NYS Court Administration: do not FOIL for what we do not want to show you

I received a cranky response from the Executive Director of the New York State Court Administration to my administrative appeal of constructive denial of the FOIL request pertaining to the records showing appointments of attorneys to attorney disciplinary committees, names of attorneys on those committeys in the Appellate Division 2nd Department and all supporting documentation for such appointments.

Here it is in its entirety.

 

The response, in short, is like this:

1) NYS Court Administration already gave you information as to points 1 & 2 - true, but only partially;

2) NYS Court administration does not maintain records as to items

• # #3-5 (current staff of attorney disciplinary committees, orders for their appointments and supporting papers for their appointments),  
• # 6 (statistics of attorney discipline imposed, by type of discipline, by county and by type of employment of disciplined attorneys - public or private);
• # 7 number of disciplinary inquiries (without mentioning names) for all attorneys in the State of New York dating back several years.

That is simply incredible, since there must be some record of people appointed to be prosecutors of other attorneys, in charge of (1) protecting the public and with authority to (2) take reputation and livelihood of attorneys, as well as their lifetime ability to be employed in any reputable job.  If those appointments are clandestine and if what NYS Court Administration is true, that such records are "not maintained", this in itself is a big problem requiring legislative intervention.

3) in the alternative, NYS Court Administration directed me to find information I was seeking through my FOIL request at the following links:

1. http://www.nycourts.gov/courts/appellatedivisions.shtml
2. http://www.nycourts.gov/reports/annual/index.shtml
3. http://www.nysba.org/copdannualreports/

First of all, I do not understand why I should be seeking PUBLIC information in link No. 3, documents of a PRIVATE organization - a bar association.

Second, NONE of these links lead to the information I was seeking.

The "Table 2" that the cranky FOIL response of Mr. Younkins refers to is not responsive to my FOIL inquiry, as it provides only general statistics of how all cases were decided by Appellate Divisions in 2013 (the latest year for which annual reports are available, when I was asking for that information up to present day).

So, the public, I guess, is not entitled to know the names of attorneys who are members of the attorney disciplinary committees in the Appellate Division 2nd Department - no links were provided, no information was provided, and the NYS Court Administration claimed that such records "are not maintained".

So, the 2nd Department disciplinary committees operate in complete secret, even the identity of who is allegedly "protecting the public" from bad attorneys is not revealed - and no records are maintained as to how such attorneys are appointed to disciplinary committees in all of the 4 Appelalte Divisions in New York State.

Simply put, the public does not have a right to know who allegedly "protects" it - while in reality protecting their own turf, protecting politically connected attorneys from liability and going after competitors and critics of misconduct in the government and especially in the judiciary.

And this state of event needs to be changed.

Urgently.

Legislatively.