ALBANY---In honor of "Sunshine Week" the state Assembly has passed a series of bills aimed at strengthening the state's Open Meetings Law, increasing government transparency and ensuring compliance with Freedom of Information laws.

According to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the nine-bill package is intended to promote public awareness of governmental actions and information as the best way to foster better government through increased openness and accountability. The legislation coincides with the second annual Sunshine Week, March 11-17, when participating media run editorials, columns, cartoons, public forums and news and feature stories that drive public discussion about why open government is important to everyone, not just journalists.

The lawmakers noted that the Sunshine Week package comes less than one month after the Assembly overwhelmingly passed legislation aimed at reforming ethics and lobbying laws in Albany.

"The Assembly has long been at the forefront of efforts to make government more open, accountable and responsive to the needs of New Yorkers," said Silver (D-Manhattan). To underscore that commitment, Silver pointed to the Assembly's success last year in enacting an expansion of State Ethics Committee jurisdiction and in overhauling Assembly rules as well as pushing for the use of more legislative conference committees in enacting public authority reform and procurement lobbying reform."

"This package builds on these achievements, and I am hopeful that the Senate will join us in this continuing effort and pass these important government-reform initiatives," said Silver.

"Last year, we enacted a comprehensive Freedom of Information Law reform package that strengthened both the FOIL and Open Meetings laws to ensure that the public has full access to the governmental decision-making process," said RoAnn Destito (D.WF-Rome) chair of the Governmental Operations Committee. "Once again, we are advancing additional measures to strengthen the public's right to know and to improve transparency of governmental actions. In this age of reform, we especially want 'Sunshine Week' to shine brighter than ever before by expanding these laws to recognize new technological methods to provide governmental information for all to see."

One of the bills already passed by the Assembly, would allow any meeting of a public body to be recorded, broadcast and photographed, provided that it is done in a way that is not disruptive to the meeting. Destito noted that technological advances make it possible to record the proceedings of a meeting without detracting from the deliberative process.

Two proposals being advanced by Assemblyman Ruben Diaz, Jr. would strengthen compliance with FOIL. The first bill would require each state agency that maintains a website to post information related to FOIL and the Personal Privacy Protection Law on its website. The measure would require this posting to include, at a minimum, contact information for the persons from whom records of the agency may be obtained, the times and places the records are available for inspection and copying information on how to request records in person, by mail, and, if the agency accepts requests for records electronically, by e-mail.

The second measure would require that subject-matter lists of records maintained by state agencies also be posted online.

Citing an Assembly study that found many agency lists were seriously outdated -- in some cases by 10 years or more - or contained little detail or omitted significant categories of agency records, Diaz said the need for transparency was clear. "The lack of consistency among state agencies in providing information to the public will be addressed through this bill," Diaz, Jr. (D-Bronx) said. "Posting this information online will help better inform the public of its rights and government's responsibilities under FOIL."

Other bills in the Assembly's Sunshine Week package would:

--allow for the public to copy the public documents maintained by the State Ethics Commission and the Legislative Ethics Committee;

--require interpreters and assistive listening devices for the hearing impaired at public hearings under certain conditions;

--require the Committee on Open Government to provide guidance to agencies on the development and maintenance of subject-matter lists;

--provide that if a public body has the ability, it must post notices of the place and time of public meetings on its website;

--prevent state agencies from claiming copyright protection for information that is required to be public by law; and

--strengthen the Open Meetings Law by providing two ways to invalidate an action when any portion of a meeting is closed in violation of the law.