Rye City Council Discusses Changes to FOIL Procedures

The city has had a difficult time handling a dramatic increase in the number of FOILs submitted and an increase in the amount of information requested in each FOIL, City Manager Scott Pickup said at the last council meeting. 

Part of the problem is that the requests they receive are much more detailed and request information from multiple departments. Another issue has been records management that the city needs put time and resources into sorting out, Pickup said. 

In 2011 the city received 94 FOIL request and in 2012 it received 207, city officials said.

“We have some real gaps in our records management, in our document management, in our email management,” Pickup said, “and all of those things effect our ability to respond to FOIL.”

The city council considered the following changes to FOIL procedures:

• The inclusion of software from E-Gov will allow requestors to submit FOIL requests from the City website, will centralize the FOIL process, eliminate the chance of FOILs being misplaced and unanswered, and allow for greater accuracy with a complete set of FOIL request records in one location.
• Any required fee for FOIL requests can be made via credit card payments on-line.
• The City Clerk will be the only designated Records Access Officer.
• The City Manager would be the appeals officer for all appeals of FOIL requests.

Councilman Joe Sack said he is against the city manager becoming the appeals officer and said he feels the city council should work in that role. Council members Julie Killian, Laura Brett and Catherine Parker agreed.

Councilman Peter Jovanivich asked if the city needs more staff to handle the increase in requests. Wilson said that by centralizing things department heads will have a better understanding of what their obligations are and they will need to be better trained further on how to deal with the requests that come to them. 

“If we are going to adopt new procedures because of this, leaving aside the whole appellate question, we have to address the staff question as to whether or not we have enough people with a streamlined process to be within acceptable guidelines,” Jovanovich said. 

After three months they would assess the new process, Wilson and Pickup said.

Leon Sculti, a Rye resident who regularly submits FOILS, blamed the increase on the “corruption” he believes is going on in the city. Sculti has been publically criticizing Pickup, city officials and the city’s response to his FOILs for several months.

He explained a specific FOIL he sent that asked how Police Commissioner William Connors approved a $250,000 Rye Golf Club bill. Pickup explained that, by city charter, he designates his responsibilites to either the Commissioner or City Engineer to act as a senior staff person on his behalf when he is absent for a significant period of time. Pickup said letters containing that command are usually included in confidential packages sent to the city council and are not public documents. Sculti explained that the response to his FOIL was inaccurate because it said no such documents existed instead of stating that they exist, but are not public record (Sculti questions why they would not be part of the public record.)

“When you have lots of corruption you are going to get lots of FOILS,” Sculti said.

Rye resident Jim Amico, who also submits frequent FOILS, said he has not received adequate responses to his requests and blamed the staff, not the process. 

The council took no action on the proposed changes and Wilson said she will report back to the council at the April 3 meeting. 

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Editor's Note: The article has been changed from its original version to elaborate on Sculti's claim about the city's response to his RGC related FOIL request.