Newtown Gets High Marks On FOI Test

By John Voket

Newtown ranked among the best of Fairfield County communities in providing access to public documents during a recent undercover project conducted by university journalism students. More than a dozen Fairfield University students celebrated the state’s Freedom of Information Act’s 30-year anniversary by going to every municipality in Fairfield County to see how its they faired in providing public access to government documents, as mandated by the FOI law.

According to their professor, Dr James Simon, his students visited three offices in each community — the police station, Board of Education, and city or town clerk’s office — and asked for documents, defined under state law as being available to the public.

While not one of the 23 cities and towns had all three offices fully in compliance with the law, according to the study released Tuesday, 51 of the 69 individual offices, or 74 percent, were violating state regulations.

Mitchell Pearlman, an attorney with the Connecticut FOI Commission said the students arrived at the individual community office during business hours.

“They asked police to see arrest records for the current and preceding week. They asked city and town clerks for all marriage license applications [with social security numbers blacked out]. They asked school officials for the teacher attendance records,” Mr Pearlman said in a release Tuesday. “In all three settings, the requested documents are defined as public records. The three types of records were picked because they were used in the 1999 Connecticut study. In most cases I suspect officials clearly knew they required public access.”

Newtown’s police department immediately provided the arrest records, and Blithe Dotson in the town clerk’s office told the visiting students she would collect the requested information and provide it as soon as she could copy and redact social security numbers on the documents.

“Most everything in our office is public information,” Ms Dotson said. “The only things we restrict are birth records less than 100 years old, and documents containing social security numbers. Those we will make available as soon as we black the numbers out.”

Although the survey found the town Board of Education office not in compliance, the unidentified journalism student had this to say about her experience:

“The secretary’s immediate response was, ‘No, that’s private.’ The requestor was walking to the car when [the person from the Board of Education office] caught up with her and asked her to come back in with her. She said that under the FOI Act, [the BOE clerk] knows she’s supposed to show the requestor certain records, but she wasn’t sure about teacher attendance records because nobody but the teachers had asked for them before.

“[The BOE clerk then] made a few phone calls, and couldn’t reach whoever she was trying to get in touch with. She took my name and phone number and said she’d call with information as soon as she finds out if she’s allowed to do so. The requestor didn’t see any records, but the secretary was aware of laws governing public record.”

Contacted Wednesday about the incident, Superintendent Evan Pitkoff said he could not verify the exact details of the incident because that clerk was not in the office to offer a first-hand explanation.

“We always want to comply with applicable FOI laws,” Dr Pitkoff said. “Of course if someone comes in and asks for information we do not have, or something that is not in ready form for public distribution, we are not required to produce those reports immediately.”

Dr Pitkoff said the secondhand information he received about the incident reflected that the staff person was willing to get the information as soon as possible.

According to Dr Simon, in many cases the students either were refused access to the documents, or municipal officials violated state regulations by demanding to know their name, to know the reason for seeing the documents, to see identification, to put the request in writing, or imposed other roadblocks that have been ruled improper under the FOI law.

 “The Freedom of Information law is for all of us, not just journalists,” said Dr Simon. “City and town officials sometimes forget that they don’t own the documents. While most public officials work hard for their communities, they have to keep in mind that any person has the right to walk into a government office and see the documents that their tax dollars paid to create.”