More Mamaroneck Stonewalling
The Village of Mamaroneck confirmed on August 9, 2022, it received my request for records pursuant to the Freedom of Information Law, dated August 2, 2022 and then took it upon itself to decide that the same law does not apply to them. Instead of 20 business days they gave themselves 44 business days until October 11, 2022.
Request #6525: A list of all scanners (make/model) including printer/scanner/copiers owned or leased by the Village of Mamaroneck including departments or bureaus such as police or fire.
Request #6510: All VMPD use of force reports as far back as they go.
Request #6509: All police disciplinary records as far back as they go.
Request #6508: A list of all employees issued mobile phones from January 1, 2018 until present.
Request #6507: All expense reports, along with all receipts and invoices and payments, for all members of the Board of Trustees from January 1, 2018 until the present.
This is not what the law permits.
The Clerk states “Due to the number of requests received, staff time is needed to research requests while also attending to their day-to-day duties”.
FOIL anticipates this “we do not have enough staff” excuse and explicitly prohibits such an excuse.
If they do not have the required staff it is on them to procure it. That this has reportedly become the common practice of the Village just highlights that they deliberately do not employ enough staff or outsource the work to avoid compliance with the law.
The timeline is they get 5 days to decide the request and then either produce the records or ask for 20 more days. If they are still unable to produce the records after those 20 days they can ask for more time then provide a date certain when they will produce the records.
In Mamaroneck, FOIL has been unilaterally suspended where they skip steps in the process, give themselves whatever time they choose and ignore lawful appeals to what amount to constructive denials of requests.
Each one of these are civil misdemeanors.
And yes, Village of Mamaroneck Village Manager Jerry Barberio continues to stonewall my FOIL request for 152 pages of documents he sent to Mayor Murphy. He has entirely ignored my appeal and so has missed both the FOIL deadline and Appeal deadline.
Bottom line: The Village of Mamaroneck is operating as a criminal enterprise, flagrantly violating state law as a matter of policy and strongly suggesting such criminality is the tip of the iceberg.
My latest FOIL request: In order to understand the scope of the issue and gather information for litigation I have made the following FOIL request:
All FOIL requests made to the Village of Mamaroneck with the corresponding response confirming the request and assigning a Request Number to the request from January 1, 2018 until present.
Thanks but no thanks: For those contacting me about this with their own experiences and suggestions, please know while I appreciate the support please realize I have an approach that has worked for me over the past 15 years based on a patient, long-term strategy.
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