The standoff between the Office of Court Administration and the Committee on Open Government — which is empowered to interpret the state's Freedom of Information Law — concerns financial disclosures that are filed each year by thousands of judges and court employees, and has attracted the attention of a top state lawmaker who has called for greater transparency.
The court system restricts public access to the disclosure filings by releasing them one by one, requiring a separate form to be submitted for each person — a process the committee found unlawful. While the watchdog cannot enforce compliance, courts have said its opinions "should be upheld" unless they are "irrational or unreasonable."
Law360 has sought a digital database of the filings, citing FOIL and the committee's August advisory opinion. But a lawyer for the court system denied the records request Wednesday, saying the watchdog had failed to grasp how FOIL applies to the judiciary and arguing it has no role in releasing ethics data.
The records of the court system's semi-autonomous Ethics Commission, assistant deputy counsel Michael Siudzinski argued, are shielded from disclosure because it is a part of the judiciary, which is exempt from FOIL's requirements.
"With respect to [the Committee on Open Government], its August 27, 2024 Advisory Opinion is based on a misunderstanding of the structure of [Unified Court System], OCA, and the Ethics Commission and is not binding herein," Siudzinski said.
"Accordingly, OCA has no responsive records and the records of the Ethics Commission are records of the judiciary which are not subject to disclosure," the court counsel said in his final determination of the records request.
OCA's claim of a "misunderstanding" drew a swift rebuke from the watchdog's counsel on Thursday morning.
"Contrary to the Office of Court Administration's response, we do understand the structure of the Unified Court System," wrote Kristin O'Neill, committee deputy director and counsel, in an email to Law360 and Siudzinski. "We need to look no further than the UCS's own website."
OCA publicly admits that it holds the ethics data requested on its own legally-mandated list of records — it even lists "Ethics Commission" records and specifies that this includes "Financial Disclosure Statements," O'Neill pointed out.
While this doesn't mean OCA has to turn over the data in its entirety, "it does mean that OCA has acknowledged that they are records of 'the agency,'" she argued.
And while the "judiciary" is exempt from FOIL, O'Neill said, that term is defined in law as "the courts of the state."
"Any other entity within the UCS, such as the Ethics Commission, would be an 'agency' subject to the statutory obligations of FOIL," the committee attorney said. OCA has "taken on the responsibility of responding to FOIL requests," she noted, and no alternate FOIL contact is provided, as required by law, for the Ethics Commission.
A top state lawmaker warned court officials against withholding the data.
"This lack of transparency was a hallmark of the much-maligned previous OCA administration," said Sen. Michael Gianaris, deputy majority leader in the state senate. "I hope the current leaders realize this is a horrible mistake and reverse course but legislation is always an option if they do not."
Gianaris previously proposed a bill that would require OCA to publicly post annual financial disclosures online, as legislators and statewide officials do.
OCA spokesperson Al Baker doubled down on OCA's position Thursday evening, saying that the Committee issued its opinion "without a full understanding of the structure and operations of OCA and the Ethics Commission."
For years, New York state court administrators have resisted efforts to publicly disclose information about judges' financial interests.
After a Law360 investigation in 2022 revealed top New York state judges ignored a gift and income reporting rule for at least a decade, senior judges erased the rule from the ethics canon. They then added less specific questions about the money and benefits judges received to an existing annual financial disclosure process — administered by the Ethics Commission.
When Law360 requested the judges' disclosures, however, the Office of Court Administration and its Ethics Commission demanded nearly 1,500 individual forms be filed with each judge's name and title.
Law360 delivered that stack of paper, as requested, along with digital copies in July. To date, the Ethics Commission has produced thousands of disclosure forms, both typed and handwritten, but has not yet delivered them all.
Baker noted that the Ethics Commission "has provided more than 8,300 documents to Law360, as part of a vibrant and transparent public inspection process."
Law360's latest data request sought purely electronic data — instead of printed forms.
The September FOIL request sought "all financial disclosure data held by the New York state court system's Ethics Commission in a digital database since 2013." Three months later, court officials replied that Law360 was asking the wrong entity and that it should fill out a form supplied by the Ethics Commission.
--Editing by Leah Bennett.
Update: This article has been updated with comment from the OCA.
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