Watchdog Report Shows Urgent Need for Legislation to Rescue Floundering FOIL

Reinvent Albany advocates for transparent and accountable New York government, including working to strengthen the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) and put government information online. Our new report, “Listening to FOIL 2025: Lessons from Five NYS Agencies,” looks at the open records requests made via FOIL to five NYS government agencies:

• Metropolitan Transportation Authority
• NYS Department of Transportation
• Empire State Development
• New York State Board of Elections
• Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government

Below is a summary of the number of FOIL requests received, and how long it took to close requests for the five agencies covered in the report.

The volume of requests and response times varies widely. One reason for this is because, unlike the federal government, the State of New York does not track or publicly report on how well state agencies and authorities fulfill their responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Law. They, along with the offices of the Governor, Attorney General, and State Comptroller, do not treat FOIL as the important public service it is. They do not track agency FOIL activity or efforts to comply with this fundamental transparency law. 

The Committee on Open Government (COOG) issues annual reports about FOIL and the Open Meetings Law, but is underfunded and has a tiny staff. Reports by watchdog groups, like Reinvent Albany, remain one of the only tools the public, Legislature, and decision makers have to evaluate whether FOIL is working, and whether agencies are ignoring or undermining it.

Key Findings

• The agencies with the most requests – Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and NYS Department of Transportation (NYS DOT) – did not include information in their FOIL logs about whether records were actually sent to requestors. Only the State Board of Elections (SBOE), Empire State Development (ESD), and the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government’s (COELIG) FOIL logs included data about whether records requests were fulfilled in full, in part, or denied. 
• While some of the five agencies in this report keep up with the volume of requests, others are struggling – in particular the MTA. 
• The MTA compares extremely poorly to much smaller agencies, like the NYS Department of Transportation, which gets about the same number of  FOIL requests, but on average closes them in 18 days versus 86 days for the MTA. 
• The MTA was inundated with requests that have nothing to do with its core function of providing public transit, and received 1,627 requests, 37% of total, from law firms. Most of these were from personal injury firms likely assessing whether they should take on a case suing the MTA.
  • In 2024, the MTA closed 16 requests that were between 5 and 10 years old. 
  • The MTA closed fewer FOIL requests than it received in 2024.
• The State Board of Elections had the shortest average turnaround time of 4 days, and closed more FOIL requests than it received in 2024.
  • No requests took longer than 30 days to be closed. 
  • Most requests to the Board of Elections were for voters lists (1,096 requests).
• The Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government was the second fastest, taking an average of 14 days to close FOIL requests.
• Performance was spotty at the NYS DOT and ESD. While most requests were closed in fewer than 30 days, a smaller number took more than a year at each agency.
• Most agencies still do not accept appeals for FOIL requests via email, instead making requestors send hard copies of appeals in the mail.
  • The MTA, State Board of Elections, and NYS DOT require FOILers to send appeals via snail mail.
  • ESD and COELIG provide email addresses on their websites for FOIL appeals.

Report Recommendations

Reinvent Albany joined with journalism groups, transparency advocates, and government watchdog groups to urge the Legislature to pass a package of four bills to strengthen the Freedom of Information Law. Our groups strongly agree that FOIL is working poorly and some of us, including Reinvent Albany, believe FOIL is dysfunctional and verging on systemic failure. 

Eighteen of our groups sent a Sunshine Week letter to New York’s Legislative leaders urging them to pass the four bills. Laudably, the Assembly did pass two of these bills.

1. Report FOIL Activity (S452 (Hoylman-Sigal) / A2321 (McDonald)) – Passed the Assembly in 2024, and 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 last session.
4. Reduce Agency FOIL Response Time (S2520-A (Skoufis) / A3425 (Raga)) – Advanced to third reading in the Senate last session.

The full report also has individual recommendations for each of the five agencies covered in our analysis.

Click here or below to view the full report.