Chris Powell: Municipalities should be posting their most interesting records

By Chris Powell

(Full column can be viewed here)

Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo is sore at people who, he says, make lots of requests for access to town records under Connecticut’s freedom-of-information law. “Some people are abusing the system,” Camillo says, and requesting town records “has been weaponized and we’re getting harassed.”

So his administration has begun posting on Greenwich’s internet site the names of all FOI requesters and the subjects of their requests.

This is perfectly legal. No one who requests access to a public record can very well object if his own request is a public record too. But Camillo’s new practice seems meant to retaliate against and embarrass requesters. It’s mistaken and almost surely will fail.

For anyone who is making FOI requests mainly to annoy town officials isn’t likely to be embarrassed in the least by publicity. To the contrary, such people probably will welcome publicity and figure that their renown will help intimidate town officials and employees in the future.

Besides, Connecticut’s FOI law now authorizes government officials to petition the Freedom of Information Commission for relief from a “vexatious requester,” a person whose requests for records are so numerous and redundant as to constitute abuse. While they are few, there are such people and the commission has taken action against some, exempting the government agency being harassed from having to respond to the requester.

So if First Selectman Camillo really thinks any FOI requester is “abusing the system,” he should identify the abuser in a complaint to the FOI Commission, whereupon the commission may call a hearing that may be as much an inconvenience to the requester as the requester’s requests are to town officials.

There’s no harm in posting FOI requests on a town’s internet site as Greenwich is doing, but there’s not much public service in it either. Indeed, if a municipality or state agency is going to put more effort into posting records on its internet site, many records would be of far more public interest than FOI requests.

For example, municipalities could post their payrolls as state government does. Some municipal government salaries are extraordinary but overlooked. Excessive overtime for police officers and others is often a scandal.

Municipal employee job evaluations and disciplinary records should be posted too. Those records are where some big scandals are hidden.

While teacher evaluations, alone among all government employee evaluations, long have been exempted from disclosure under state FOI law — a testament to the influence of teacher unions and the subservience of state legislators to the worst of special interests — nothing prevents municipalities from disclosing teacher evaluations voluntarily just as municipalities are required to disclose the evaluations of other employees.

With local journalism weakening, these days most municipal governments have little serious news coverage and few if any reporters inspect disciplinary records regularly.

Posting more records about government’s own performance would show the public far more about who is really “abusing the system.” Any annoyance to government officials from this greater transparency might be offset by accountability and better management.