[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s I stroll down Mamaroneck’s Beach Avenue, past rows of imposing, multi-family homes, I’m called by a voice from across the street.
“I’m over here,” I hear while blowing past my intended destination.
Village of Mamaroneck resident Stuart Tiekert, 66, tall and thin, clad informally in shorts and a T-shirt, is sitting cross-legged in a chair on his porch, awaiting my arrival.
“How’s that GPS working?” he asks facetiously as I backtrack to the opposite side of the avenue.
“Really great, can’t you tell?” I say, brushing past some foliage partially obscuring my view ahead.
While Tiekert and I have a lot to talk about—he’s running as an anti-establishment candidate in a Democratic primary on Sept. 13 for the village Board of Trustees, and is an avid attendee of village meetings—we didn’t meet, on this specific day, to talk about politics.
Tiekert, who runs his own landscaping business by trade, has another pastime of note locally; that being a strong affinity for government transparency through use of the Freedom of Information Law, otherwise known as FOIL.
FOIL, a New York state law, extends the right to issue requests for documents from nearly any public governmental organization or agency under the sun, with a few notable caveats that include personnel matters and on-going litigation.
And Tiekert, a 30-year village resident, more so than just about any muckraker, concerned citizen, or conspiracy theorist one could cite offhand, is well-acquainted with the FOIL process.
Over the past 12 months, Tiekert has submitted 638 of the village’s 890 total received requests, constituting just under 72 percent of all requests received by the village, and equating to about 130 total work hours for village employees. In total, Tiekert averages just under two FOIL submissions per day.
This year, with 438 requests submitted since the start of 2016, Tiekert’s own feat is close to being replicated, if not surpassed.
In fact, Tiekert’s deployment of FOILs—which easily total more than 1,000 since 2011—is so immense, it has even caught the attention of New York state’s most respected authorities on FOIL law.
“I believe Mr. Tiekert’s use of FOIL is absolutely abnormal,” said Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York state Committee on Open Government.
Freeman, who has worked for the committee since its inception in 1974 and has been the recipient of numerous awards for his work—most notably, recognition from the National Freedom of Information Coalition and the Society of Professional Journalists as one of their “Heroes of the 50 States,” as well as a lifetime achievement award from the New York Press Association.
But even for a seasoned veteran in the world of information law like Freeman, Tiekert has made a noted impression.
“[Tiekert] copies me in on many of his email communications with local officials,” Freeman said. “And, in my opinion, many of those officials have been unnecessarily kind.”
While Freeman advocates the use of FOIL on a regular basis—he was preparing to extol the merit of the federal Freedom of Information Act to a journalism class at the University of Albany just after we got off the phone—he said the law does have its limitations.
“There is simply no law that requires that government officials answer people’s questions,” he told me. “We can, and we do answer them frequently, but the back and forth, day after day between Tiekert and village officials is unusual and excessive.”
Over the past several years, Tiekert has made a habit of not just sending in requests for hundreds of documents, but keeping track of those requests through dialogue with village officials.
Those conversations encompass a number of topics; from contractors stepping outside of their required site plan limitations, to appeals of his request denials, and one of Tiekert’s favorite topics, the Jefferson Avenue Bridge; a pet project which he considers the biggest triumph in his FOIL endeavors.
“If it weren’t [for my FOILs], the public would know basically nothing about the Jefferson Avenue Bridge,” he said, regarding a village-owned bridge which was the subject of lengthy litigation. “The public wouldn’t have known that an estimated 3 million gallons of raw sewage went into the water.”
Tiekert believes that government naturally leans towards secrecy, because secrecy “is an easier space to operate in,” and considers his FOILs as a push back against that opaqueness.
He also readily brushes off his critics who see his use of FOIL as a detriment rather than a service to his community.
“There are certainly some people who write me off,” Tiekert said. “But the benefit to taxpayers outweighs the cost.”
Even when it comes to critics of the sheer volume of his FOILs, he has his own explanation.
“They’ve changed how they do FOIL, I believe, to make my numbers look higher,” Tiekert explained, adding that instead of being able to request multiple documents at once, now each document constitutes a separate request.
Others in the community, he said, routinely thank him for paying attention, especially when it comes to his incisive dissection of the village budgeting process.
“People that I don’t know stop me and thank me for looking out for the money,” he said. “That’s one thing people get. I can go on and on about storm water and stuff, but they get the money thing.”
Still, not everyone in the community feels that sense of admiration; namely the village FOIL officer Agostino Fusco and his colleague, Sally Roberts, the village deputy clerk.
“He’s the No. 1 FOILer that we have,” Fusco said. “We try to get as much information to him as possible, but sometimes we’re held accountable for stuff beyond our control.”
Unlike other municipalities, Fusco—who has been the village’s FOIL officer for the past 12 years—explained that Mamaroneck does not have separate offices for assessment and treasury. Instead, Fusco’s office acts as both clerk and treasurer.
“Accounting of the village; records of village; permits; all the taxes; calculation of taxes,” Fusco said. “We do everything.”
And over the past five years, both he and Roberts have continued to process even more.
According to records obtained from the clerk-treasurer’s office, the number of FOILs submitted to the village has accelerated since 2011, leaping from 328 processed during the 2011 to 2012 fiscal years to 862 in 2015 to 2016.
Currently, Roberts said, the village is on pace to process more than 1,000 requests by the time the fiscal year expires in May 2017.
“About 20 percent of any given day is devoted to processing FOILs,” Fusco said.
Even so, Tiekert has no intention of letting up.
“I don’t feel guilty about my FOILS,” he tells me. “The village should make public records public.”
Tiekert said he holds out hope that his venture down the village’s records rabbit hole, exposing what he views as the hidden truth, will yield change, and if elected trustee in November, it’s something he would actively facilitate.
“Secrecy is kind of a knee jerk reaction, it’s a reflex a lot of times,” he says. “If you don’t learn from this stuff, you just keep doing it over and over.”
