Non-Profit Files Lawsuit Against Town of Oyster Bay

A New York City based non-profit group recently announced that they have filed a lawsuit against the Town of Oyster Bay as well as the Elmont and Manhasset school districts.

The group, Reclaim New York Center for Government Reform and Accountability, has filed the lawsuit against the Town and school districts for allegedly refusing to comply with New York State’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), by either denying or ignoring requests made by the group for information on contracts and expenditures.

“New Yorkers shouldn’t have to beg to see how local government spends their money,” Reclaim New York Executive Director Brandon Muir said. The organization launched an unprecedented, statewide transparency project last month, to open the checkbooks of all of New York’s 3,400-plus governments to public view.

According to the group's website, as of Tuesday, a total of 253 FOIL requests were sent to 13 Towns, 97 Villages, and 125 school districts on Long Island (and county offices) since start of their transparency project in May.

Out of the 253 requests, a total of 57 were incomplete, 38 were denied, and 196 were completed.

In addition to the Town of Oyster Bay, the group claims that the Towns of Islip, Riverhead, Babylon, and Hempstead also have not complied.

The Town of Oyster Bay denied the request, the Town of Hempstead asked for $4,000 to provide the requested documents and the Town of North Hempstead complied "only after the project was announced," the group wrote on their website.

In addition, about 25 percent of local Villages did not comply, 17 out of the 125 total school districts have ignored or denied the requests and 17 percent of school districts have still not sent back records, according to the group.

"The Town of Oyster Bay’s refusal is particularly disturbing in light of scandals like Harendra Singh’s alleged bribery and loan scheme," the group wrote in a press release.

Oyster Bay ignored a formal appeal, and follow up phone calls, after requesting a 20 day extension, according to the group.

Patch reached out to the Town of Oyster Bay, but did not yet receive a response.

However, the Town of Oyster Bay told Newsday that they are "working on compiling the roughly 1400 pages of information and will notify the group of its availability as soon as possible.”

The Elmont School District, which recently came under fire for paying Thomas Galante even after he was fired for abusing taxpayer dollars as CEO of the Queens Library, told the group that they did not have records that tracked payments to vendors and ignored a formal appeal from Reclaim New York, according to the release.

Superintendent Al Harper said in a statement that “under state law, the district is not legally required to alter existing records by redaction or otherwise to respond to a FOIL request,” and also claimed that some of their records were "not in the format that the group requested," Newsday reports.

The Manhasset School District denied Reclaim’s FOIL request for records they are "legally obligated to provide," the group said.

Superintendent Charlie Cardillo told Newsday that they declined to release vendor information partially because it includes Social Security numbers and addresses which could not be redacted “without unreasonable time and effort."

"We denied their request for those specific reasons, and not to avoid transparency about District expenditures,” they told Newsday.

Reclaim New York stated that they plan to use the information they received from Long Island will be included in a new, searchable online database as a public resource will allow any citizen to see how their taxpayer dollars are being spent, the group said.

A video of the announcement can be seen below: