KNOX — Last month, following an appeal to a Freedom of Information Law request issued by The Enterprise, the town of Knox released the name of the resident who had filed his own FOIL request in April that was later denied by the town.

“There should be no reason to withhold the name of the person making the FOIL request, according to Kristin O’Neill, assistant director of the New York State Committee on Open Government,” The Enterprise wrote in a May 30, 2019 editorial, “The public’s right to know vs. Knox’s right to ‘No’”

The Enterprise then filed an appeal in an attempt to find the information to which the public is entitled.

A town law passed in 2016 had made it so that the entire town board must vote on whether or not a denial to a FOIL request should be upheld, rather than a single FOIL appeals officer. Earlier this year, the town board voted to have the supervisor solely serve as the appeals officer, with only Councilman Earl Barcomb voting against it.

In his role deciding on the Enterprise appeal, Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis released the name of the person who had filed the FOIL: Patrick Walter.

Walter did not want his name published in The Enterprise and declined commenting on his reasons for making the FOIL request.

Walter’s request, which asks for video records of the Knox Transfer Station during its operating hours on March 28, was denied by the town clerk, Traci Schanz, who serves as Knox’s FOIL officer.

Schanz had written that the request was denied because it fell into three categories that are exempt from FOIL law:

— Unwarranted invasion of personal privacy;

— Compiled for law enforcement purposes; and

— If disclosed could endanger the life or safety of a person.

This denial was appealed by Walter, but the denial was upheld in a vote at a special town board meeting on April 26. In upholding the denial, the board said that Schanz’s reasons were adequate.

The three town board members who attended — Supervisor Lefkaditis, and council members Kenneth Saddlemire and Karl Pritchard — all voted in favor of the denial.

The three ran together on the Republican slate — as did Schanz — and also voted as a bloc early in the year to replace three transfer-station workers. Two of the fired workers have since been reinstated since their jobs were protected under Civil Service Law.