governor sign, the following bills:

1. Report FOIL Activity (S452 (Hoylman-Sigal) / A2321 (McDonald)) – Passed the Assembly in June 2024 and again in March 2025.
2. Limit Commercial FOIL Exemption (S5000 (Hoylman-Sigal) / A1410 (Rosenthal)) – Passed the Senate in 2024 and the Assembly in March 2025.
3. Strengthen FOIL Attorneys’ Fees (A950-A (Steck) / S1418-A (Liu)) – Passed the Senate in May 2025, died in Assembly.
4. Reduce Agency FOIL Response Time (S2520-B (Skoufis) / A3425-A (Raga)) – Passed both houses in June 2025, then was vetoed by the Governor. Reinvent Albany strongly criticized the Governor for vetoing what we said was the most consequential FOIL bill to pass the Legislature in years.
5. The Legislature should also introduce and pass legislation to require FOIL appeals to be allowed to be submitted electronically by email as well as through FOIL software used by agencies to accept FOIL requests, like GovQA.

The full report includes individual recommendations for each of the 11 agencies:

1. Executive Chamber
2. Division of the Budget (DOB)
3. Office of General Services (OGS)
4. Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY)
5. Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
6. Office of Cannabis Management (OCM)
7. Office of Information Technology Services (ITS)
8. Department of Public Service (DPS)
9. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
10. New York State Thruway Authority (NYSTA)
11. Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB)

Click here or below to view the full report.