Ulster County Town Sues to Regain Access to Years of Government Records

In Ulster County, the Town of Rochester has filed a lawsuit against Richard S. Miller of Ellenville, NY, alleging he withheld government email records stored on a privately controlled server—an arrangement the town says has disrupted access to public records, FOIL responses and legal compliance.

Town Supervisor Erin Enouen says the dispute stems from years of efforts to transfer roughly a decade of municipal emails and archived correspondence into a secure town-managed system, efforts she says ultimately broke down and led to the legal action now before the court.

“This definitely was a last resort action,” Enouen said. “We did spend years trying to coordinate a collaborative transition of this data to a secure municipal system.”

Long-running dispute over email records

According to Enouen, the arrangement originated years ago when Miller volunteered to host the town’s email system on a server located at a personal residence. By 2021, town officials determined the setup needed to be replaced, and they hired a professional IT service provider to migrate the system into municipal control.

“We really needed to move away from” a system where “a private individual on a volunteer basis” was hosting government email records, Enouen said.

The records at the center of the dispute include roughly 10 years of emails from town employees and elected officials, including archived inboxes from prior administrations. Enouen said the materials include official government correspondence, attachments and attorney-client communications.

“These are all public records,” Enouen said. “Any government business that’s done over email is considered a public record.”

Enouen said access to the legacy system was cut off in December 2025 after the town transitioned its active email accounts to a Microsoft-based platform managed by its IT provider. Since then, officials say they have struggled to fully comply with Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests and meet discovery obligations in ongoing litigation.

“The hardest thing right now is fulfilling the Freedom of Information Law requests,” Enouen said. “We’re unable to fulfill the full request for records because we don’t have access to correspondences that are being requested.”

Town seeks court-ordered access

The lawsuit seeks immediate access to the legacy server and full transfer of “care, custody and control” of the records to the town.

“What we would like in the immediate is access to the email records,” Enouen said. “We should be able to just log into the old accounts.”

Enouen said the town is not asking Miller to perform the migration work himself, but instead wants access secured under professional oversight.

“We want whatever is going to achieve the outcome in the fastest and best way possible,” Enouen said, “and in accordance with what would be fiscally responsible for the town.”

Miller disputes allegations

In an interview with the Daily Freeman, Richard S. Miller disputed the town’s claims and said officials themselves were responsible for losing access to archived email records.

“I supplied the town with email access. I set it up as a favor to the … (former) town Supervisor, Carl Chipman,” Miller said. “They decided they were going to go in a different direction, didn’t bother to ask, didn’t consult with me in any way, treated me quite poorly, and then made a change, pointed their domain name at a different place and wondered why they didn’t have access to all their archival mail.”

Miller said there was never a written agreement between himself and the town.

He also said he had not been informed of the lawsuit prior to speaking with reporters and argued that compensation is required for any return of the records.

“They ordered me to give them all the data, which is about 500 hours worth of labor … and it’s very clear under statute and law that you can’t force a civilian, a person, to do free work,” Miller said. “They tried a bunch of different things, we were in negotiations, and I guess they didn’t like the price.”

Miller added: “I’m happy to give it to them and safeguard it, but they can’t have it for free.”

He also disputed the town’s assertion that it cannot fulfill FOIL requests.

“Every document, everything, they had copies of it. By law, they have to,” Miller said. “It’s a contest that they think they’re going to win with force, even though we’ve been doing nothing but negotiating in good faith since day one.”

Enouen responds on negotiations and records access

Enouen said Miller was notified when the town began transitioning to a new email provider and disputed his claim that the town maintains complete copies of all archival records.

She said the town was open to discussing compensation, but only within reasonable public-sector standards.

“We have always been willing to discuss compensation for the work involved,” Enouen said, “but we have a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of the town to have agreements that are standard, reasonable market rates.”

Enouen said repeated attempts to reach a transition agreement ultimately failed, prompting the town to seek court intervention.

“Our attempt to resolve this through conversation and professional coordination, that has proved fruitless,” she said.

Broader implications

For residents, Enouen said the dispute underscores the importance of ensuring municipal control over government information systems.

“These records are the public’s records,” she said. “This is how we ensure accountability of our officials.”

He added that Rochester’s experience highlights the risks small municipalities can face when relying on informal or volunteer-run technical infrastructure for essential government services.

“It’s not rare to have a town who wants to save money or has generous volunteers who want to give back to their community,” Enouen said. “But public property, town records, official government records and correspondence really need to be safeguarded and secured.”

Despite the dispute, Enouen said current systems are secure and town operations remain stable.

“We are very busy in the town of Rochester,” he said. “The reason why we took this legal step is to move this process along so that we can regain control of those historical records and ensure that we’re serving the public to the fullest extent possible.”

Image: Paper copies of the Town of Rochester’s Tentative Assessment Rolls for 2026. (Town of Rochester)