Haley Viccaro
Albany Bureau
ALBANY — County clerks around New York say they are struggling with thousands of pistol permit opt-out forms flooding their offices and with no money from the state for the additional work.
A provision in New York’s new guncontrol law provides state residents with the option to fill out a form that would keep their pistol permit records exempt from Freedom of Information requests. State Police released the forms on Feb. 15, and permit holders have until May 15 to complete the forms or risk having their information available to the public.
Monroe County has received 11,000 forms. Westchester County has received 9,000, and Broome County has gotten 4,000. Clerks report long lines of people submitting the forms.
“It started a little slow the first week with a couple of hundred a day, and now we get about 700 to 800 at the most per day,” said Westchester County Clerk Tim Idoni. “People realize that the deadline is approaching soon to get these forms in.”
Westchester County has received opt-out forms from more than half of the 16,800 people who have active pistol permits, Idoni said. The provision was included in a state gun-control law in January after the Journal News , a Gannett Co. Inc. publication, released an interactive online map in December of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. The map was taken off the Journal News website after the new law was passed.
The gun-control law expands a ban on some weapons with assault-style features, requires registration of guns every five years and limits the number of rounds in a magazine to seven except in limited circumstances.
Gun-permit information that is held by counties will be kept private until May 15, when the opt-out forms take effect. Those who still want to complete a form can do so after that date, according to the law, but they wouldn’t be assured that their information would be kept private in the meantime.
County clerks said the forms have their offices working overtime and pulling staff from different divisions to help organize the information. Some counties said they have started sending the forms to county judges for approval to stay ahead of the process.
“Right now we are absolutely overwhelmed, we have lines out the door, and our staff are stressed to the max,” Monroe County Clerk Cheryl Dinolfo said. “We are treading water and doing what needs to be done to get through the day.” Dinolfo said about 1,000 of the county’s forms came from new pistol-permit applicants because the law has also spurred a surge in people seeking guns. Monroe County has about 45,000 pistol-permit holders.
For most counties, the opt-out forms are approved or denied by county judges. Then they are sent back to the county clerk’s offices, where the pistol permit holders’ status is updated and logged as private. The opt-out form allows for a number of reasons why a gun owner can seek to have his or her information kept private. The options include if an applicant is a law enforcement official, victim of domestic violence, had served on a grand jury and feared for their safety or were concerned about harassment. Clerks said the law is not clear as to who needs to give final approval of the forms. State officials have said the new gun law shouldn’t add costs to local governments. State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico testified at a hearing in February that the process would be borne mostly by the state.
“We don’t expect any counties to incur costs here,” D’Amico said. “That, I think, was an intention of the governor when the bill was passed.” Chenango County received about 700 opt-out forms, and the County Clerk Mary Weidman said the county judges might decide to accept the forms without reviewing them. “We have triple the number of people coming in now because the deadline is approaching and they are concerned that they will lose their right to have guns, which is certainly not the case,” Weidman said.
Sen. Thomas O’Mara, R-Big Flats, Chemung County, said the law should be changed to simply keep all gun information private, avoiding the need for the work by counties. O’Mara is among gun-rights supporters who want a full repeal of the law. “The opt-out should be done away with all together. There shouldn’t be any disclosure of this information,” O’Mara said.
Some good-government groups have disagreed and supported the Journal News’ attempt in December to get the pistol-permit data from Putnam County, which refused to release the information.
“We oppose efforts to undermine the integrity of the state’s Freedom of Information Law and fear the slippery slope of carving out exceptions as an attempt to undermine the public interest,” the groups said in a statement Jan. 8. Some counties have their sheriff’s departments handling the pistol permit forms. The Broome County Sheriff’s Department said it doesn’t have a computer system and logs individuals’ records using index cards. Identification Officer Brian Curtis said his three-member staff plans to locate each pistol permit holder’s index card and stamp it if their optout requests are approved. They received about 4,000 forms out of 23,000 residents in the county with pistol permits.
“There is no way we are going to beat the deadline with the amount of people putting in new permits and buying guns,” Curtis said. “We average about a two-hour wait to get into our office.” County clerks said they were bracing for the registration of assaultstyle weapons, which is set to begin April 15 when the State Police will make the forms available online.
“It is an unfunded mandate and it was dumped on us,” said Cortland County Clerk Elizabeth Larkin. “It should have never happened on the state level with no thought of the consequences to local county offices.”
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Cheryl Dinolfo, Monroe County Clerk, displays the stack of 11,000 opt-out forms filed with her office as of Thursday. The forms allow pistol owners to keep their information private, if approved. SHAWN DOWD/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
NEW ARTICLE
Clerk seeks state reimbursement
Jessica Alaimo
Staff writer
The Monroe County Clerk’s Office has incurred $177,107 in costs to process the opt-out forms it has received under the state’s new gun laws, and it is requesting reimbursement from the state.
The Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act passed Jan. 15 allows for pistol permit holders to file a form with the county clerk to keep their names out of public databases and Freedom of Information Act Law requests. As of Monday, Monroe County had received more than 11,000 forms.
County Clerk Cheryl Dinolfo believes the state should reimburse the county.
“The NY SAFE Act states that any costs associated with the program will be paid out of the Division of State Police capital budget and I am simply requesting how we will be reimbursed,” Dinolfo said in a release.
Dinolfo cited several news reports in which state officials said counties wouldn’t be harmed, including this comment by State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico at a hearing in February. “We don’t expect any counties to incur costs here,” he testified. “That, I think, was an intention of the governor when the bill was passed.”
Dinolfo estimates processing the optout forms will cost about $177,107. Deputy Clerk Kirk Morris said the office figured out the average cost of processing a document in 2012 and multiplied it by the number of forms to arrive at this figure, with an average cost of $16.10 a form.
Each form must be time stamped, sent to a judge, sent back and filed. The office has had to bring on extra help to handle to workload, Morris said. Many people delivered the forms in person, taking up staff time.
Morris said there has been no communication from the Governor’s Office regarding reimbursement of costs.
However, the Governor’s office says the burden is on local governments to find ways to address the issue.
“By any reasonable standard, making all forms readily available online and setting a grace period that will keep pistol permit information private until each opt-out form is processed mitigates costs to local governments,’ said Richard Azzopardi, a spokseperson for the Governor’s office.
Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks has also expressed concerns about costs to the county under the mental health provision in the bill.
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