TOWN OF ULSTER, N.Y. >> The Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency has turned down another request to release a feasibility study about forming a multicounty trash authority.
The state’s public information watchdog says the stalling by the agency is based on a flawed understanding of law.
The second rejection of the Freeman’s request for the study came from Timothy DeGraff, the Resource Recovery Agency records access manager.
“Your FOIL (state Freedom of Information Law) request for a copy of the draft feasibility study for a Greene, Ulster, Sullivan combined solid waste authority is denied,” DeGraff wrote. “The draft study is exempt from FOIL under Section 87(2)g of the Public Officers Law since it is not a final agency policy or determination.”
The Freeman has been trying to obtain the study, which was prepared by Cornerstone Engineering and Land Surveying, since it was discussed during a closed-door meeting in January that was attended by a total of about a dozen people from the three involved counties.
The agency’s first rejection of the newspaper’s request for the study said the request lacked specificity, which Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, called “a little bit on the ridiculous side.”
Freeman said the premise of the most recent rejection is incorrect because a summary of the study that was released last month stated the study contains statistical information and factual tabulations and is based on data from each of the three counties.
Freeman said a recommendation in the study can be withheld but that information about costs, the number of personnel, the location of properties and the amount of solid waste generated is required to be made public.
“When a record is prepared by a consultant for an agency, it’s treated as intra-agency material,” he said. “However, in the [state] Court of Appeals decision that established that to be so, the court was careful to point out that various portions of those kinds of communications are public.
“The Court of Appeals has said that statistical and factual information means not only numbers that appear graphically or in rows or whatever on a printed page, but rather factual information,” he said.
In a 1996 case, the Court of Appeals pointed to state Public Officers Law Section 87(2)(g) in ruling that materials could not be withheld based on being in draft form.
“The exemption for intra-agency material does not apply as long as the material falls within any one of the provision’s four enumerated exceptions,” the decision states. “Thus, intra-agency documents that contain ‘statistical or factual tabulations or data’ are subject to FOIL disclosure, whether or not embodied in a final agency policy or determination.”
Freeman said the Resource Recovery Agency’s rejections of the newspaper’s requests amount to a “stall” that exemplifies why the appeals court addressed draft reports.
“Whether it’s a draft or not, the statistical and factual information should not change,” he said. “It should be public.”
Trash agency officials have said they expect the feasibility study to be presented to lawmakers in Ulster, Greene and Sullivan counties around March.
DeGraff, in rejecting the second Freedom of Information request, said a final version of the study is expected to be ready in four to five weeks.
