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FOIL: Getting the Records

About Course

New York’s Freedom of Information Law, in plain English. For the clerk who has to answer the request and the resident who filed it. Every government record in New York is presumed to be yours to see. This course explains what that presumption covers, how to ask for a record so the request actually works, what the clock looks like on the government’s side, which records can be withheld and why, what you can be charged, and what to do when the answer is no or there is no answer at all.

What Will You Learn?

  • Write a request that reasonably describes the records and cannot be bounced on a technicality
  • Count the deadlines: 5 business days, 20 business days, a date certain, 30 calendar days, 10 business days
  • Tell a lawful denial from an unlawful one, and redact instead of withholding
  • Know what may be charged and what may never be charged
  • Appeal, ask the Committee on Open Government for an opinion, and know when a lawsuit is the only step left
  • Set up a FOIL process a one-person office can run

Course Content

Lesson 0: Welcome
How the course works, who the Coalition is, and the example the course follows all the way through: a resident asking for a village's water rate study.

  • Welcome
    03:18
  • Lesson 0 quiz

Lesson 1: Why this law exists
Why New York has a Freedom of Information Law, how it passed over the objections of nearly every agency that testified, and how it has changed since 1978.

Lesson 2: What FOIL covers: agencies and records
Which agencies have to answer a FOIL request, what counts as a record (including officials' personal email used for public business), what an agency does not have to do, and three records every agency must keep.

Lesson 3: The players
The records access officer, the appeals officer, the Committee on Open Government and the courts: who does what, and who can enforce anything.

Lesson 4: Making a request that works
The law asks one thing of a requester: describe the records well enough that the agency can find them. This lesson covers how to do that, what an agency cannot demand from you (a reason, your name, its own form, a visit in person), and four sentences that belong in every request: ask for electronic copies, cap the fee, ask for a certification if a record cannot be found, and invite a call to narrow the request.

Lesson 5: The clock: 5, 20, a date certain, 30 and 10
The deadlines: 5 business days to respond, 20 to decide, a date certain after that, 30 days to appeal and 10 for the answer. Silence counts as a denial.

Lesson 6: What can be withheld, in plain English
The reasons an agency may withhold a record, the rule that it must redact rather than withhold whole files, the internal-deliberations exemption and its four holes, and what a denial that holds up looks like.

Lesson 7: Fees: what you can be charged, and what you cannot
The 25-cent page fee, what "actual cost" may include, and what an agency may never charge for: search, review, redaction, inspection or certification.

Lesson 8: When the answer is no, or nothing: appeals and court
How to appeal a denial or a non-response, what the appeals officer must do, when a court case makes sense, and who pays the lawyer.

Lesson 9: Running FOIL well, on both sides of the counter
A working FOIL system for clerks, retention schedules, proactive posting, training, and what residents and reporters can do to keep agencies honest.

Lesson 10: Wrap-up
FOIL on one card, where to go next, and how the final exam works.

Final exam
25 questions drawn from the whole course. You need 80 percent to pass, and you can take it as many times as you like.

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