The Department of Health (DOH) in Albany has been awful about fulfilling vital records request. It doesn’t seem possible but this year they seem to be getting even worse. In May I wrote this long blog post about them over the years. I had linked to a TV report from Channel 6 in Albany. In that report they mentioned that DOH was good about cashing checks and then not sending the genealogy requests for over 4 years. DOH solved that problem. They decided to not cash any checks. I requested a marriage certificate in early April and my check still hasn’t been cashed. I asked online and one person said they requested a certificate in January and their check still has not been cashed. Checks are normally only good for 6 months after they are written. So any of us that sent in a genealogy request this year probably will never get our certificates as the checks will be invalid when, or if, DOH ever decided to cash the checks.
Back in May DOH was 4 years behind on genealogy requests. I don’t think that anyone has received a genealogy certificate since then. It appears that they are still only doing certified vital record requests. So how are they doing on those? My spies say that it is taking 7 or 8 months to get a certified vital record. If you needed a new copy of your birth certificate for a passport or an enhanced driver’s license you would be waiting for a while. This should only take a month; not 7 or 8 months.
There was a bill going through the legislature to have all old vital records digitized and put online. It was going to cost the State nothing. The bill passed both houses in June. It didn’t make it to the Governor’s desk until October. She vetoed it. She wrote a veto message on her reason but I can’t find it online and I’m not sure why she would have vetoed it. In response, the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) wrote this letter to the Governor.
The NYG&B letter does mention that the Governor would “explore contracting with a capable vendor to digitize these records.” I didn’t mention it in May but I had heard that DOH has been spending a lot of money to digitize some of their records. I couldn’t find any proof at that time; but I have found some proof now. This report from 2021 says that eBizDocs had digitized well over 37 million images for the Health Department since 2015. I am fairly sure that eBizDocs is still digitizing their records. eBizDocs just happens to have an office about a half mile from DOH’s vital records office.
How many vital records does DOH have? After 145 years (since 1880) my best guess is they have somewhere around 3 billion birth, marriage, divorce, and death records. It would cost billions of dollars to digitize all their records. The option to have the old records digitized for free is still available to DOH.