Your right to your assessment records
The records an assessor used to value your home are public. New York's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lets you ask for them — including reports the assessor's software can produce on request.
The reports that matter
Most New York assessors use the State's Real Property System (RPS). It can print, for any parcel:
- Comparable Sales Report — the sales the system matches to your home.
- Comparable Assessments Report — how similar homes in the same town are assessed. This is the uniformity record, and the one a SCAR hearing officer is directed to consider.
- Cost Valuation Report — how your home's features, grade and condition turn into a value. Only this report shows what each code is worth.
Public Officers Law § 89(3)(a): the agency has to produce it
Section 89(3)(a) sets the ground rules for every FOIL request. Four parts matter most for assessment records.
An answer within five business days
Within five business days of receiving a written request, the agency must make the record available, deny the request in writing, or acknowledge it in writing with “a statement of the approximate date, which shall be reasonable under the circumstances of the request, when such request will be granted or denied.”
“We would have to create a record”
The statute does say that nothing in FOIL requires an agency “to prepare any record not possessed or maintained by such entity.” The very next sentences answer that for computer records:
“When an agency has the ability to retrieve or extract a record or data maintained in a computer storage system with reasonable effort, it shall be required to do so. When doing so requires less employee time than engaging in manual retrieval or redactions from non-electronic records, the agency shall be required to retrieve or extract such record or data electronically.”
“Any programming necessary to retrieve a record maintained in a computer storage system and to transfer that record to the medium requested by a person or to allow the transferred record to be read or printed shall not be deemed to be the preparation or creation of a new record.”
The data behind a Comparable Assessments, Comparable Sales or Cost Valuation Report is already in the assessor's RPS system. Running the report is retrieving that data, which § 89(3)(a) requires when it takes reasonable effort — and these reports take minutes.
“It's too much work”
An agency may not deny a request because it is voluminous or because the agency lacks staff, “if the agency may engage an outside professional service to provide copying, programming or other services required to provide the copy.”
Delays need a reason and a date
If the agency grants a request but cannot deliver within twenty business days of its acknowledgement, it must state in writing “both the reason for the inability to grant the request within twenty business days and a date certain within a reasonable period, depending on the circumstances, when the request will be granted in whole or in part.”
How long these reports take
From assessors' own printed timestamps on reports produced to me: a complete set for a home and its comparables has been produced in a single sitting of well under an hour, and across a sitting the reports run at about a minute each. A Comparable Assessments Report has been generated in 34 seconds. Cost Valuation Reports stamp only to the minute, so those times are upper limits.
Public Officers Law § 87(2)(g): the exemption that doesn't fit
FOIL starts from openness. Section 87(2) requires every agency to make available “all records,” except those that fall within a listed exemption, and a denial “shall be valid only when there is a particularized and specific justification for such denial.”
The exemption assessors most often reach for is § 87(2)(g), for internal working papers. It lets an agency withhold records that:
“(g) are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not:
i. statistical or factual tabulations or data;
ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
iii. final agency policy or determinations;
iv. external audits, including but not limited to audits performed by the comptroller and the federal government”
The exemption protects opinions, advice and recommendations. It does not reach the four things listed after “which are not.” An RPS report is a tabulation of facts already on the roll and in the property inventory: sale prices, assessments, square footage, grade, condition, and the values the system assigns to them. That is “statistical or factual tabulations or data,” which § 87(2)(g)(i) keeps public. The final assessment roll is the assessor's final determination, which § 87(2)(g)(iii) keeps public.
If an agency does withhold something under (g), ask it to say which part of the record is opinion rather than fact, and to release the rest. The exemption applies to “records or portions thereof,” so the factual parts still have to be disclosed.
Public Officers Law § 89(4)(c)(ii): when the agency pays the legal fees
If a request is denied and the administrative appeal fails, the requester can bring a proceeding in court under Article 78. Section 89(4)(c) decides who pays for it:
“(i) may assess, against such agency involved, reasonable attorney's fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred by such person in any case under the provisions of this section in which such person has substantially prevailed, and when the agency failed to respond to a request or appeal within the statutory time; and (ii) shall assess, against such agency involved, reasonable attorney's fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred by such person in any case under the provisions of this section in which such person has substantially prevailed and the court finds that the agency had no reasonable basis for denying access.”
Note the difference. Under (i), where the requester won and the agency also missed a statutory deadline, fees are up to the court: “may assess.” Under (ii) they are mandatory: “shall assess.” Two things trigger (ii) — the requester substantially prevailed, and the agency had no reasonable basis for the denial. An agency that refuses a report its own system can print in minutes takes that risk.
Whether a denial had a reasonable basis is decided case by case. In 2026 the Second Department awarded fees in both Wagner appeals; in Franklin v City of Syracuse, below, the trial court ordered the reports produced but declined to award fees.
What the Committee on Open Government says
The State's Committee on Open Government issues advisory opinions on FOIL. These are the ones that answer the objections assessors raise most often. Each links to the full opinion.
FOIL-AO-14755
“If electronic information can be extracted or generated with reasonable effort, I believe that an agency must do so.”
FOIL-AO-14836
“The contents of an assessment roll and an inventory have historically been accessible to the public in great measure, pursuant to provisions of the Real Property Tax Law.”
FOIL-AO-15334
“I believe that an assessment roll or its equivalent must be disclosed, irrespective of the intended use of that record.”
FOIL-AO-16361
“If electronic information can be extracted or generated with reasonable effort, we believe that an agency must do so.”
FOIL-AO-19168
“insofar as the items sought can be generated and retrieved with reasonable effort, we believe that they must be disclosed to comply with FOIL”
FOIL-AO-19109
“Agencies no longer have authority to require a certification that such a list is not requested for solicitation or fund-raising purposes.”
A sentence often attributed to FOIL-AO-15334 — “Assessment records are public information pursuant to other provisions of law and have been for sometime” — is in fact the court's language in Szikszay v Buelow, 436 NYS2d 558 (Sup Ct, Erie County 1981), quoted in that opinion. Cite the court for it, not the Committee.
What the courts have said
The Wagner decisions (Appellate Division, Second Department, 2026)
On 4 February 2026 the Second Department decided two FOIL appeals by the same requester against the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. They are not assessment cases, but they apply exactly the provisions above.
Matter of Wagner v New York City Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene, 246 AD3d 748
The agency kept extending its production date, each time past twenty business days, citing only the size of the job. The court held:
“the DOHMH cited the volume and burden of production as the only reason for its delay. That was not a statutorily permissible reason for delay and amounted to a constructive denial of the petitioner's request”
It also held that a requester “substantially prevail[s]” for the fee statute “when the commencement of the CPLR article 78 proceeding ultimately succeeds in obtaining the records responsive to the FOIL request, whether by court order or by voluntary disclosure” (quoting earlier Second Department cases), and awarded attorney's fees.
Matter of Wagner v New York City Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene, 246 AD3d 751
The agency withheld documents under the privacy and inter-agency/intra-agency exemptions. The court restated the rule:
“[T]he agency seeking to prevent disclosure carries the burden of demonstrating that the requested material falls squarely within a FOIL exemption by articulating a particularized and specific justification for denying access”
Because the agency “only provided conclusory assertions without factual support,” the § 87(2)(g) exemption failed, the records were ordered produced, and fees were awarded because “the record reflects that the DOHMH did not have a reasonable basis for denying access.”
My own cases
Matter of Franklin v Walsh, Index No. 010748/2023
The City of Syracuse's assessor stated that saving an RPS comparable sales report is “entirely within the discretion of the assessor,” and that he had found no “cost report” for the property. The court found that failing to save the report used to set an assessment “certainly frustrates the public's access to the record admittedly used in reaching that assessment,” and ordered the City to generate the RPS Comparable Sales Report “that was used in rendering the assessment,” and a Cost Valuation Report provided the information needed for it was already in RPS. In a September 2024 letter decision the court denied the City's motion asking it to declare that the City had complied.
Matter of Franklin v City of Syracuse, Index No. 004143/2026
The court ordered the City to produce RPS comparable assessment, cost valuation and sales analysis reports, holding that:
“a report that can be run on computer software with reasonable effort, which organizes data already housed in the software based on data points with comparability, constitutes a record in the City's possession within the meaning of FOIL's statutory provisions”
“Whether a document or data is subject to public access does not depend upon whether or how the agency makes use of that data.”
Both are trial-level decisions. In the 2026 case the court denied attorney's fees, describing the fee question as a relatively close question of law.
Town of Urbana (Steuben County), 2025
After a dispute over the Town's response to a FOIL request for assessment records, the owner brought an Article 78 proceeding. The Town stipulated to pay $9,000 of the owner's attorney's fees and then produced the records, including the RPS Comparable Assessments Report. This was a settlement, not a court decision: no judge ruled on the merits, and nothing was found against the Town. It shows how § 89(4)(c) works in practice — an agency facing a fee claim often decides that producing the records is the better course.
More opinions and guidance are on the Committee on Open Government website.