Tag: Freedom of Information

It’s easier to acquire documents listing Nassau and Suffolk county authorities’ secret investigative files than obtain records detailing taxpayer-funded workers’ salaries in the villages of Island Park, Manorhaven or Port Jefferson. Those were among the many findings of an unprecedented audit of 196 Long Island municipalities and agencies’ responsiveness to the New York State Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), the four-decade-old process that the public, media and others use to obtain government documents.

I experienced firsthand the incompetence and neglect behind Obama’s failure to make good on his FOIA promises. Newly uncovered documents (made public only through a FOIA lawsuit) show the Obama administration aggressively lobbying against reforms proposed in Congress. The Associated Press found last year that the administration had set a record for censoring or denying access to information requested under FOIA, and that the backlog of unanswered requests across the government had risen by 55 percent, to more than 200,000.