The Croton Chronicle Legal Fund

Help keep Croton well informed by supporting possible legal challenges to denials or redactions in Freedom of Information Law requests.

Announcing The Croton Chronicle Legal Fund. From the GoFundMe page:

“The Croton Chronicle is an online media outlet serving the village of Croton-on-Hudson, New York. We do a fair bit of investigative reporting, and much of that requires filing Freedom of Information Law requests with either the village or the local Croton-Harmon school district, and sometimes other agencies.

FOIL requests are often denied, or documents are redacted, in ways that we think violate both the letter and the spirit of the law, which fosters maximum government transparency. Government secrecy is the enemy of democracy.

Thus we anticipate engaging in litigation over FOIL requests and related matters. This fund will make that possible, as litigation is very expensive even when attorneys donate their time pro bono.

Thank you for supporting local journalism and helping reporters do their jobs.”

Among the issues we may have to litigate is denial of our FOIL requests for the competing response to the Request for Proposals for Lot A issued in July 2023. As we pointed out in a post last year, the village has decided that residents do not have the right to read and discuss all of the proposals for the sale of village land, even though that land belongs to all of us. The excuse given, that divulging this information may affect the sales price of the property, does not in our view meet the balancing requirements that FOIL decisions be weighted towards serving the public interest.

Now that the Board of Trustees has approved the special permit and the sales price has been agreed upon, we have resubmitted this FOIL request in hopes that the village will reconsider and opt for full transparency in decisions involving sale of village property. We plan to appeal any negative decisions.

Indeed, village democracy is very much at issue here. Once we found out—after it was too late—what the five competing bids for Maple Commons had been, many villagers felt that the best decision about what to do with this plot of village land (the former “Katz property”) had not been made. The vital information necessary for a wise decision about sale and development of publicly owned land was kept tightly in the hands of a small number of people.

We do not relish the prospect of having to take the village or school district to court over FOIL or other matters, and yet it may turn out to be necessary—and we need to be sure we can do it if village democracy demands it.

Please consider donating to The Croton Chronicle Legal Fund and spread the word about it. We will provide a regular accounting of all funds received and dispersed, with full transparency.

Thank you.

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