Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo (D-Endwell) announced today that the Assembly has passed a package of legislation she co-sponsored to increase accountability of state and local governments. The bills’ passage coincides with the fifth annual, mid-March Sunshine Week – the national, non-partisan commemoration that stresses the importance of open government and freedom of information.
“People have a right to know how state government operates,” Lupardo said. “The measures we passed today will help open up government and increase accountability by making information more accessible to the public.”
The package of legislation includes bills that would:
- increase public awareness of government by clearly allowing the recording, broadcasting and photographing of government public meetings (A.10093);
- allow courts to overturn government decisions done in violation of open meetings laws and require public officials who disregard the law to attend compliance training sessions (A.10196);
- ban government agencies from claiming copyright protection whenever the materials don’t reflect artistic creation or scientific or academic research (A.5726-A);
- require public meetings, if practicable, to be held in facilities sufficiently sized to accommodate the number of people who wish to attend (A.5873);
- shorten the time state agencies have to appeal judgments against them for Freedom of Information Law violations from four months to 30 days (A.6484); and
- authorize state agencies to waive fees related to the reproduction of records requested by a member of the public (A.6371).
Lupardo has long been an advocate for comprehensive government reform laws. In addition to the package of bills passed by the Assembly today, she is a co-sponsor of legislation (A.7187-A) that would subject advisory boards to the Open Meetings Law and legislation (A.9911) to require that records be posted on agency’s websites at least twenty-four hours prior to a public meeting and provide a reasonable number of “hard copies” prior to or at the meeting.