Staffing shortages

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law, I hereby request the following records:

Quite simply, all records that discuss a "staffing shortage", "staffing shortages", "staff shortage", "staff shortages", "staffing issues", "short staffed", "short staffing", "staff illness", "staff absences", "staff sickness", "staff disability", "long covid", and "covid disability".

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

ALEXANDER RICCIO

In my prior dealings with city agency FOIL requests, I have seen the city proffer dates 60 days ahead as the expected completion date, only to further delay by 60 days on that date. More than one agency illegally repeated this at least a half dozen times.

Can I expect this FOIL request to actually be completed on or before Friday, February 16, 2024? If not, I will not hesitate to appeal on grounds of constructive denial.

Should narrowing be required (as it likely will be), consider the records of the following people AND positions since January 1, 2020:

Jacques Jiha, Ph.D. - Budget Director

Joseph Taranto - Chief of Staff

Kenneth Godiner - First Deputy Budget Director

Jeffrey Werner - General Counsel

Tara Boirard - Senior Deputy Director for Housing and Economic Development, Infrastructure, Value Engineering and Technical Services, Budget Resources and Recovery Grant Management and Community Development

Latonia McKinney - Senior Deputy Director for Intergovernmental Affairs and Education

Joshua Goldstein - Deputy Director for Tax Policy, Revenue Forecasting and Economic Analysis

Teddy Gordon-Martin - Deputy Director for Management

David Greenberg - Deputy Director for Health and Social Services

Charin Winker - Deputy Director for Uniformed Agencies and Government Operations

David Womack - Deputy Director for Financing Policy and Coordination

Ivan Acosta - Associate Director for Intergovernmental Affairs

Lia Cairone - Sustainability and Resiliency Director

Michael Chimowitz - Associate Director for Policy and Operations Research

Katherine Coletti - Associate Director for the Office of Budget Review

Michael McClenathan - Associate Director of Education and CUNY

Paul Tymus - Associate Director for Capital Budget, Leases, Accounting Services, Internal Audit and Single Audit

Sanna Wong-Chen - Associate Director of Financing Policy and Coordination Unit

Sallina Yung - Associate Director for Infrastructure, Parks and Capital Development

Danica You - Chief EEO and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer

Org charts do not seem to be available. Please include secretaries and top level employees of those listed senior leadership officials.

Should a different individual occupy a role at a point in that time range, please include them and their staff.

I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of my 12/07/2023 communication.

I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of my 12/07/2023 communication.

I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of my 12/07/2023 communication.

Can I expect this FOIL request to actually be completed on or before 4/26/2024?

On 12/15/2023, I said the following:

I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of my 12/07/2023 communication

On 1/25/2024, I sent the following:
I have yet to receive an acknowledgement of my 12/07/2023 communication.

At no point before the very date of the deadline did the agency attempt to give justification or reason for missing the deadline. I suspect they have not even individually addressed this request, and merely applied a "bulk send delay email" action, as the open FOIL platform supports. With such an action, I have no reason to believe they would actually have considered whether or not the request can be fulfilled by the new specified date, and I have no reason to believe they actually intend to provide an accurate date when that deadline inevitably lapses. This is in effect a lie!

In my experience with other city agencies, whether or not the proposed extended deadline is actually something the agency intends to meet is entirely hit and miss.

I am appealing this on grounds of constructive denial - delays of indefinite, repeated, and nonspecific, nature, are kinda the epitome of constructive denial.

By providing a date that is fairly soon after a given communication, agencies give the appearance of a reasonable timeline. If the actual likely time of completion is much longer - I've had to wait as much as two years of repeated 60 day delays - an agency actually proferring that likely time of completion may be held to account by the courts. Thus, I would be able to challenge the long delay as a constructive denial.

An agency may reasonably delay completion dates of FOIL requests, yes. This has been ruled in court.

But they must also *reasonably* delay the date, not merely kick the can down the road and then lie about their intent to complete a request. The individual missed deadline on it's own does not constructively deny the public access to records. The individual missed deadline may also, on its own, be entirely reasonable. But repeated extensions that are not proffered with actual intent or completion by said dates act to string together a denial constructively.

I have yet to receive acknowledgement of my 2/19/2024 appeal.

Thanks for producing documents in the meantime.

I apologize for being so pushy - I have had to deal with other agencies abusing the extension process to continuously delay by 30-90 days at a time for as long as two years. I know from reading the source code for NYC's FOIL management program that there's even a functionality to bulk delay all open requests by some arbitrary length of time, which is the opposite of a reasonable and honestly expected completion timeline.

When provided with a 30, 60, or 90, day completion estimate, it is nearly impossible for me to challenge the timeliness of records production at any point in time, even if the records production is not completed for another two years. It is further harmful to the credibility of staff from *other* agencies (like NYC OMB) when one agency makes a dozen promises to produce records by a given time, only to break them a dozen times. It is sometimes entertaining to me to see that MuckRock has a better estimate of when an agency is likely to produce records than the agency themselves.

Thanks again, and thanks in advance.