Open Records Lesson In New Albany Probe

A federal probe into Albany corruption has reached yet closer to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. A report this week from the International Business Times says that his administration has confirmed it is being investigated over ties between the state and Mr. Cuomo’s top campaign donor. This is the first time the ongoing examination into state graft has reached the governor’s office. Up to now, all the action has been at the State Legislature, with several elected officials under indictment, including former Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, Dean Skelos, the former Senate majority leader, and Mr. Skelos’s son.

Mr. Cuomo has not been implicated in wrongdoing. However, his office refused the publication’s Freedom of Information Law request for documents related to transactions between Glenwood Management and the state, citing — improperly, as we see it — a blanket exemption for documents involved in a law enforcement investigation. In doing so, Mr. Cuomo’s aides said that the administration was indeed a target of United States Attorney Preet Bharara, which had been suspected.

As has been Mr. Cuomo’s tendency toward dubious interpretations of the law, he is wrong on this as well. The right to withhold public records in a case like this was intended to allow police and other official investigators latitude to do their work; it was not intended to stymie the work of the news media or block interested citizens from knowing about the function of their governments. Notably, Robert Freeman, who runs the New York State Committee on Open Government, called the Cuomo position “ridiculous and contrary to the intent of the Freedom of Information Law.”

This is not surprising, coming from a governor who infamously shut down the Moreland Commission anticorruption effort, declaring that because he had set it up, he had the right to pull the plug. Maybe Mr. Cuomo believes all this, but New Yorkers should not.