The Committee on OPEN Government | Continued

Mr. Freeman has been with the Committee on Open Government, which was created to administer FOIL, since it was started in 1974 and has served as its Executive Director since 1976. He is far above and beyond politics and his one allegiance is to seeing that FOIL and the equally crucial Open Meetings Law (OML) are upheld. He and his staff regularly answer questions over the phone to advance its application and have issued thousands of Advisory Opinions to further the effectiveness of the Freedom of Information Law and the Open Meetings Law in promoting transparent government. When recently asked if he wasn’t concerned about a backlash when he calls them as he sees them, he pointed out, “This is the Committee on Open Government, not Closed Government.”

The TTA has made dozens of FOIL requests of City and State agencies, but the most critical ones have been for the Silverstein contracts from 2001 to the present. The Port Authority is not technically subject to FOIL because it is a bi-state agency, but its by-laws bind PA officials to a Freedom of Information Policy that “is consistent” with the laws of the two states. The PA has gone to ridiculous lengths to prevent the contracts’ release since the beginning of 2010 — which means that they would rather violate their own Policy than disclose what is in those contracts. That clearly suggests that they know the public would never have agreed to the terms, which would make the deliberately murky process a massive swindle.

FOIL makes documents accessible from any agency that is subject to it, regardless of whether or not the agency originated the document or was a party to a requested contract. Therefore, we were delighted when we came across a decision online to a tax appeal petition Silverstein Properties had initiated with the NYC Tax Appeals Tribunal (TAT) for tax relief at the site, because the Administrative Law Judge’s decision was posted online and included the surprising information that all of the documents we were after had been introduced as exhibits in that appeal.

We therefore requested the documents from the Tax Appeals Tribunal in June — access was denied; we appealed and the appeal was denied. But the grounds were clearly specious, so we asked the COOG for an Advisory Opinion. It was issued on September 6, 2011, and covered not only the TAT decision, but also other matters that we had passed by them at various times without asking for formal Advisories. Copies of the Opinion were sent to the PA’s Board of Commissioners, the Lower Manhattan Develpment Court, the Tax Appeals Tribunal, and others.

We took the next step in challenging the TAT denial by filing an Article 78 civil proceeding in New York Supreme Court on October 18, 2011. The Tribunal has to answer our petition on or before Novemeber 15, 2011. Given that the law clearly bears out the contracts’ release, and that making the contents of the contracts public is critical to determining whether there is a lawful basis for what is going forward at the World Trade Center, we are confident that we are getting close to exposing the layers of wrongdoing.

The following video is an excellent introduction to the laws that are in place to promote transparency in New York State government: