Traster v Rockland County Solid Waste Mgt. Auth.

Supreme Court, Rockland County

Decided on July 8, 2026

Index No. 034589/2025

John P. Collins, Jr., J.

The following papers were read and considered on this Article 78 proceeding: Notice of Petition and Verified Petition, with exhibits annexed thereto (NYSCEF Doc. Nos. 1-10); Petitioners' Memorandum of Law in Support of Verified Petition (NYSCEF Doc. No. 11); Affirmation of Steven A. Torres, Esq., in Opposition, with exhibits (NYSCEF Doc. No. 19); Affidavit of Gerard M. Damiani, Jr., with exhibits (NYSCEF Doc. No. 20); Affidavit of Suzanne Haggerty, with exhibits (NYSCEF Doc. No. 21); Respondent's Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Petitioners' Verified Petition (NYSCEF Doc. No. 30); and Petitioners' Reply Memorandum of Law in Further Support of Verified Petition (NYSCEF Doc. No. 31).

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

This Article 78 proceeding arises out of a request under the Freedom of Information Law (hereinafter "FOIL"), New York Public Officers Law § 84 et seq., by which Petitioner Tina Traster ("Traster"), publisher of the Rockland County Business Journal, sought records concerning Respondent Rockland County Solid Waste Management Authority's (hereinafter "Rockland Green" or the "Authority") award of an approximately $18 million contract for the construction of a new county animal shelter. Petitioners seek an order compelling Respondent to produce all records responsive to their request, unredacted except to the extent any redaction is properly and specifically justified under one of FOIL's narrow statutory exemptions, together with an award of attorney's fees and litigation costs pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(c).

Before turning to the particulars of this dispute, the Court pauses to observe what is truly [*2]at stake. A free press is not an ornament of democratic government; it is one of its load-bearing walls. The First Amendment's guarantee of a free press was written into our Constitution precisely so that an independent Fourth Estate could stand between the citizenry and the government that citizenry funds, watching, questioning, and, when necessary, exposing. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964) (recognizing "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open"). A local journalist tracking how a public authority spends eighteen (18) million taxpayer dollars is engaged in exactly the work the First Amendment was written to protect — unglamorous, granular, and indispensable.

The Legislature gave that constitutional commitment statutory teeth when it enacted FOIL. The statute's own declaration of policy could hardly be more emphatic: "The people's right to know the process of governmental decision-making and to review the documents and statistics leading to determinations is basic to our society," and "[t]he more open a government is with its citizenry, the greater the understanding and participation of the public in government." Public Officers Law § 84. Government, the Legislature reminded us, "is the public's business," and "[t]he public is vested with an inherent right to know" how that business is conducted. Id. Justice Brandeis's century-old admonition that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants" remains as true in a Rockland County procurement file as it was on Wall Street: the surest guard against favoritism, carelessness, or worse in the letting of public contracts is not a rule of law alone, but the certainty that the letting will be examined in the light of day. See Louis D. Brandeis, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It 92 (1914).

It is against that backdrop — a free press performing its constitutional function, invoking a statute the Legislature designed to be construed liberally in favor of access — that the Court evaluates Respondent's withholdings. FOIL does not ask public agencies to trust that their good intentions will substitute for disclosure, nor does it ask citizens or journalists to take an agency's word that a redaction is warranted. It asks for proof. Where, as discussed below, that proof is wanting, the presumption of openness that animates both our constitutional traditions and our statutory law must prevail.

Having reviewed the parties' submissions, and for the reasons set forth below, the petition is granted to the extent set forth in the Order below. The Court finds, on this record, that Respondent has failed to carry its burden of demonstrating that its withholdings and redactions fall squarely within any FOIL exemption, having offered only conclusory, categorical assertions rather than the particularized and specific justification the law requires.

BACKGROUND

Traster submitted a FOIL request to Respondent on December 12, 2024, seeking two categories of records: (1) "all of the bid documents and submissions submitted for the construction of the animal shelter at 427 Beach Road in West Haverstraw" ("Part One"); and (2) "notes of the committee assessing the bids and any determination made to accept or reject a submitted bid" ("Part Two"). See Pet. ¶¶ 10-11 & Ex. 1.

Respondent extended its response deadline on several occasions and ultimately conditioned production on payment of a processing fee, which it reduced from $450 to $52.42 -- following an administrative appeal. See Pet. ¶¶ 18-24. On April 14, 2025, Respondent produced approximately 3,000 pages of documents responsive to Part One, subject to extensive redactions. See Damiani Aff. ¶ 50. Respondent produced nothing responsive to Part Two at that time. [*3]Respondent's only contemporaneous explanation for its redactions was a brief email asserting, in essentially the language of the statute, that the redacted material implicated "personal information," "financials," and "references" of the proposers, exempt under "Section 87(2)" of FOIL because disclosure "would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy and would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject proposers' enterprises." See Pet. Ex. 7.

Traster filed a third administrative appeal on May 6, 2025, challenging both the redactions to Part One and the complete non-production of Part Two material. Respondent denied that appeal on May 20, 2025, asserting for the first time that the Part Two records were being withheld in their entirety as "pre-decisional materials that are part of the deliberative process" under Public Officers Law § 87(2)(g). Pet. Ex. 9. This proceeding followed.

Respondent represents in its opposition papers that it "maintained a detailed privilege log as well as unredacted versions of the proposals and clarification records containing its 'draft' redactions." See Damiani Aff. ¶ 51. That log was not appended to Respondent's motion papers, but a copy has since been furnished to Petitioners and reviewed by the Court. The log is materially at odds with the impression created by Respondent's litigation submissions, which devote considerable attention to the personal privacy exemption. In fact, the log reflects that the overwhelming majority of Respondent's logged redactions — spanning categories as disparate as financial data, prior-experience and reference-project information, and supply-chain information — are supported by a single, undifferentiated entry, repeated verbatim regardless of the specific document or content at issue: "Submitted to by commercial enterprise, disclosure would cause substantial injury to competitive position." By contrast, entries invoking the personal privacy exemption make up only a small fraction of the log. The personal privacy exemption, in other words, is not the principal basis on which Respondent withheld information from Petitioners; the commercial information/trade secret exemption under § 87(2)(d) is, and it is invoked in near- boilerplate fashion.

In opposition, Respondent submits the affidavit of its Executive Director, Gerard M. Damiani, Jr., describing at length the Authority's mission, its procurement policy, and the competitive negotiation process by which it selected O'Connor Company of N.C., Inc. to construct the new shelter over a lower-priced competitor. Respondent represents that it ultimately identified 375 instances of redaction across nine (9) proposals, falling into categories that include financial information, litigation and settlement information, medical and personal information, licensing and certification information, and "sensitive commercial information" concerning prior projects, subcontracting, and industry references. See Damiani Aff. ¶ 50. Respondent maintains that these redactions were properly made under the personal privacy exemption, Public Officers Law § 87(2)(b), and the trade secrets/commercial information exemption, Public Officers Law § 87(2)(d), and that the Part Two records are exempt in their entirety as intra-agency deliberative material under § 87(2)(g) and, Respondent now asserts for the first time in litigation, as attorney-client and attorney work-product privileged material.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

FOIL "imposes a broad duty on government to make its records available to the public" in order "[t]o promote open government and public accountability." Gould v New York City Police Dept, 89 NY2d 267, 274-75 [1996] citing Public Officers Law § 84. All records of a public agency are "presumptively open to public inspection and copying unless otherwise specifically exempted," and the statutory exemptions are to be narrowly construed "to ensure [*4]maximum public access to government records." Cap. Newspapers, Div. of Hearst Corp. v Burns, 67 NY2d 562, 566 [1986]; See Public Officers Law § 87(2).

When an agency asserts that a record or portion thereof falls within one of FOIL's exemptions, the agency bears the burden of proof. See Matter of Data Tree, LLC v Romaine, 9 NY3d 454, 462 [2007]. It is not enough for the agency to show that withholding is plausible; the agency must "prove" that the material falls "squarely within a FOIL exemption." Id. at 462-63. FOIL's "exemptions are to be narrowly construed, and the burden rests on the agency to demonstrate that the requested material qualifies for exemption by articulating a particularized and specific justification for denying access." McDevitt . Suffolk Cnty., 237 AD3d 940, 941-42 [2d Dept 2025]. "[C]onclusory assertions that records fall within [a] statutory exemption under [FOIL] are not sufficient; evidentiary support is needed." New York Civil Liberties Union v Village of Freeport, 229 AD3d 630, 631 [2d Dept 2024]. "To meet its burden, the agency seeking the exemption must present 'specific, persuasive evidence' that the material being sought falls within the exemption," Matter of Newsday, LLC v Nassau Cnty. Police Dept, 222 AD3d 85, 91 [2d Dept 2023] quoting Markowitz v Serio, 11 NY3d 43, 51 [2008]; conclusory assertions unsupported by any facts are insufficient. See id.

Where, as here, an agency's justification for withholding consists largely of boilerplate recitations of statutory language applied categorically across hundreds of pages, rather than particularized, record-specific explanations, the agency has not carried its burden, and the material must be produced. See M. Farbman & Sons, Inc. v New York City Health & Hosps. Corp., 62 NY2d 75, 80 [1984].

DISCUSSION

I. Respondent Has Not Carried Its Burden of Providing a Particularized and Specific Justification for Its Withholdings.

Respondent's own submissions confirm that, at the time it made its redactions, it offered Petitioners nothing more than a single email tracking the general language of two statutory exemptions. See Pet. Ex. 7. Respondent's administrative appeal determination fares little better, again reciting categorical labels — "pre-decisional materials," "deliberative process" — without tying any particular redaction to any particular fact. See Pet. Ex. 9. Respondent's litigation submissions, while more detailed in describing the volume and general subject matter of its redactions (financial information, litigation and settlement information, licensing information, prior-experience information, and the like, (See Damiani Aff. ¶ 50), still do not descend to the level of the individual redaction. Respondent has not submitted, for the Court's or Petitioners' review, redaction-specific logs correlating each withheld or redacted passage with the particular facts that render it exempt.

Rather, the Court received for in-camera review two hundred thirty-two (232) pages of documents delineated "Deliberative Materials" (Bates Stamped RG003137-RG003368), a document titled "Index of Deliberative Materials Withheld" (which was the entirety of the 232 pages) with the Bates Number and a description of the document, and redaction logs for each company proposal in spreadsheet format which includes the Bates Number, the statute upon which the exemption is based, the information redaction and the "Justification" for the redaction.

This distinction matters. A category label — "litigation and settlement information," for example — does not itself establish that the information is non-public, that it was treated as confidential, or that its disclosure would cause the requisite harm. Respondent's papers do not [*5]explain, for instance, why information about a construction company's completed projects, submitted by the company itself to a public authority to demonstrate its qualifications for a public contract, would meet the demanding, fact-specific test for a trade secret, discussed further below. Nor do Respondent's papers explain why professional licensing information or tax identification numbers, which are public record, were properly withheld under the privacy exemption. Categorical assertions of this kind are precisely what the Court of Appeals and the Appellate Division, Second Department, have held to be insufficient. See Newsday, 222 AD3d at 91; See also Cap. Newspapers, 67 NY2d at 566.

Respondent argues that requiring entry-by-entry justification would force it to "litigate" a trade secret analysis "on the face of the log" and would undermine the very confidentiality FOIL permits it to protect. The Court does not agree that any such tension exists here. Nothing in this Decision requires Respondent to disclose the substance of properly exempt material in describing why it is exempt; an adequate log identifies -- for each redaction: the Bates page, a brief non- revealing description of the category of information, the specific exemption claimed, and the particular facts — as opposed to conclusions — supporting application of that exemption to that material. Respondent has not yet produced logs of that character, notwithstanding the volume of its production.

The logs Respondent has produced illustrate precisely why a categorical approach is legally insufficient. A log entry is not "particularized" merely because it exists in a spreadsheet keyed to Bates numbers, provides the information redacted, and the statutory language under which the information was redacted; it must reflect that the agency actually considered the specific content of the specific redaction. Here, the same sentence — "Submitted to by commercial enterprise, disclosure would cause substantial injury to competitive position" — appears to have been applied indiscriminately to financial statements, bank references, prior-project descriptions, and supply- chain information alike, without regard to whether each category, in fact, satisfies the fact-specific trade secret test discussed in Section II below. A single boilerplate sentence, copied without variation across hundreds of redactions of differing character, is itself evidence that no individualized, document-specific evaluation occurred, and it does not carry Respondent's burden as to any of them. See Newsday, 222 AD3d at 91; See also Markowitz, 11 NY3d at 51.

II. The Trade Secrets and Commercial Information Exemption Does Not Support the Redactions Respondent Has Described.

Public Officers Law § 87(2)(d) permits an agency to withhold records that "are trade secrets or are submitted to an agency by a commercial enterprise" where disclosure "would cause substantial injury to the competitive position of the subject enterprise." The exemption exists "to protect businesses from the deleterious consequences of disclosing confidential commercial information, so as to further the State's economic development efforts and attract business to New York." See Encore Coll. Bookstores, Inc. v Auxiliary Serv. Corp., 87 NY2d 410, 420 [1995].

To invoke the trade secret prong of the exemption, an agency must show that the material is truly secret, considering:

(1) the extent to which the information is known outside of [the] business;

(2) the extent to which it is known by employees and others involved in [the] business;

(3) the extent of measures taken by [the business] to guard the secrecy of the information;

(4) the value of the information to [the business] and [its] competitors;

(5) the amount of effort or money expended by [the business] in developing the information; and

(6) the ease or difficulty with which the information could be properly acquired or duplicated by others.

(7) See Matter of Verizon NY, Inc. v New York State Pub. Serv. Comm'n, 137 A3d 66, 72-73 [3d Dept2016)] quoting Ashland Mgmt. Inc. v Janien, 82 NY2d 395, 407 [1993]. To invoke the substantial-injury prong, the agency must present "specific, persuasive evidence" of competitive harm; "conclusory" assertions or "speculative" concerns are not enough. See Markowitz, 11 NY3d at 51.

Respondent has not made this showing for any category of redacted material, let alone the entirety of its redactions. Respondent's papers describe the categories of information redacted — financial information regarding contracting values, bonding capacity, and bank references; litigation and settlement information; prior-experience and reference-project information; and supply-chain and trade-reference information, (See Damiani Aff. ¶ 50) — but nowhere apply the Matter of Verizon NY, Inc. factors to any of them. Respondent has failed to make any argument or provide any documentation that the information in the redacted documents is truly secret based upon the factors set forth in Matter of Verizon NY, Inc. Respondent's affidavit states, in conclusory fashion, that proposers "often submit details about proprietary functions and trade secrets" and that the Authority "endeavors to keep such confidential information private," (See Damiani Aff. ¶¶ 22-23), but this is not evidence particular to the material actually withheld here.

As noted above, this deficiency is confirmed, not cured, by Respondent's own redaction logs submitted in spreadsheet format and titled by the name. The vast bulk of Respondent's withholdings — the overwhelming majority of the 375 logged instances — rest not on any privacy rationale but on the single recurring trade-secret entry, "Submitted to by commercial enterprise, disclosure would cause substantial injury to competitive position," applied uniformly across financial statements, bonding and tax information, prior-experience narratives, and supply-chain references alike. Nowhere do the logs distinguish, for example, between a proposer's confidential internal cost breakdown and a proposer's own description of a completed public construction project — categories that plainly implicate the Verizon factors differently, if at all. A justification that does not vary with the nature of the information it purports to protect is not a "particularized and specific justification" within the meaning of McDevitt and Newsday; it is the paradigmatic conclusory assertion that Markowitz holds insufficient. See Markowitz v Serio, 11 NY3d at 51. The Court accordingly finds that Respondent's trade secret exemption claim fails not merely for lack of proof as to isolated redactions, but systemically, across the redaction log as a whole.

Nor has Respondent presented specific evidence, as opposed to generalized concern, that disclosure would cause substantial competitive injury. Its submissions assert that disclosure "would jeopardize future procurements" because contractors "do not want" confidential information disclosed, Damiani Aff. ¶ 24, but this is precisely the kind of speculative, categorical assertion that Markowitz forecloses. See Markowitz v Serio, 11 NY3d at 51. Moreover, several categories of information Respondent redacted are difficult to square with the exemption on their face. Information about a contractor's completed projects and professional references — submitted to a public agency by the contractor itself to demonstrate its own [*6]qualifications — is not self- evidently secret, known to only the contractor, or the product of substantial proprietary investment; nor is it apparent how a contractor's own description of its completed work, once submitted to induce the award of a public contract, remains competitively sensitive once the contract has been awarded. See Cross-Sound Ferry Servs., Inc. v Dept of Transp., 219 AD2d 346, 349 [3d Dept 1995] (terms of successful bidder's proposal no longer "competitively sensitive" once contract is awarded); see also CAT*ASI, Inc. v New York State Ins. Dept., 195 Misc 2d 456, 459 [Supreme Ct, New York County, 2002].

The Court does not foreclose the possibility that some narrow subset of the redacted material — for example, genuinely proprietary pricing methodologies, cost breakdowns, or internal financial data not otherwise available — may ultimately satisfy the trade secret exemption upon a properly particularized showing. But on this record, Respondent has not carried its burden as to any specific redaction, and the presumption of disclosure controls.

III. The Personal Privacy Exemption Does Not Support the Redactions Respondent Has Described, Beyond the Narrow Category of True Personal Contact Information.

Public Officers Law § 87(2)(b) permits withholding of information whose disclosure "would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." The exemption is confined to material that "would ordinarily and reasonably be regarded as intimate, private information." Hanig v Dept of Motor Vehicles, 79 NY2d 106, 112 [1992]. Petitioners do not seek, and have expressly disclaimed any interest in, personal cell phone numbers, personal email addresses, and home addresses of individuals reflected in the proposals. As to that narrow category, the privacy exemption applies and no further showing is required.

The Court notes at the outset that, notwithstanding the attention devoted to the privacy exemption in Respondent's papers and in its original email response to Traster, see Pet. Ex. 7 (citing both privacy and competitive-injury grounds), the redaction logs confirm that privacy is the stated basis for only a small minority of Respondent's actual redactions. The great majority, as discussed above, are attributed to the trade secret/commercial information exemption. To the extent the logs do invoke privacy, the same concerns about undifferentiated, boilerplate justification apply with equal force.

Beyond that limited category, however, Respondent's papers do not identify with any particularity what other information was withheld as private, nor why. Respondent's affidavit lists, among the material redacted, "medical information and associated personal information," "private personal information regarding licensing and certification," and various financial data concerning individual employees. See Damiani Aff. ¶ 50. As to licensing and certification information in particular, such records are public, maintained by state licensing authorities and, in the case of certain New York City trades, searchable online. Respondent has not explained why the specific licensing information redacted here differs from the ordinarily public category, nor has it undertaken a case-specific analysis balancing the individual's privacy interest against the public's interest in the information, as § 87(2)(b) requires.

Other than citations in a boilerplate fashion that assert disclosure of the specified information would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, Respondent fails to meet its burden of showing whose or what privacy interests would be implicated and how someone would be harmed, or that the statutory exemption applies to the information redacted. Respondent's reliance on cases holding that disclosure of home addresses, dates of birth, and similarly intimate identifiers may be withheld, see, e.g., Harris . City Univ. of New York, Baruch [*7]Coll., 114 AD2d 805, 806 [1st Dept 1985], is unremarkable and consistent with this Decision; the difficulty is that Respondent has not shown that its redactions were in fact limited to that category of intimate personal identifiers, as opposed to business and professional information that happens to be associated with a named individual.

IV. Respondent Has Not Justified the Blanket Withholding of Records Responsive to Part Two of the Request.

Public Officers Law § 87(2)(g) permits an agency to withhold inter-agency or intra-agency materials that reflect "opinions, ideas, or advice exchanged as part of the consultative or deliberative process of government decision making," Gould, 89 NY2d at 277, but the exemption expressly does not extend to material that is "statistical or factual tabulations or data," "instructions to staff that affect the public," or "final agency policy or determinations." Public Officers Law § 87(2)(g)(i), (ii), (iii). Even where a document is otherwise properly withheld as deliberative, any severable factual or final-determination content it contains must be disclosed. See Gould, 89 NY2d at 276-77.

Respondent withheld the entirety of the Part Two records — committee notes and any determination to accept or reject a proposal — asserting only, in conclusory manner, that they are "pre-decisional deliberations" exempt from FOIL. This blanket approach is wholly rejected.

"[B]lanket exemptions" for particular types of documents are "inimical to FOIL's policy of open government"; the agency must instead justify withholding on a document-specific, or at minimum a segregable-content-specific, basis. See Gould, 89 NY2d at 275. Respondent's papers do not address, let alone overcome, the statutory carve-outs for factual tabulations and final determinations at all. To the extent the committee's notes recite the bids received, the proposers' qualifications, pricing, or similar objective information, that content is "factual data" that must be disclosed "whether or not embodied in a final agency policy or determination." Id. at 276. And to the extent any document reflects the committee's final recommendation, ultimately adopted by the Board of Commissioners in awarding the contract, see Damiani Aff. ¶ 34, that determination itself must be disclosed. See New York 1 News v Off. of President of Borough of Staten Island, 231 AD2d 524, 525 [2d Dept 1996].

Respondent's newly raised claim, first asserted in its opposition papers, that some of the Part Two material is protected by the attorney-client and attorney work-product privileges fares no better, for two independent reasons.

First, judicial review of an agency's FOIL determination is generally limited to the grounds the agency invoked at the administrative level; a justification raised for the first time in litigation is unpreserved. See Madeiros v New York State Educ. Dept, 30 NY3d 67, 74-75 [2017]. Respondent's administrative denial invoked only the intra-agency exemption, Pet. Ex. 9; it said nothing of privilege.

Second, even if timely raised, Respondent has offered no facts — as opposed to legal conclusions — establishing that any particular communication was made in confidence for the purpose of obtaining legal advice, was not commercial in nature, and was not shared with the non- attorney members of the evaluation committee, which by Respondent's own account included outside consulting engineers and the project architect in addition to counsel. See Damiani Aff. ¶ 34.

Respondent contended several times, during the Court's oral argument of this motion, that portions of the "Deliberative Materials" were exempt based upon attorney-client privilege. [*8]When those documents were reviewed by the Court in the parties' presence, it was determined that the documents sought to be included were those documenting that an attorney participated in the contactor interview process and included references to the attorney's presence interwoven with documents addressing the evaluative process, and not the rendering of legal advice or services.

For the Respondent to properly invoke the attorney-client privilege, the communication "must have been made for the purpose of facilitating the rendition of legal advice or services" and must have been "confidential"; unsupported, conclusory assertions of privilege in an affidavit or by counsel during the hearing are not evidence of either element.

V. Remedy.

Because Respondent failed to carry its burden of demonstrating that its redactions and withholdings fall squarely within a FOIL exemption, "FOIL compels disclosure, not concealment." Data Tree, 9 NY3d at 463.

The Court declines Respondent's invitation to remand this matter to the agency for further administrative processing. Remand is not the ordinary remedy for an agency's failure to meet its FOIL burden in a judicial proceeding; the ordinary remedies are disclosure, or, where the Court cannot determine on the existing record whether particular material is properly exempt, in camera review. See Gould, 89 NY2d at 275; M. Farbman & Sons, 62 NY2d at 83.

Consistent with the principle that FOIL exemptions are narrowly construed and that all doubts are to be resolved in favor of disclosure, the Court directs as follows. First, Respondent shall produce all records responsive to Part One of the request without redaction, except that Respondent may continue to redact (i) personal cell phone numbers, personal e-mail addresses, and home addresses of individuals, which Petitioners do not contest, and (ii) any other specific, narrowly circumscribed material for which Respondent, within thirty (30) days of this Decision and Order, submits to the Court for in camera review both the unredacted document and a particularized log identifying, for each continued redaction, the exemption claimed and the specific facts — not conclusions — supporting its application, correlated to Bates-stamped page numbers. Categorical or boilerplate justifications will not suffice, and any redaction not supported by such a log within the time provided shall be deemed waived and the material disclosed in unredacted form.

As to Part Two, Respondent shall likewise produce all responsive committee notes, evaluations, summaries, and determinations within thirty (30) days, redacting only those specific passages that reflect genuine opinions, recommendations, or advice exchanged in the deliberative process, and only upon the same in camera submission and particularized log described above. All factual tabulations, statistical data, and the final determination(s) reflected in such records, including any summary or recommendation ultimately adopted by the Board of Commissioners, shall be disclosed without redaction regardless of the format in which they appear. Any claim of attorney-client or attorney work-product privilege as to Part Two material is deemed waived for failure to raise it at the administrative level and, in any event, unsupported on this record. Accordingly, no material may be withheld on that basis.

VI. Attorney's Fees and Litigation Costs.

Public Officers Law § 89(4)(c) mandates an award of reasonable attorney's fees and litigation costs where a petitioner has "substantially prevailed" and the agency either had no reasonable basis for denying access or failed to respond within the statutory time. A petitioner substantially prevails where the litigation results in disclosure of the "full and only response [*9]available" under the statute, even if not every page sought is ultimately produced. See South Shore Press, Inc v Havemeyer, 146 AD3d 929, 930-031 [2d Dept 2016]; see also Matter of Legal Aid Soc'y v New York State Dept of Corr. & Cmty. Supervision, 105 AD3d 1120, 1122 [3d Dept 2013].

On the record before it, the Court finds that Respondent extended its own deadlines repeatedly, conditioned production on an unsubstantiated $450 fee later reduced almost in its entirety without explanation, withheld all Part Two material without any contemporaneous justification, and has failed, at every stage of this proceeding, to provide the particularized justification FOIL requires for its extensive redactions.

These circumstances do not reflect a reasonable basis for denial within the meaning of § 89(4)(c). Petitioners' application for attorney's fees and litigation costs is granted in principle. The determination of the reasonable amount of such fees and costs is held in abeyance pending completion of the production directed above as a petitioner has not "substantially prevailed" until the Article 78 proceeding results in obtaining the records responsive to the FOIL request, see LTTR Home Care, LLC v City of Mount Vernon, 179 AD3d 798, 799-800 [2d Dept 2020]; Petitioners may submit appropriate documentation, and Respondent may be heard in response, by further application to this Court following completion of the production.

CONCLUSION

A public authority that spends the public's money is answerable to the public for how it spends it, and a free press that asks how stands in the shoes of the citizenry it serves. Respondent's redactions and withholdings, tested against the searching, particularized standard FOIL demands, do not withstand scrutiny.

For the foregoing reasons, it is hereby

ORDERED that the petition is GRANTED to the extent set forth herein; and it is further

ORDERED that, within thirty (30) days of the date of this Decision and Order, Respondent shall produce to Petitioners all records responsive to Part One of the December 12, 2024 FOIL request without redaction, except for personal cell phone numbers, personal e-mail addresses, and home addresses, and except for any material for which Respondent timely submits an unredacted copy and a particularized, record-specific log to the Court for in camera review as described above; and it is further

ORDERED that, within thirty (30) days of the date of this Decision and Order, Respondent shall produce to Petitioners all records responsive to Part Two of the December 12, 2024 FOIL request, redacting only those specific portions reflecting genuine deliberative opinions, recommendations, or advice, and only upon the same in camera submission and particularized log, with all factual data and final determinations disclosed in all events; and it is further

ORDERED that Respondent's assertion of attorney-client and attorney work-product privilege as to any Part Two material is deemed waived and, in any event, unsupported, and no material may be withheld on that basis; and it is further

ORDERED that Respondent's application for remand to the agency is DENIED; and it isfurther

ORDERED that Petitioners' application for an award of reasonable attorney's fees and litigation costs pursuant to Public Officers Law § 89(4)(c) is GRANTED in principle, with the amount thereof held in abeyance pending further application to this Court following completion of the production directed above; and it is further

ORDERED that this constitutes the Decision and Order of the Court.

Dated: July 8, 2026

New City, New York

HON. JOHN P. COLLINS, JR., J.S.C.