FOIL Log for Office of the Mayor

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the New York State Freedom of Information Law (1977 N.Y. Laws ch. 933), I hereby request the following records:

A log of all FOIL requests filed with Office of the Mayor between January 1 2014 and June 1 2014.

I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as I believe this request is in the public interest. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.

In the event that fees cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

J.K. Trotter

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 21, 2014. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 21, 2014. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 21, 2014. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

I would like to appeal this determination and clarify the nature of my request: I am seeking a log of all FOIL requests between January 1 2014 and June 1 2014 that includes the name of the requester and a description of the records each requester is seeking.

The online tool you linked to only describes the dates, status, and tracking number of FOIL requests, with no other information.

Thank you.

J.K. Trotter

I would like to appeal this determination and clarify the nature of my request: I am seeking a log of all FOIL requests between January 1 2014 and June 1 2014 that includes the name of the requester and a description of the records each requester is seeking.
The online tool you linked to only describes the dates, status, and tracking number of FOIL requests, with no other information.
Thank you.
J.K. Trotter

Mr. Berger,

Thank you for your response, dated July 11, to my appeal regarding the FOIL log for the Office of the Mayor. I will look out for any correspondence from the records access officer charged with fulfilling my request.

I must, however, express my concern about your justification for withholding the names of individual requestors from the detailed FOIL log you have otherwise agreed to release. I believe there has been a serious oversight.

You are withholding the names of requestors, you write, because “what a requestor is seeking information about reveals the nature of their interests, their thinking, and potentially their personal, academic or professional research” and that “New York law recognizes that an individual’s research interests are private and confidential.”

It is obviously true that that the contents of requests can potentially reveal information about the original requestor. But you have not made it clear how submitting a FOIL request necessarily constitutes a protected research interest. You reference, instead, a court decision regarding the disclosure of an individual’s public library records—even though FOIL requests are clearly not “library records,” but inquiries about whether certain public records even exist.

Furthermore, the previous mayoral administration did in fact disclose the names of requestors (and their institutional affiliation) for particular FOIL requests—albeit without the contents of those FOIL requests—on multiple occasions. You can inspect these disclosures at the following URLs:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/219701068/NYC-Mayor-s-Office-FOIL-Records-2012

http://www.scribd.com/doc/219701069/NYC-Mayor-s-Office-FOIL-Records-2013

For reasons that remain unclear, however, the current mayoral administration withheld the names and affiliations of individual requestors in response to a similar request fulfilled earlier this year:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/219700674/FOIL-Records-2014

To reiterate: I am pleased that you are granting my request for the disclosure of the contents of individual FOIL requests. But there is simply no recent precedent for withholding the names of requestors as well.

Sincerely,

J.K. Trotter

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on April 21, 2014. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.