06/20/17 – By Joe Wojtas
12/13/16 – Thumbs up to New Milford resident Greg Mullen for appealing to the state Freedom of Information Commission recently over a meeting with some members of the Board of Education’s Facilities Committee and town officials over a draft agreement on use of the former John Pettibone School, and Thumbs Up also to Facilities Committee Chairman Bob Coppola for his reasonable reaction. Coppola said he hadn’t realized he had created a quorum, and therefore a public meeting notice was required, and appreciated Mullen’s point. FOI is for the public and the more who understand how it works the better. Read More
12/11/16 – By Katrina Koerting
NEW MILFORD — A Freedom of Information complaint filed this week seeks to nullify a draft agreement between the town and the Board of Education over the proposed move of central school offices to the John Pettibone School. Read More
10/14/16 – By John Voket
After a protracted mediation process and with the clock winding down to a Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission hearing, Newtown Board of Ethics Chair Jacqueline Villa admitted to violating the state FOI Act on two separate occasions, both involving illegal executive sessions — meetings with members of her board closed to press and citizens that should have been conducted in public.[Read More]
Town Councilors Bruce Flax and Harry Watson filed the complaint with the commission on April 1, after city councilors walked out of a scheduled joint meeting with the town on March 30 to discuss highway funding. Flax said the city councilors left the joint meeting, stepped into a conference room in the Town Hall annex and closed the door. The city mayor was upset after she saw an attorney for the town in the audience, Flax said.
“To me it goes way beyond parking lot discussion,” Watson told hearing officer Mary E. Schwind. “It was a deliberate, all get up, go into another room and close the door.”
But John Casey, the attorney representing the city [Read More]
