Good government watchdog Paul Wolf asked for the appointment calendars of Erie County legislators. Chair Tim Meyers said there were none to be had. Now Wolf is suing.
Old Erie County Hall. Photo: J. Dale Shoemaker.
Erie County legislators told a government transparency watchdog they didn’t keep calendars tracking their daily meetings and activities.
So he tricked them into admitting they did.
And now he’s suing the Erie County Legislature in state court, asking a judge to compel the body to collect and release the documents they claimed they did not have — not once, but three times.
“If schedules exist, the public has a right to see them,” attorney Paul Wolf — founder of the New York State Coalition for Open Government — said in a statement he shared Friday morning with Investigative Post.
He noted that legislators earn $65,000 a year for what is considered a part-time job, and taxpayers have a right under state law to know who their elected officials are meeting and why.
“Transparency about how elected officials spend their time is a basic expectation of accountable government,” he said.
Here’s how the records request turned into a lawsuit.
Back in December, under the auspices of the state’s Freedom of Information Law, Wolf requested copies of appointment calendars for all 11 Erie County legislators. He asked for all entries from January 1, 2025 forward.
Wolf does this sort of thing all the time. He frequently sends FOIL requests for public records — sometimes because he wants the documents and sometimes because he wants to test public bodies for transparency and responsiveness.
The Legislature’s clerk, Olivia Owens, was certainly responsive. She got back to Wolf in a mere three business days to tell him no such documents existed.
Incredulous, he asked her if she’d checked with each legislator to be sure. She assured him she had.
“That claim raises serious questions,” Wolf said in his statement. “Most professionals maintain some form of calendar to manage their responsibilities. It is difficult to understand how 11 elected officials … would operate without any record of their work-related activities.”
Attorney Paul Wolf.
Several legislators are, like Wolf, practicing attorneys who need calendars to track appointments, court dates and billable hours, he noted. All 11 legislators campaigned for reelection last year, an endeavor that likewise demands careful scheduling.
Wolf appealed this denial of his request to Legislature Chair Tim Meyers, who, as the head of the body that denied Wolf the records, is responsible for its compliance with state transparency laws.
Meyers, a Cheektowaga Democrat, said the same thing as Owens: After “a diligent search,” he “determined that no responsive records exist.”
“Such efforts included review of the Legislature’s electronic recordkeeping systems, and consulting with relevant Erie County Legislature staff and members who could potentially create, possess, or maintain the records requested,” Mills wrote.
Not satisfied, Wolf emailed 10 of the 11 legislators individually, asking them whether they kept calendars. (Meyers told Wolf in person that he himself did not keep a calendar, according to Wolf’s court papers.) Only Legislator Lawrence Dupre, a Buffalo Democrat, responded. Dupre suggested Wolf file a FOIL request with Owens, the clerk — which, of course, he had already done.
Wolf suspected he was being blown off. So he devised a test.
On Jan. 22, he emailed all 11 legislators individually to see if they’d be available the last week of February to take part in a panel discussion on the subject of term limits for elected officials.
Dupre wrote back the next day:
“Thank you for the invite to what I know will be a robust discussion. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend due to a scheduling conflict.”
Dupre went on to say he would be out of town for most of that week and already had events scheduled upon his return.
A few days later Legislator Lindsay Lorigo, a West Seneca Republican, replied:
“I needed to see if it would be possible to adjust my schedule to accommodate. I can make myself available for this.”
A few weeks later one of Lorigo’s staffers followed up looking for a firm date to put in the legislator’s calendar.
Wolf, in the lawsuit he filed Thursday morning, called the responses from Dupre and Lorigo “an admission” that “directly contradicted” what he’d been told by the Legislature’s chair and clerk.
“Both Legislator Dupree and Lorigo have confirmed in their own words that they maintain schedules and calendars,” Wolf wrote in the lawsuit he filed Thursday morning. “The Legislature’s claim that a diligent search was conducted for such records and not a single legislator keeps such records — is false.”
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Wolf’s court papers include all the email exchanges described above, as well as two opinions from the state Committee on Open Government affirming that an elected official’s calendar is a public document. In his complaint, Wolf noted that he had previously, through FOIL requests, obtained calendars from Buffalo’s mayor, Amherst’s town supervisor and the Erie County executive.
Heather Murray, associate director of Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic, told Investigative Post it doesn’t matter whether the legislators keep their calendars on personal devices or use devices and software provided by the county.
“The use of personal appointment calendars or email accounts cannot shield public records of legislators from disclosure under FOIL,” she said. “If that were the case, it would severely undermine FOIL’s purpose of holding government officials accountable. An agency has the obligation to gain access to these records and determine what should be disclosed under FOIL.”
Mills and Owens did not respond to a request for comment. Erie County Attorney Jeremy Toth, whose office is charged with defending the Legislature in the lawsuit, declined to comment while the litigation is pending.
posted 44 minutes ago – May 1, 2026