EDITORIAL -- Claverack clerk hiring makes case for strengthening FOIL

[November 2, 2025 | Register-Star, p.A4]

If you’ve ever wondered why the state needs to strengthen its government transparency law and assess meaningful penalties to officials who seek to violate it, look no further than the plight of residents in Claverack, who have spent the last two months trying to get to the bottom of a questionable political hiring using the state’s inadequate Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

The residents have rightly questioned how it came to be that William Rich Michael was elevated to the position of town clerk after the resignation of then-Town Clerk Mary Jean Hoose without any record of the appointment being made and without any formal process demonstrated to seek potential candidates to fill the vacancy.

On Oct. 1, resident Claire Ackerman, secretary of the Columbia County Democratic Committee, filed a FOIL request with the town seeking payroll records dating back to 2018 for Michael, Hoose and two others, in part to see if Michael had indeed — as Republicans claim — been working as deputy town clerk prior to his elevation to clerk less than a month before the election.

Ackerman said that two months after she filed her request for the records, she still has yet to receive them, nor has she received the required response explaining why the town needed more time to collect the records and giving an estimate of when the records might be released.

Michael told our reporter that he was working on filling the request and that it takes time. But it shouldn’t take two months to retrieve payroll records for four employees of a small town.

The Freedom of Information Law does allow officials to take extra time to track down and deliver records that take a long time to identify and prepare. But the “search” can’t be open-ended. Otherwise, officials would just indefinitely deny the release of records until the citizen no longer needed or wanted them.

In this case, releasing the records prior to the election could have provided voters with vital information about the questionable appointment process of Michael to be town clerk.

Gov. Kathy Hochul had an opportunity to strengthen the law by signing a bill (A3425A/S2520B) that would have tightened the timeline for government bodies to respond to public requests and set firm deadlines. But in October, she instead vetoed the bill, citing specious arguments such as the bill was “unworkable” and that it set arbitrary deadlines. It wasn’t, and it didn’t.

Citizens shouldn’t have to wait indefinitely for public information, and government bodies shouldn’t have unlimited time to honor requests. 

If you needed an example as to why the state needs to toughen its transparency laws, this is it.