How we reported on counties' private legal fees

The process to obtain records for our story on outsourced legal work by Lower Hudson Valley counties tested the state Freedom of Information Law's intent.

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The law, which allows access to most government records, dictates that a public body has to acknowledge receipt of a request within five business days, then has 20 business days to say whether the records will be provided — and when. If a request is denied, the filer has 30 business days to appeal.

The Journal News submitted a FOIL request to Westchester County on Sept. 4, 2014, seeking records of payments made to private law firms for legal services to the county between Jan. 1, 2009, and Sept. 2, 2014.

The county acknowledged receipt of the request in an email five days later. The email also said the newspaper "will be provided with a response to your above referenced FOIL request on or before October 7, 2014."

On Oct. 7, 2014, the county told The Journal News that its reply to the request could not be provided before Nov. 21, 2014, because it would require time to locate the payment vouchers and redact information the county did not deem relevant. The county did not contact the newspaper by that date.

During November and December, The Journal News instead filed for and obtained outside counsel records from Rockland and Putnam counties through separate FOIL requests.

On Jan. 22, 2015, Westchester County asked for an "upfront payment" of $250 from the newspaper. The law allows a public entity to charge 25 cents per page for paper copies, and the county said it would have to provide more than 1,000 pages of records. The Journal News paid the fee on March 23.

Westchester officials did not provide the first set of records until May 29. Those records were for outside counsel payments for 2009 and 2010, or one-third of the records requested by the newspaper. The vouchers for 2011 and 2012 were provided on June 12, and the 2013 and 2014 records on July 29.

Due to the delays, The Journal News decided to seek additional vouchers dating to the end of 2014 and filed a new request for records on Sept. 23 for the final four months of 2014. The county acknowledged receipt of those records on Sept. 30, and said it would reply on or before Oct. 29. The records, consisting of 70 new pages of vouchers, were emailed on Nov. 2.

The Journal News on Dec. 8 submitted a list of questions to Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino's office, at its request. In part, the newspaper asked why the records did not include payments made to at least three other firms that, based on the newspaper's reporting, had been retained by the county for legal services.

The county acknowledged on Dec. 11 that not all of the vouchers had been provided. An additional 150 pages of vouchers were provided that night. However, the county also said there were records of payments to six other law firms that were not listed on the original FOIL request. Those were provided on Dec. 16.

On Friday, Astorino's office emailed its responses to the newspaper's questions from Dec. 8.

In the reply, the county said it spent $7 million on outside counsel during Astorino's first four years in office, and cited one law firm paid to defend the county in a federal housing lawsuit. However, the newspaper had not been provided with any vouchers of payments to that firm since it filed its FOIL request. County officials said, in fact, that there were at least $1.2 million in additional outside-counsel payments beyond the records provided to The Journal News.

County officials said Friday that those records would also be made available, but had not been included because The Journal News had only requested payments to a list of law firms with retaining contracts with the county. They said the additional $1.2 million in legal fees went to firms that were not on that list.