Ivan Pentchoukov

A City Council committee voted unanimously on Tuesday to pass bills that would require the city to publish its laws and its official newspaper online.

Currently, the city contracts the New York City Legal Publishing Corporation to publish the City Charter, the Administrative Code, and Rules online. But the contractor is not required to update the laws regularly. The new bill would require the city’s law department to publish the laws online, internally or through a contractor, and update them at least once every four weeks.

“In this age of complex legal requirements in so many areas of our life it is more important than ever for the law to be accessible to everybody. In the age of Hammurabi that meant putting it in cuneiform. Today it means putting it online,” Ben Kallos, the chair of the Council committee on government operations, said.

New York City spends $20 million a year on responding to Freedom of Information Law requests from the public, but it can save up to $13 million by centralizing all of the requests on a single website, according to a report released on June 6 by Reinvent Albany, a non-profit promoting government openness and transparency. The report was released in advance of a City Council hearing on a bill that would create a centralized FOIL website for New York City...

Kaehny was involved in drafting the bill, which is sponsored and by Council members Ben Kallos and James Vacca, and supported by Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer. 

A bill that would centralize all of the city’s Freedom of Information Law requests on one website was lauded by several City Council members and good government groups on Monday, but received surprise opposition, in its current form, from the mayor’s office. Two members of the media also testified expressing concern that such a website could compromise their competitive advantages.

The council heard public testimony Monday on a bill that would mandate the creation of a website which would list all Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests filed with the city, display the status of each request, and make the government’s responses public, among other features. New York State’s FOI law states that all government records are the property of the public and should be provided in a timely manner upon request...

Council member Ben Kallos, one of the bill’s sponsors, defended the government’s right to publish all FOIL requests. He pointed out that if such requests aren’t published in a timely manner, it would be impossible for the public and the media to tell if requests are being filled on time or filled at all.