Young v. Town of Huntington

The State’s fundamental public disclosure statute, the Freedom of Information Law (Public Officers Law, art 6; L 1974, ch 578), contains a provision which exempts from inspection information contained in law enforcement investigatory files. When the Building Department of the Town of Huntington relied upon the exemption to deny the petitioner access to its records and was sustained by the Huntington Records Access Appeals Board, he instituted this article 78 proceeding to review the denial. The breadth of the exemption has evolved as the principal issue in the case.

The exemptive provision is…