Governor Kathy doesn't like to kiss and tell about government business

 

 Progress New York

 Twenty Government Agencies in New York are responsible for over 66 per cent. of appeals seeking the release of Government records, an analysis of New York State Committee on Open Government data has shown, with the New York Police Department behind the largest number of open records requests that triggered challenges.

Of 4,077 FOIL Appeals tracked on a spreadsheet maintained by the Committee on Open Government, the NYPD was responsible for at least 961 challenges filed by the makers of FOIL Requests. The New York State Dept. of Corrections and Community Supervision, the City of Rochester Law Department, Suffolk County, and the New York State Dept. of Health rounded up the top 5 Government Agencies triggering the most FOIL Appeals.

Combined, 20 Government Agencies in New York generated 2,731 challenges out of a total of 4,077 FOIL Appeals tracked on Committee on Open Government spreadsheet. The data was provided to Progress New York in response to a request filed under the State’s Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL.  Progress New York is seeking records about FOIL Appeals and their dispositions ; records about FOIL Appeals and determinations made thereon are required by law to be forwarded to the Committee on Open Government.

As has been widely-reported, Gov. Kathleen Hochul (D-NY) has promised that, “Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration,” she told talk show host Joseph Scarborough during an MSNBC interview.

Despite her promise, Government Agencies in New York refuse to explain their record of triggering so many FOIL Appeals.

The office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information at the NYPD did not answer a press inquiry about having been the target of so many disputes over their decision to deny or withhold access to Government records. Silence was also the response from officials with the New York City Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene and the New York City Dept. of Transportation, two of the top 20 Government Agencies triggering the most FOIL Appeals. In total, five New York City Agencies were amongst the top 20 Authorities that gave rise to the most challenges.

In 2015, the news Web site Gothamist reported that New York City Hall were “screening” open records requests that reflected on Mayor Bill de Blasio (WFP-New York City). For this report, the press office supporting Mayor de Blasio did not answer an interview request.

The press office supporting Gov. Hochul, likewise, did not answer an interview request for this report.

Mayor de Blasio continues his recidivist secrecy of keeping information from the public with coronavirus map

The five borough map of COVID-19 positive patients is out, and it's still hazardously vague

Patch

 Residents of United Hospital Fund Neighborhood zone 408 who tested positive for COVID-19 make up between 51.26 and 65.41 percent of the region's population to receive tests.
Get it? Yeah, neither do we.

The Health Department released Friday a difficult-to-interpret map of novel coronavirus cases in New York City, one day after a Wall Street Journal reporter called out Mayor Bill de Blasio for a lack of transparency.

"You have to release more detailed data on cases and deaths," Katie Honan told de Blasio. "It's negligent that you're not ... please, everyone has to get this data."

De Blasio lashed back at Honan, "If you believe it's your role to editorialize in the middle of your question, that's your right as an American."

"I don't believe that not only is it not negligent," he said. "I would say to you it's the exact opposite."

Yet less than 24 hours later, a new map appeared on the Department of Health's COVID-19 that tracks the percentage of patients testing positive by neighborhood.

Neighborhoods are designated by numbers instead of name — 408 is Jamaica, Queens, by the way — and the percentages are not connected to population data but to those tested.

The number of people tested per zone? Not included.

The population for zone? Not included.

Some New Yorkers were baffled.

"Anyone from NYC area who can parse this heat map of Covid-19?" asked Twitter user @_mzishi_.
Others were not.

"Map is pretty clear," tweeted Devin Balkind. "It's showing that the administration has no interest in transparency."

Since my role is also to editorialize, as an American I would like to say again that Bill de Blasio is a bastard. 

Mayor de Blasio is refusing to release information about what exact areas in the five boroughs have the most COVID-19 cases

Propublica

Residents of Los Angeles can go to a county website to look up how many confirmed coronavirus cases there are in Beverlywood, or Koreatown, or Echo Park. Officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, have released figures at the ZIP code level. The South Korean government is sending geotargeted texts to alert citizens to positive cases near them.

In New York, now at the center of the outbreak, Mayor Bill de Blasio has resisted releasing what the city knows about a basic question: Where, precisely, is the virus?

Answers could take the form of a number of data points — tests, confirmed infections, hospitalizations or deaths — each of which shed light on a different part of the crisis.

Instead New York, along with several other state and county governments around the country, has released daily data only on the county, or borough, level. That means there is just one figure for COVID-19 cases in all of Kings County — Brooklyn — which has a population larger than 15 states. 

The roughly 4,600 confirmed COVID-19 cases among Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents account for 8% of the confirmed cases in the entire country. There is also just one coronavirus case figure for the 2.2 million residents of Queens, where there are just over 5,000 confirmed cases.

The lack of detailed information makes it difficult for medical workers, journalists and the public to establish whether particular communities in the city are being harder hit and to get beyond anecdotal accounts of which of the city’s roughly 60 hospitals are already overwhelmed.

Dr. Michael Augenbraun, director of the infectious diseases division at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in central Brooklyn, said that while he knows the city has its hands full, the data could be useful for doctors. “Everyone is struggling to make sense of this evolving picture,” he said. “I think it would be useful to us in the hospitals to get a detailed situational appraisal, to know how much of the burden we are confronting.”

Augenbraun noted that more precise data could reveal important trends in how the disease is affecting different New Yorkers. “There are many things that may correlate with the spread of infectious diseases,” he said. “Race might be one, poverty might be another.”

But some of those same factors, particularly ethnicity and race, may account for the city’s reluctance to make public more localized data that could point to clusters in particular neighborhoods, among certain communities. Around the country, there have been disturbing reports of bias attacks against Asian Americans by assailants blaming Chinese communities for the spread of the virus.

“The risk is that certain communities would be unfairly stigmatized, especially if communities with many COVID-19 cases already shoulder poverty or high crime,” said Dr. Jessica Justman, associate professor of medicine in epidemiology at Columbia University. “On the other hand, communication and information are always important and especially important in a pandemic setting.”

Some experts argue that the city should be releasing more granular information, perhaps even down to the block level.

“More detailed information will allow everyone to target their efforts much more effectively than only county-level information,” said John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center.
 

In Newark, the largest city in neighboring New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka has disclosed that there were three coronavirus hot spots where residents should take extra precautions. On March 21, the city released detailed maps of the areas, which cover between 50 and 100 square blocks; it did not release the specific number of cases for each area.

New York has held fast on the policy the mayor laid out during a March 12 press conference when he was asked by a reporter if the city could go beyond borough-level numbers and break down cases by neighborhoods. The mayor declined, saying only that the city would release figures in the case of what he called a “cluster.”

“When we say ‘community spread,’ the assumption should be that this is something that is going to reach every corner of the city, whether we like it or not,” he said at the press conference. “And I don’t think it’s particularly productive. I don’t know what you do with that information. I don’t know how you change your life. Unless there is an indication of a cluster, that’s something we absolutely will talk about.”

THE CITY 

The city is sending homeless shelter residents and public hospital patients with coronavirus to hotels — but won’t say where.

And officials aren’t providing hotel staff or the city employees monitoring the infected guests with masks or any other form of protective equipment — instead instructing them to maintain social distance.

“Going into a hotel room with an infected patient is the same as going into a room of a hospital with an infected patient,” said City Councilmember Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), who called for protection for the workers.

The news came as officials confirmed the first death of a homeless New Yorker who succumbed to COVID-19.

The city’s Department of Homeless Services and the Health + Hospitals Corporation said the shelter residents and patients sent to the hotels are all experiencing low-level symptoms and do not require intensive medical care.

As of Wednesday, DHS had placed 65 individuals from shelters into hotel rooms.

Among them: residents who are infected, people who came in close contact with those who tested positive and shelter clients with potential coronavirus symptoms who haven’t been tested, officials said.

Overall, the city has lined up 500 rooms in four hotels, though only two facilities were being used as of Wednesday afternoon, officials said.

Isaac McGinn, a DHS spokesperson, declined to reveal the locations of the hotels, citing shelter residents’ privacy.

HHC wouldn’t say how many patients it had sent to the hotels so far. At least one HHC patient with COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, had no known address and was routed to a hotel, via DHS.

 The number of shelter residents infected with the virus jumped from 17 to 39 between Sunday night and Tuesday night, with the illness spreading from 12 to 27 separate shelters across the city during that time, DHS officials said. Twelve people have been hospitalized — including the unidentified person who died Tuesday.

Queens has the most COVID-19 cases in the city with 6,420 and had the biggest gain in the last 3 days at last count on THE CITY's website.

Followed by Brooklyn with 5,232, Manhattan with 3,616, Bronx with 3,532 (second biggest gain) and Staten Island with 1,166. 

A total of 285 citywide have died by the virus. 

I'm going to take a break for a few days.

City orders school officials to obfuscate any display of coronavirus symptons of faculty and students

 

THE CITY

Two days before closing a New York City public school building where a student tested positive for the coronavirus, Department of Education officials sent out an internal memo advising staff not to report anyone with potential symptoms to the city Department of Health, THE CITY has learned.

The memo from schools headquarters to staff systemwide went out Tuesday morning, days after Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed that three public school teachers who’d been in a coronavirus hot zone had to be tested. At the same time, his health commissioner issued an order mandating that educators, first responders and city health care workers deemed at risk must be tested.

The memo lists a number of precautions to stem the spread of the virus, but explicitly makes clear the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene —  the command center for tracking the virus in New York City — should not be contacted.

“At the moment, there is no reason for any school to call DOHMH to report potential or confirmed cases. DOHMH is receiving information from about positive test results strictly from laboratories. We can support our colleagues at DOHMH by keeping their phones clear to speak with laboratories.”

Mid-morning Thursday, more than 24 hours after THE CITY asked about the logic of this approach, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokesperson Stephanie Buhle wrote in an email, “Our guidance is abundantly clear: if you’re sick, stay home. Physicians and public health professionals guide when testing is appropriate.”

An hour earlier, de Blasio announced that two schools co-located in a South Bronx building — the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology and South Bronx Preparatory — were shut down temporarily “due to a student’s self-confirmed positive case of COVID-19,” the designation for the coronavirus illness.

The statement notes that the Department of Education will “completely disinfect the building” and that the Health Department will “trace close contacts of this individual [student] to recommend quarantine and testing if necessary.” The two schools enroll a total of more than 1,300 students in grades six through 12.

Subsequently, schools officials tweeted, “At this time there is no indication that students in these schools need to be tested” but advised them to stay in their homes until further notice. The school building was shut down for 24 hours following a protocol issued last week by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

City Hall has not yet released any details on the circumstances that led to the student being tested for COVID-19, but during a news conference Thursday afternoon, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza confirmed the protocol advising staff not to notify DOHMH of suspected cases, explaining that the DOE did not want to “inundate” the Health Department.

Mayor de Blasio is utilizing a shady app to avoid keeping records of his communications

NY Daily News

Mayor de Blasio has joined the 21st century — and found a way to hide his communications.

Hizzoner joined encrypted messaging app Signal over the weekend. The tech lets users send disappearing messages to one another and protects the content with encryption.

So if the mayor wanted to discuss something controversial with an aide or campaign contributor, all he’d have to do is time his messages to disappear after a few minutes and the public would never know.

De Blasio’s use of the app poses legal and ethical problems, said Alex Camarda, a senior policy adviser for good government group Reinvent Albany.

“We don’t think that any elected official should be using an app that does not preserve communications that are subject to the Freedom of Information Law and the records archiving laws,” he said.

Under state law, “any information kept, held, filed, produced or reproduced by, with or for an agency ... in any physical form whatsoever” is subject to FOIL requests requiring agencies including the mayor’s office to turn over the info.

“We don’t see how it’s possible to use that kind of app and be in compliance with those laws,” Camarda said of Signal.

This is SOP for our secretive and above all laws mayor. I tend to think he's been pulling this craven stunt for years during his daily Park Slope Y workout routine.

MTA would like to keep congestion pricing plan a secret

NY Post

The board that will recommend congestion pricing tolls to enter Midtown must deliberate in public and not behind closed doors, the state Committee on Open Government has ruled.

The MTA last fall claimed the Traffic Mobility Review Board is not covered by the Open Meetings Law, and therefore its meetings are not open to the public because it is an advisory board.
But the Committee on Open Government disagreed.

The panel’s meetings should be open to the public because it was established in state law to help create policy, Kristin O’Neill, the committee’s assistant director, said in a Nov. 21 ruling.
The MTA has yet to respond to the decision, transit advocates said.

 We want the TMRB’s meetings open to the public. Congestion pricing is going to affect millions of people and provide billions of dollars in revenue to the MTA,” said Lisa Daglian of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.

“There will be people who won’t like paying a congestion fee but at least they’ll know how the decisions were made,” Daglian said, adding that “there should be no back-room deals.”

Cuomo passes $51,500,000,000 MTA capital plan despite de Blasio no-show

 

NY Post

The MTA’s $51.5 billion capital plan was approved without oversight from the city Wednesday — after Gov. Andrew Cuomo refused to convene a review panel amid a spat with Mayor Bill de Blasio.

The deadline for the Capital Program Review Board to review the hefty five-year construction budget ended at the stroke of midnight, meaning the MTA can officially begin allocating funding for the plan with no questions asked.

Cuomo refused to convene the four-person panel — consisting of one appointee apiece from Cuomo’s office, de Blasio’s and both chambers of the state Legislature — unless the mayor appeared in person, insisting the decision was too monumental to be given to a proxy.

But de Blasio, who wanted budget aide Sherif Soliman to represent City Hall’s interests, declined, ceding the city’s veto power over the massive infrastructure plan.

The MTA’s board — which is dominated by Cuomo appointees — green-lit the plan in September.

LLC's are now required to reveal their identities in New York

Daily Freeman


People who control limited liability corporations (LLCs) that own residential rental properties in New York state can no longer hide their identities.

Sen. James Skoufis, D-Woodbury, and Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, D-New City, announced this week that their legislation requiring the disclosure of such LLC operators' names has been signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Under the new law, which takes effect immediately, LLCs that own residential properties containing one to four units "will now be required to share the names and contact information for all owners, managers and agents associated with the company at the time of a real estate transaction,” the legislators said in a prepared statement.

“Currently, it is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the true ownership of anonymous LLCs, leaving municipalities with no person to hold responsible for code violations, illegal building or fines,” the statement continued.

Until now, a limited liability corporation buying, say, a residential property at 1234 Main St., had been allowed to identify itself only vaguely, such as 1234 Main Street LLC.

Skoufis, whose Senate district includes parts of Ulster, Orange and Rockland counties, said the new law “will rip the mask off of these anonymous LLCs that continue to purchase massive amounts of real estate in the Hudson Valley."

“Neighbors have a fundamental right to know who owns the home next door to them,” Skoufis said. 

“Likewise, municipalities are desperate for this disclosure when they seek to hold property owners accountable for ... violations."

 

Posting a property on AirBnB will have consequences

From Crains:

Airbnb seemed to be sucking wind after its political foes delivered it a gut punch Wednesday.

The City Council voted 45-0 in favor of a bill backed by the hotel industry and its union allies, a measure that will require the company to disclose to law enforcement the names and addresses attached to every one of its listings in the five boroughs. The legislation, expected to by signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, will help the city to crack down on anyone violating state law by using the site to rent an apartment for fewer than 30 days.

The sole consolation for Airbnb was that the final draft of the bill lowered the fines the city can levy against the firm for every case of noncompliance to just $1,500, down from the original bill's range of $5,000 to $25,000.

The vote followed months of bitter public recriminations between the tech giant on one side and the city's traditional lodging interests and Hotel Trades Council on the other. On the morning of the vote, Airbnb labeled its loss "bellhop politics," and announced it would fund a lawsuit against the city brought by a host who claimed authorities targeted him after he testified at a council hearing.

Fixing the ULURP process

From an Op-Ed by Council Member Geenfield and Borough President Gale Brewer published in Crains:

The current Uniform Land Use Review Procedure requires the Department of City Planning to make development applications public when the Planning Commission certifies them, roughly seven months before the City Council would vote to approve them. But applicants often submit paperwork describing their projects much earlier. Their plans can go through months or even years of pre-certification work. These pre-application forms matter because once an application is certified, it is difficult or impossible to make major changes.

One of us, Borough President Brewer, has made a practice of submitting Freedom of Information Law requests for those forms so her office can get a head start. The other, Land Use Chairman Greenfield, formally requested that they be turned over voluntarily. We both think it’s time to take that approach citywide.

If community boards, borough presidents and council members can review these forms at roughly the same time the Department of City Planning can, then they’ll know what’s coming. They’ll be better equipped to think through projects’ merits and demerits, seek out input from affected stakeholders earlier, and flag community concerns before it’s too late to address them.

So today, as the Committee on Land Use holds an oversight hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget for the Department of City Planning, the council is requesting—as a “term and condition” of adopting the department’s budget—that pre-application forms be shared automatically with the relevant community board, borough president and council member. A range of data on the pre-application forms will also have to be included in the annual Mayor’s Management Report.

Bringing more transparency to the zoning process will make it less of a high-stakes, zero-sum game. When that happens, we’ll be better able to use zoning to deliver the results—whether it is affordable housing, commercial and manufacturing space, infrastructure, or open space—that our neighborhoods need.

All about de Blasio

Lots of links about the mayor's malfeasance this morning:

EXCLUSIVE: Mayor de Blasio donor raised nearly $200G for political favors, prosecutors say - Daily News

Judge orders Mayor Bill de Blasio to release consultant emails - AM-NY

De Blasio Says He’ll Fight to Hide From the Public His Correspondence With a High-Powered Real Estate Consultant - Observer

Critics Slam De Blasio After He Refuses To Take Questions About Midtown Stabbing - CBS

Homeless hotels have become an epidemic

From Brooklyn Daily:

Sunset Parkers came out in force to Community Board 7’s Sept. 21 meeting concerned that the city is quietly turning area hotels into homeless shelters. Numerous buildings billed as inns for tourists are actually homes for the transient, but the city is not broadcasting that fact, and locals are fed-up with the lack of transparency, said one resident.

“It feels like a bait-and-switch situation where we were told there was going to be a hotel but it’s a shelter,” said 23rd Street resident Maya Visco, referring to a stalled hotel that is operating as a temporary family shelter on 24th Street between Third and Fourth avenues. “You know I’m a home owner, my kids go to school here. I’m in it for the long haul and I want to know what is going on here, and I feel there is a serious lack of transparen­cy.”

Sunset Park only has one official homeless shelter — a controversial place for single men on 49th Street between Second and Third avenues. But the area is exploding with hotel development, and the Department of Homeless Services is actually renting rooms in five area inns without alerting locals, according to Community Board Seven district manager Jeremy Laufer.

“As they keep telling me, these are not shelters so they do not have to inform us when they are renting there,” he said.

This despite de Blasio having banned the use of hotels as shelters back in February.

Not exactly transparent

From NY1:

NY1 and the New York Post have sued the mayor over his refusal to turn over emails between top city officials, including himself, and Rosen.

In this case, though, the city did turn over some e-mails to NY1. But while we received 87 pages of e-mails in all, we learned that when the mayor had something to say, it was often blacked out.

When de Blasio sent a New York Times story about stagnant middle-class incomes to top city advisers, Del Cecato and his wife, Chirlane McCray, his note to the group was redacted.

It was the same with a New Yorker story about Hillary Clinton that he forwarded to his wife and Del Cecato. The mayor's message is blocked.

"These emails show how ridiculous it is to designate these consultants as agents of the city," said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union. "These emails, in particular, are benign. They are talking about political stories and news stories, and for them to be protecting the mayor's comments just shows how ridiculous this whole matter is.

De Blasio's handling of his emails have also raised complaints that he is failing to live up the transparency promises he made as a candidate for City Hall.

DeBlasio: "Nothing to see here"

From NY1:

Critics accuse Mayor de Blasio of setting up a shadow government — comprised of consultants who are not paid by City Hall, but pocket cash from clients, many of whom have business before the city.

The arrangement has long drawn complaints but it is generating a new wave of condemnation, because City Hall is refusing to release emails the consultants exchanged with the mayor and his top aides.

"It's disappointing to see the mayor, whose whole persona in government is about doing it for the people and being transparent about it, and to be relying on a legal analysis from some lawyer about whether this consultant's communications are protected is ridiculous," said Dick Dadey with good government group, Citizens Union. "Just disclose."

More than a year ago, NY1 made an open-records request for emails between a top de Blasio consultant, Jonathan Rosen, and the Mayor and high-ranking administration officials.

The request was denied, even though emails between city officials and people outside government are presumed to be public. In a letter to NY1, a city lawyer referred to Rosen as a consultant to the Mayoralty. He argued the emails were protected by the same exemption that keeps us from seeing many of the e-mails the mayor sends to his City Hall staff only.

Everything's a secret in de Blasio land

From the Queens Chronicle:

Did you know there was a meeting Tuesday night among representatives of the Department of Transportation, NYPD and Community Board 6 about how crowded Austin Street is and what might be done to make the strip safer and more workable for all?

You do if you’re reading this week’s Central, Mid or North Queens editions of the Chronicle, or visiting qchron.com. We don’t know if other papers have the story. We do know that if it were up to the DOT, we wouldn’t either.

No, no, no — that department’s press office was not at all happy to hear that we had learned about the meeting and had the gall to ask questions about it. The nerve of the press! In America, no less! True, we already had perturbed the office by contacting an actual decision-making official directly, at the recommendation of a knowledgeable source, so we had to get the old “You must go through us!” speech again. Yawn.

But eventually the DOT press people were quite helpful. When the Chronicle’s Christopher Barca asked what was discussed at the meeting, whether the agency would study traffic on Austin, and whether it has a plan going forward, we got this detailed response that was more than we could have hoped for in our greatest reportorial dreams:

“While DOT currently does not have a proposal to adjust traffic patterns on Austin Street in Forest Hills, we are aware of the community’s concerns related to congestion.”

The DOT is not alone in this by any means. This is rapidly becoming standard for city agencies. So why single out the transportation agency? Because it happened to be the one to try to cover up a newsworthy event this week. Luckily another well-placed source supplied the little information we got about the meeting. Like that it had taken place.

But most agencies and officials are getting less prone to answer the questions of a free press. That’s why you see so much “said in a prepared statement” in our stories. No interview allowed; take an email. That’s why the New York Press Club periodically writes letters reminding the mayor of the First Amendment, which then run in these pages. And that’s why Barca made a number of calls and sent several emails over two days to confirm that big secret: that a meeting had been held. Among public employees. On a matter of public interest. Expect a follow-up one day ... if anyone will talk.

Data to be more readily available

From the Daily News:

The City Council passed a package of bills to help New Yorkers get ahold of city data online.

One piece of legislation will require plain language dictionaries on the city’s open data portal to explain tongue-twisting terms like “carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand.”

Another bill will require that when city agencies update their own websites, they also quickly add the information to the open data portal. And the city will have to preserve more data instead of erasing it when stats change.

Mr. Transparent puts his foot down

The mayor has changed his tune on how he deals with the press, but he's going to call the shots. (At least when he is in town.) Those FOIL requests will just have to wait.

DeBlasio will answer questions when he is good and ready

From CBS:

Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned on a pledge to be the most transparent mayor ever.

But CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer reported the mayor was aggressively trying to control the message Wednesday – taking reporters’ questions only about once a week on topics he has not pre-approved.

Kramer went toe-to-toe with the mayor’s press secretary about it on Wednesday.

Kramer reported that the late Mayor Ed Koch answered reporters’ questions as many as six times a day, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg did it three or four times a week.

She said she did not recall a mayor who said he was only taking “on-topic” questions one day, and went on to say, “Tomorrow, we’ll talking about other types of topics.”

But press secretary Karen Hinton vehemently defended the practice.

Mayor quite dense at being transparent

From ABC:

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who promised to run the most transparent administration in city history, has taken steps to have his office review any public records request of any city agency that could "reflect directly on the mayor."

That broad mandate, outlined in a May 5 email obtained by The Associated Press, could give de Blasio's office control over virtually all newsworthy Freedom of Information Law requests from journalists, watchdog groups or members of the public.

Although the ramifications of the policy are not yet clear, transparency advocates fear such control could lead to prolonged delays in responding to records requests, a criticism both President Barack Obama and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced when they instituted similar policies.