By Terry Cowgill
While the freedom-of-information outlook has often been rather grim during the transparency-challenged Malloy administration, the General Assembly’s regular session finished up with some encouraging news.
And gosh knows, we could use some. Remember the “Task Force on Victim Privacy and the Public’s Right to Know,” the ill-advised government secrecy panel formed in the emotional aftermath of the Newtown school massacre? And there was the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which lobbied (apparently unsuccessfully) to get a slew of new FOI exemptions passed for towns and cities.
And don’t forget the disastrous Office of Government Accountability, a Malloy-inspired effort to consolidate several agencies, including three of the largest autonomous watchdog units, and essentially put them under his control. The act, which (shockingly) included the Freedom of Information Commission, was met with cries of well-earned protest from open-government advocates that grew even louder after a pair of arrogant performances on the part of the OGA’s first two executive administrators. [Read More]