New York's records law is the Freedom of Information Law, article 6 of the Public Officers Law at sections 84 to 90, and the Committee on Open Government describes the right it creates as public access to records maintained by government agencies, subject to certain exceptions. The definition of a record is broad enough to make most arguments about format pointless: any information kept, held, filed, produced or reproduced by, with, or for an agency, in any physical form whatsoever, including reports, statements, examinations, memoranda, opinions, folders, files, books, manuals, pamphlets, forms, papers, designs, drawings, maps, photographs, letters, microfilms, computer tapes or disks, rules, regulations or codes.
Who to ask matters here more than in most states. The Committee advises on the law and publishes opinions but holds no other agency's records, so a request must go to the agency that maintains them. Under the Committee's regulations at 21 NYCRR Part 1401, every agency must designate one or more records access officers, whose job is to coordinate the agency's response, and a request should ordinarily be addressed to that person. The Committee itself oversees three laws, the Freedom of Information Law for records, the Open Meetings Law for meetings of public bodies, and the Personal Privacy Protection Law for personal information held by state agencies, and it gives advice by telephone and email as well as in written advisory opinions. For New York records held locally, see the New York county pages.
- Five business days: the agency must grant access, deny in writing, or acknowledge receipt with an approximate date for a decision.
- Twenty business days: an acknowledgement must name a date within twenty business days, or explain in writing why not and give a date certain.
- Silence is a denial: missing those deadlines, or giving an unreasonable date, is a constructive denial that can be appealed.
- Appeal: thirty days to appeal, ten business days for the agency head to answer, and a failure to answer is itself a denial that opens the courts.
Written by SearchSystems.net from New York's own systems: the New York Committee on Open Government, the Committee's make a FOIL request page, the Committee's explanation of time limits for response, the Committee's sample letter for appealing a written denial, the Department of State page about the Committee on Open Government, the Department of State FOIL request page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
The five day letter and the twenty day date
The Committee's explanation of the time limits quotes the statute and then says what it means. Under section 89(3)(a), within five business days of receiving a written request for a reasonably described record an agency must make the record available, deny the request in writing, or furnish a written acknowledgement of receipt together with a statement of the approximate date, reasonable in the circumstances, when the request will be granted or denied.
Language added in 2005 tightened the second stage: where circumstances prevent disclosure within twenty business days of the acknowledgement, the agency must state in writing both the reason it cannot grant the request in that time and a date certain, within a reasonable period, when it will be granted in whole or in part. The Committee is explicit that this is not a licence to take twenty five business days as standard. The amendments are intended to stop agencies delaying unnecessarily, not to let them wait until the fifth business day and then take twenty more, unless the circumstances of the request make that reasonable, and where records are clearly public or readily retrievable there may be no basis for any delay at all.
It points to the statement of legislative intent in section 84, that it is incumbent upon the state and its localities to extend public accountability wherever and whenever feasible, and to the Court of Appeals in Westchester News v. Kimball, which treated that phrase as making explicit what the law implies. For disputes about how long is too long, the Committee cites Linz v. the Police Department of the City of New York, where the court held that reasonableness is judged case by case, taking account of the volume of documents requested, the time involved in locating the material and the complexity of deciding whether the records fall within an exception.
When a request has been denied without anyone saying so
New York gives requesters something most states do not, a defined point at which inaction becomes a decision they can challenge. Under section 89(4)(a) a request may be considered constructively denied where no response and no acknowledgement arrive within five business days, where an agency delays unreasonably beyond the approximate date it gave of less than twenty business days, where it acknowledged the request but failed to grant access by the specific date it set beyond twenty business days, or where the specific date it gave is unreasonable.
The Committee publishes a sample appeal letter for exactly that situation, written to say that more than five business days have passed without a response, or that an acknowledged deadline came and went, and that the requester therefore considers the request denied and is appealing on that basis.
The appeal, and the ten business days that follow
An appeal is made in writing within thirty days of the denial, to the head, chief executive or governing body of the agency, or whoever is designated to determine appeals. That person must, within ten business days of receiving the appeal, either provide access to the record or fully explain the reasons for the further denial in writing. Section 89(4)(b) adds the sanction: a failure to determine an appeal within ten business days is itself a denial of the appeal, at which point the appellant has exhausted administrative remedies and may go to court.
One further requirement helps everyone, and the Committee's sample letter reminds agencies of it: the law directs agencies to send all appeals and the determinations that follow to the Committee on Open Government at One Commerce Plaza, 99 Washington Avenue, Albany, which is how the state keeps sight of how the law is being applied. A requester appealing should include a copy of the original request and of the response received.
What copies cost, and how records arrive
Fees are set by statute rather than by each agency. Unless a different fee is prescribed by law, section 87(1) of the Public Officers Law authorises a charge of 25 cents per copy for records up to nine inches by fourteen, or the actual cost of reproducing a record. The Department of State's FOIL page and the Committee's own guidance set out what actual cost may include, and the list is closed: an amount equal to the hourly salary attributed to the lowest paid agency employee who has the skill needed to prepare the record, but only where at least two hours of employee time are needed; the actual cost of the storage devices or media supplied to the requester; and the actual cost of engaging an outside professional service to prepare a copy, but only where the agency's own technology is inadequate for the job.
Nothing else, including staff time spent searching or reviewing, can be charged. Requesters are told before release where a fee applies. Once prepared, records can be delivered by email, fax, paper, disc or memory stick, and inspection is available by appointment on business days, in the Committee's case from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., arranged by telephone.
What the Committee on Open Government does
The Committee is a standing state body rather than an ombudsman created for a single dispute. Its description of its own role is to oversee and advise on the Freedom of Information Law, the Open Meetings Law and the Personal Privacy Protection Law, giving advice by telephone, email and written advisory opinions, all of which are published and searchable, with separate indexes of court decisions under each law. It publishes a basic guide to the two access laws, with sample letters of request and appeal, trains government staff and other groups, and must submit a comprehensive annual report to the Governor and the Legislature on its experience under each statute together with recommendations for improvement, the most recent being its 2025 report.
For a requester arguing with an agency, an advisory opinion on the same point is the most useful single document to attach to an appeal, which is what the Committee's own sample letter suggests doing.
Reading a New York response
Three letters are normal in New York and each means something different. A letter granting access ends the matter. A written denial starts the thirty day appeal clock and must be answered within ten business days. An acknowledgement is the one to read carefully, because it must carry an approximate date, that date must be within twenty business days unless the agency has explained in writing why not and fixed a date certain, and an acknowledgement with no date, or with a date months away and no explanation, is the kind of response the Committee says the 2005 amendments were meant to stop.
Silence past five business days is not nothing, it is a constructive denial, and the appeal can be sent that day.
Questions about public records requests in New York
Related New York records
New York's other public records guides on this site are the New York background check guide for the state criminal history service, the New York court records guide for the unified court system, the New York arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the New York county pages for every county office.