Scope: only § 89 is modelled, to keep the benchmark text short (§ 89 alone is about 3,800 words). Section 87 is not included. It sets the fees: paper photocopies up to 9 x 14 inches cost at most 25 cents each (§ 87(1)(b)(iii)); other records are charged at the actual cost of reproduction under § 87(1)(c); no fee may be charged for preparing such a copy unless at least two hours of agency employee time is needed; and the requester must be told the estimated cost when more than two hours of employee time is needed or an outside professional service would be used. Section 87 also requires that a denial rest on a “particularized and specific justification” and lists the § 87(2) exemptions. In this model those appear only as cross-references, and the denial-contents rule is not modelled.
Constructive denial: § 89(4)(a) says failure to conform to subdivision three “shall constitute a denial”, and § 89(4)(b) says the same for a failure to decide an appeal on time. Both missed deadlines therefore route to the next remedy rather than to an end state: a missed five-business-day response, or a missed approximate date after an acknowledgement, leads to the administrative appeal, and a missed ten-business-day appeal decision leads (through the committee copy) to Article 78 review, which is the default path after the appeal whenever access was not provided.
Acknowledged requests: the text sets no fixed number of days for granting or denying after an acknowledgement, only the 'approximate date' stated in it, which must be 'reasonable under the circumstances'. The timer on decide_later therefore has no fixed length (zero days after the stated date). Treating a missed approximate date as a denial is an inference from § 89(4)(a) ('Failure by an agency to conform to the provisions of subdivision three'), not an express rule. The twenty-business-day mark applies only after the agency decides to grant: if disclosure cannot happen within twenty business days of the acknowledgement, the agency must state in writing the reason and a date certain. That is modelled as a rule of later_response, not as a timer, and it does not apply to denials. The model does not represent a grant that misses the stated date certain.
Not-held certification: § 89(3)(a) lists exactly three five-business-day responses (make available, deny in writing, or acknowledge). The duty to certify that the agency does not have the record or cannot find it after diligent search appears later, as the alternative to providing a copy 'Upon payment of, or offer to pay, the fee'. Placing that certification among the responses in response_type and later_response (and the record_not_held outcome after respond or decide_later) is an inference; the text does not list it as a fourth five-day response.
Partial grants: a request may be granted 'in whole or in part'. The model gives one outcome per response, so it does not show the appeal of the denied portion of a partial grant running alongside production of the granted portion.
Request form and channels: entities with reasonable means must accept and answer requests by e-mail (3(b)); state agencies with websites must accept requests online (3(c)); the Committee on Open Government must publish a request form (1(b)(v)). An agency may require a written certification that lists of names and addresses will not be used for solicitation or fund-raising. These shape submit_request but are not separate steps.
Grounds an agency may not use: an agency may not deny a request as voluminous or burdensome for lack of staff if it could hire an outside professional service (3(a)). It must retrieve electronic data with reasonable effort, and programming done to retrieve a record is not the creation of a new record. These limit the 'grant' input but are not modelled as rules.
Fees: copies are provided 'upon payment of, or offer to pay, the fee prescribed therefor'. pay_fee therefore comes before provide_copy, but the amount is set by § 87, which is not in this model. Inspection without copies, which § 87(2) provides for, is not modelled separately.
Committee copies: the agency must 'immediately' forward to the Committee on Open Government 'a copy of such appeal when received by the agency and the ensuing determination thereon'. The ten-business-day clock for the appeal decision runs from receipt of the appeal and does not depend on that forwarding, so decide_appeal follows the appeal directly. Both copies are drawn as one step (forward_to_committee) after the decision, which is also reached when the decision deadline is missed, since the appeal copy is owed either way. In the text the appeal copy is due on receipt, alongside the decision; it is drawn after the decision because a parallel forwarding branch could not rejoin the process once the deemed-denial timer leaves decide_appeal. The requester's next step (pay_fee if access was provided on appeal, otherwise seek_review) is drawn after the forwarding; the statute does not make the requester's rights wait on it.
Trade secret and critical infrastructure information: § 89(4)(a) and (b) apply 'Except as provided in subdivision five'. Subdivision five has its own procedure for records excepted at the submitter's request (seven-business-day appeal, ten-business-day decision, fifteen-day limit for the submitter's Article 78 proceeding). That procedure is not modelled.
Judicial review: the section does not state a time limit for starting the Article 78 proceeding; that limit comes from the CPLR, which is not in this text. The attorney's fee rule of § 89(4)(c) is modelled as attorney_fees: the court may award fees if the requester substantially prevails and the agency missed a statutory time limit, and must award them if the requester substantially prevails and the agency had no reasonable basis for denying access. The table gives no output where neither rule applies, because § 89 is silent there. The missed_statutory_time input corresponds to the deemed-denial timers on respond, decide_later and decide_appeal. An agency's appeal from a disclosure order gets preference and is deemed abandoned if the agency does not file its record and brief within sixty days (4(d)). The model ends at court_review.
Privacy and redaction: an agency may delete identifying details to prevent an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy (2). Law enforcement disciplinary records must, or may, be redacted before disclosure (2-b, 2-c). Home addresses of employees and retirees need not be disclosed (7). These limit what is released but are not modelled as steps.
The three ways a request is granted (in the first response, after an acknowledgement, or on appeal) rejoin at pay_fee as an exclusive merge (join 'any'), and the two ways of denying, written or by missed deadline, rejoin at appeal the same way. Willful concealment or destruction of a record to prevent inspection is a violation (8). That is an offence, not a step.