No need for secrecy with Renaissance

At Wednesday's City Council meeting, officials plan to hold a closed-door, executive session to talk about negotiations between the city, the Bristol Downtown Development Corp. and Renaissance Downtowns. Let's assume it's just dandy under the state open government laws for that to happen. It probably is. But just because something can be discussed in secret doesn't mean it must be done out of the public's view. And in this case at least, it's hard to see any justification for it. Renaissance is supposed to be coming up with an alternative plan to begin its Depot Square project. The BDDC will likely review it soon. That plan will be made public, officials have already told me. At the same time, there's a Hartford real estate outfit performing an independent review. I think its work, which is due for completion this month, will also be public. What the council does will be public. What the BDDC does will be public. What Renaissance does will be public. What Goman+York does will be public. The only thing that isn't going to be public is, oddly, the discussion by the city's elected leaders. That doesn't make a whit of sense. What are they doing in secret that can't be said or done in the open? At the very least, they ought to explain in a whole lot more depth what the heck they're thinking and why before they disappear into a little room with no cameras and no audience. Adherence to the idea and spirit of open government is a whole lot more important than mere obedience to the terms of the law.
Copyright 2014 All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Release the Sandy Hook papers NOW

It now appears the state police won’t release records related to the Sandy Hook School massacre until perhaps September.

There’s no reason for the delay.

Connecticut’s Freedom of Information law allows law enforcement to keep records secret if they needed for an active police investigation.

That may make sense, at least in some cases.

But there is no active investigation of Sandy Hook anymore. There is no suspect on the lam. There is nobody sitting in jail waiting for trial. By all accounts, there is nobody, anywhere who is eyed by police as a possible accomplice.

There is no active investigation. At best, there is an active effort to write a report.

The law says the records can be held secret if they “were compiled in connection with the detection or investigation of crime, if the disclosure of said records would not be in the public interest because it would result in the disclosure” of a confidential informant, a witness who could be endangered, investigative techniques not known to the public or information that would be prejudicial for a potential law enforcement action.

Not one of those exemptions applies in this case.

I can understand why information was kept under wraps during those first difficult days and weeks, when the anguish was raw and the case still not completely clear. But we all know the basics of what happened now. We know who did it. We know how he did it. And we will probably never really comprehend why he did it.

The state has no reason to hide information we paid to collect from us. It needs to lay out what it has gathered and let the public makes it own decisions about what it all means.

Yes, produce a report. Try to make it sound something like English, too, for a change.

But let’s not pretend there is an active investigation going on. This is not what the law was meant to protect. We don’t live in a police state. I’d like to think we live in a state that trusts its citizens and prefers to let the sunlight shine.

Open the books already.

Copyright 2013 All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Ward challenges GOP to take the lead

Fed up by Republican complaints that he is moving too slowly to consolidate government departments, Mayor Art Ward recently offered to let the GOP-controlled City Council spearhead the process.

Bristol Mayor Art Ward

“It is quite evident, based upon the City Council’s level of frustration and suggestions of the consolidation efforts not being done readily enough, that the members of the City Council seem to possess more expertise on this project than I, or anyone else involved up to this point,” Ward recently wrote in an email to the council.

Ward said he would “graciously entertain nominations for the names of any City Council members who wish to volunteer their experience, time and wisdom to become the chairperson of this effort,” Ward wrote.

The mayor said that nobody has yet expressed interest in taking up the position.

The move followed complaints by two GOP councilors – David Mills and Derek Czenczelewski – about the slow pace of consolidation efforts.

Ward said the initial push has been to try to consolidate the computer divisions of City Hall and the Board of Education. He said it probably wouldn’t save money but it would improve efficiency.

Mills asked the personnel director in an April 11 email obtained through a Freedom of Information request how come nothing has been mentioned about other potential areas for consolidation, including “vehicle maintenance, putting all buildings under one department and all public grounds under another.”

“Has this even been discussed yet? It has been five months since it was proposed to the mayor,” Mills said.

Ward wrote back to Mills, “Patience is a virtue.”

Mills fired back: “In other words, it hasn’t started yet.” Link to full story

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

The night Mosback crashed his cruiser

Seconds after Police Officer Robert Mosback veered off Riverside Avenue at high speed at 11:22 p.m. on June 26, a woman phoned 911.
“A cop just hit a pole,” she said.
“A cop hit a pole?” the dispatcher responded.
“Yeah, real bad,” she answered.
“Where?” the dispatcher asked.
“Riverside Avenue,” she said, before naming a nearby business.
“We’re sending help,” the dispatcher said, then asked rather plaintively, “Can you see if he’s OK?”
At about the same time, another caller, a man, reached a different emergency dispatcher.
“Hey, listen, we’re on Riverside Avenue and one of your cruisers just hit a telephone pole,” the man said.
“A cruiser?” the dispatcher answered. “A police cruiser?”
“Yeah,” the fellow said.
The caller said “the guy seems to be unconscious” behind the wheel. “He’s not responding,” the man said.
“Are you sure it’s a Bristol police cruiser?” the dispatcher asked.
“Listen, this isn’t a joke,” the caller said.
Digital audio files obtained by The Bristol Press through a Freedom of Information Act request provide a glimpse into the confusing minutes surrounding the on-duty crash that sent Mosback to St. Francis Hospital and knocked out power to thousands of residents for hours.
Mosback, who suffered only minor injuries, resigned from the force in September after an insurance company for the city declined to pay his workers compensation claim for medical bills after discovering a laboratory report that showed the officer had been intoxicated at the time of the late night, on-duty wreck.
Nothing in the hours of audio provided by the city – including dispatch messages, phone calls and other communications – proves that anyone knew Mosback had been drinking before totaling the 2008 Ford Crown Victoria.
Mosback, a 5-year veteran who has since asked for his job back, was briefly suspended for violating departmental policies in the accident but has not been charged with any crime. Two outside investigations are underway into the police department’s handling of the case.
The audio files, which encompass the first hour after the crash, do not disclose the names of the people talking. Most are calls among public safety personnel and dispatchers.
In addition to the Mosback crash, police also had to deal with another accident, a death and a young man who had a seizure, the ordinary background of many a night.  Click here for the full story.
Here's a video I made to let everybody hear some of the audio:

If you go back to this posting, you can see some of the documents pertaining to the case. I have more to add there. Have to get to that.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Open government 101

The city's elected officials are getting a refresher course in the Freedom of Information Act in May. The need is all too obvious after last week's City Council meltdown.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Frank Johnson gets mad

The day after the Bristol Downtown Development Corp.'s last meeting, where board members held a long executive session, the nonprofit's leader felt the need to lecture his colleagues about the need for secrecy.
In a Feb. 23 email he sent to the entire board and its lawyers, Johnson said that "certain representations and characterizations were passed to outside parties regarding conversations that took place in confidence."
Johnson said the breach of secrecy caused "certain members of the city staff" to become "very upset" and the loose lips exacerbated "the aready complicated" negotiations between the BDDC and the city about the terms that should be offered to Renaissance Downtowns.
Johnson said he felt "very disheartened" about the leak, which he did not detail.
"We may disagree inside the room, we may offer strong opinions, we may even comment on the other parties involved in the negotiations; but what is said in the room should stay in the room," Johnson said.
Johnson called the breach "totally unprofessional."
"I ask that this email remain CONFIDENTIAL and not be forwarded to any other parties," Johnson concluded.
To be fair, nobody leaked it. I received a copy as part of a Freedom of Information Act request for information that I'll probably still be sorting through when the project is done.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Yet more unnecessary secrecy from the police

Give the police this: they're consistent.
But just as it was wrong for them to refuse to name the man who allegedly ran over Henry Waye on George Street last March, killing the boy, it is wrong for them to decline to identify the driver who plowed into Jeff Dziob at his Rosemary Lane home yesterday. Dziob, 38, died, leaving a wife and two children behind.
The police said she's in the hospital so they can't identify her, a totally irrelevant point.
Telling the public who was behind the wheel during an accident is not the same as accusing them of a crime. It's just telling the community vital information that we have a right to know.
All of this unnecessary secrecy just breeds gossip and discontent.
The police need to reconsider a dumb policy.

Update Tuesday, 9:50 a.m. -- Channel 3 in Hartford identifies the driver as 49-year-old Fran Ablesk.
The TV station also has another story about a standoff with police in Bristol last night.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Johnson answers executive session questions

The chairman of the Bristol Downtown Development Corp., Frank Johnson, just sent me this:
Jennifer’s question about Renaissance ‘being spread too thin’ was raised in Executive session as were a number of other questions by board members. Each in turn was determined to be inappropriate for Executive session and the discussion moved around the table. However Dave Sheridan and I did our best to cut off such discussion and focus on only financial issues. Dave and his associate composed several specific questions that were germane to the purpose of the Executive Session which was purely financial in nature.

The only questions posed to Mr. Monti in Executive Session and to Mr. D’Amato in Executive Session were these previously crafted and agreed to financial questions. They were asked and they were answered and following the Executive Session each was asked in public if they would submit to the BDDC attorney the documents that were inquired about in Executive Session.

Ms. Janelle is correct, her question was not posed to Renaissance in the Executive Session because it was not germane to the purpose of the executive session. She could have, and should have raised it in public if she was that concerned.

The final question I asked of all directors at the conclusion of the Executive session was, “Other than what we intend to ask Renaissance and D’Amato to provide; is there any other financial information that any member feels they will need in order to intelligently cast a vote at our next meeting?’ Everyone replied “NO” including Ms. Janelle.

It is fair for you to question what discussion or actions took place in the Executive Session, but it is impossible for me, with a strong minded board facing an enormous decision to control what each person says or asks. She raised it, it was not relevant to the purpose of the session, it was not further discussed, it was not asked of or answered by the developer

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

So what's so secret about this?

In her email to the Bristol Downtown Development Corp. board and others this morning, Jennifer Janelle included this paragraph:
In addition to Waterbury, Meriden, Norwich, and Nashua, the July 2009 edition of New Urban News states that Monti has targeted and is putting in proposals in 22 communities:  Paterson, NJ; Springfield, MA; Nashua, Concord and Manchester, NH; Norwalk, Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Britain, Hartford, Bristol, Meriden, Enfield, Windsor, New Haven, New London and Norwich, CT; Glen Cove, Long Beach, Hempstead, Copaigue and Freeport, New York.    This heightens my concern about being spread too thin (which I raised in executive session) having enough money to go around and spending enough time on Bristol.  I also found City Council minutes which show that a proposal has also been submitted in Bedford, NH.  I specifically requested in Executive Session that we ask how many proposals there are out there and what has been promised to each, but that question was not posed.
I know the Freedom of Information Act pretty well and can't see grounds that would allow BDDC commissioners to talk in secret session about whether Renaissance was "spread too thin" or to request that officials find "how many proposals there out there and what has been promised to each."
Those are the sorts of discussions, in fact, that ought to be happening in public.
Had they been, we would know a lot more about the build-up to the downtown meltdown on Monday night.
Instead, it looks like much that we should have known happened not in the public's eye but behind closed doors.
This is not how government should operate.
It certainly raises all sorts of questions about what else has transpired out of view.
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

City considers allowing committee members to participate through internet

City councilors agreed recently to consider allowing municipal board members to participate in meetings without actually attending them.

First-term city Councilor David Mills said that more people would be able to participate if they could sometimes attend through web-based meeting programs or other electronic means.

“Maybe the pool could be increased” of possible board members if the city made the change, Mills said.

At the suggestion of an assistant city attorney, Edward Krawiecki, Jr, the council voted unanimously to have the Ordinance Committee explore the idea.

The city charter requires members and alternates of every board, commission or committee to “regularly attend meetings” and mandates they be thrown off if they miss 60 percent of the regular sessions during the year or if they skip three in a row.

It doesn't define what attendance means. State law doesn't appear to resolve the issue either, though it is clear that meetings can be held over the phone.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Other housing managers also got secret raises

Housing Director Mitzy Rowe wasn’t the only manager at the Bristol Housing Authority to receive a secret raise this summer.
All of the supervisors for the Bristol Housing Authority were evaluated behind closed doors in June and new salaries for them set by consensus, according to the authority’s attorney.
Salvatore Vitrano, the agency’s lawyer, said Wednesday that four housing commissioners listened during an executive session in June as Rowe talked about the performance of each housing supervisor and recommended pay hikes for each.
While some received the same 3 percent hikes that the authority’s union members later got, others wound up with more.
Some ended up with the same 5 percent pay raise that Rowe received -- at her recommendation.
Vitrano said the raises were partly based on job performance but they were also meant to reflect changing duties.
It’s not clear which managers received the raises or how much each got.
Vitrano said that commissioners realized they should vote on the supervisors’ pay hikes in public as well as Rowe’s salary, but could not add it to the agenda for Tuesday’s special meeting where they renewed the director’s raise in public.
At the next regularly scheduled housing board meeting -- at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20 in the meeting room at Cambridge Park -- commissioners plan to vote again on the pay hikes they handed out in secret in June.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Secret pay hike draws criticism for BHA

A secret 5 percent pay hike awarded to the Bristol Housing Authority’s director in June drew harsh criticism Wednesday.
Mayor Art Ward said he was upset and bewildered that housing commissioners would give Mitzy Rowe a 5 percent pay hike in the middle of a recession.
“I don’t see how they could not have realized” the need for them “to demonstrate the severity of the conditions” in Bristol’s economy by keeping any salary hikes minimal, the mayor said.
“Everybody around us is not getting raises,” said Ward, who voted this year to slash the mayor’s pay by 5 percent in the coming term to ensure the city’s leader sets the right tone.
Rowe received her pay hike to $100,000 annually in a closed-door executive session in June after the board reached a consensus to hike her salary by 5 percent. The decision was never ratified in public until Tuesday night, after city Councilor Ken Cockayne and reporters began asking questions about it.
“It was really an oversight,” said Brian Wolverton, the chairman of the housing commission. “There was never any intent to keep it out of the public forum.”
Wolverton said that Rowe, who declined to comment, got a raise starting July 1 because of her outstanding performance in the job and because the authority could afford to pay her. He said nobody talked about whether it was appropriate to hike the salary so much during hard times.
‘Honestly, if someone brought it to the table that evening and said maybe this wouldn’t look so good, I would have given it consideration, but honestly it just didn’t come up that night,” Wolverton said.
Cockayne said that in “this tough economy,” when the city and state governments are asking workers for concessions and “the federal government is up to its eyeballs in debt,” he questions whether it is “morally right to take a 5 percent increase.”
Cockayne said that Rowe should not have received more than the 3 percent pay hike that BHA workers got this year.
“A fair raise would have been what the workers below her received,” Cockayne said. “If they’re good for a 3 percent raise, then why wouldn’t the director be good for a 3 percent raise?”
Wolverton said the panel wanted to give Rowe an increase over and above the norm to reward her for a solid performance in a difficult job.
Though housing commissioners said the failure to record in the minutes that Rowe received a raise was an oversight, several officials said privately it was done deliberately to avoid letting the BHA workers’ union know how much more the director would receive.
The commission didn’t want to complicate negotiations, the officials said.
Wolverton said it’s possible they meant to keep it secret.”We may have been glibly instructed” to keep it quiet until negotiations were over with the union, he said, but he doesn’t remember it.
“That would be true for the management increases” generally, he added.
The housing panel was told this week by its attorney it did not have to vote in public because there was no dissent about the pay hike, but opted to do it anyway, Wolverton said.
“We decided it was just a matter of good form to officiate it in the form of a vote,” Wolverton said.
The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission’s Valicia Hamon said Wednesday she urged Vitrano to push the commissioners to vote in public because it would ratify the solid performance review done behind closed doors.
She said, though, that it doesn’t appear an improper vote was taken in executive session in June because it was “really a performance review” more than a discussion about pay levels.
“The executive session wasn’t about how much. It was about how great,” Hamon said.
It did, however, result in a pay hike that Rowe began receiving in July without public notice.
Wolverton said the commission is establishing new procedures to make sure it evaluates managers in the right way and awards raises in public in the future. Transparency is crucial, Wolverton said.
Wolverton said he regrets the way this was handled.
“It was a very regrettable chain of events, I think,” Wolverton said.
Ward said the housing authority operates separately from the city government, but because the mayor appoints commissioners, he felt “a moral obligation” to speak out against the raise that Rowe received.
He said that his own decision to support a 5 percent pay cut for whoever is elected mayor next month shows the magnitude of the fiscal crisis that’s hit the community.
Taking a 5 percent salary increase in such times, Ward said is wrong.
“They really need to be cognizant of the effect on the community” that so large a pay hike can create, the mayor said.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

911 call from Henry Waye's friend alerts police

Here's a story about the 911 call that police received from Logan Costante, the boy who was walking with 14-year-old Henry Waye, Jr when a pickup truck slammed into Waye on the evening of March 5. It's heartbreaking to hear.

And here is another about the Freedom of Information requests we've made seeking from the police as much information about the fatal accident as possible.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

An outrageous change in open government law

It turns out that a pretty good legal argument exists for keeping secret the proposals received by the Bristol Downtown Development Authority and any other "public agency" that doesn't want the responses to its requests for proposals circulating to the public.
In 2007, the state legislature added an exemption to the open records law that allows officials to keep the responses secret "provided the chief executive officer of such public agency certifies that the public interest" in disclosing them is outweighed by the need to keep them secret.
What that means is that bid responses can be kept confidential if a secretive mayor wants them to be. It means that the government can treat bid responses the same way it treats internal security audits or the home addresses of corrections officers.
It's absolutely wrong.
I don't know exactly what the arguments were made in the legislature to allow this change or who voted for it, but I'm going to explore that. We can't just sit back and allow government to lock away more and more of the information we need.
By the way, we still don't have the entire document that was submitted for the downtown site. The final appendix remains off-limits, though I do have an Freedom of Information request pending.

For those interested,
here are the allowed exemptions to the FOI, including this one:

(24) Responses to any request for proposals or bid solicitation issued by a public agency or any record or file made by a public agency in connection with the contract award process, until such contract is executed or negotiations for the award of such contract have ended, whichever occurs earlier, provided the chief executive officer of such public agency certifies that the public interest in the disclosure of such responses, record or file is outweighed by the public interest in the confidentiality of such responses, record or file.

Update:
It sailed through the legislature's committees, as part of a larger measure called Substitute Senate Bill No. 1182, AN ACT CONCERNING ADMINISTRATIVE PROCEDURES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS, AUDITING OF LARGE CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS, ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW OF CERTAIN LAND TRANSFERS, GRANT PAYMENTS TO MUNICIPALITIES, ADVERTISING ON STATE BUILDINGS AND CERTAIN EXEMPTIONS TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT.:

Here are links to the bill's whole history, including roll call lists that show all of Bristol's legislators voted for it.

Maybe someone else will have some luck figuring out how come they made the change. I can't find anything at all that explains the thinking. Reading through testimony and transcripts, it seems at first glance anyway, that this thing got stuck in there and just sailed right through. I have no idea who did it or why.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

First look at school budget

In another example of last-minute announcements -- barely making the statutory cutoff for advance notice -- the Board of Education's Finance Committee intends to meet at noon on Friday in the Superintendent’s Conference Room of the Board of Education Administration Building, 129 Church Street, Bristol, Connecticut.
The agenda says there will be a presentation of the proposed budget, which is marked as an "action item," which presumably means that it's more than a presentation. Someone must plan for the committee to approve something or another as well. The wording really ought to be more clear.
The agenda also includes "other business," but that's illegal since it is not a regularly scheduled meeting so only items on the agenda are allowed by law.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

"Script" case dismissed by state FOI Commission

An open government complaint that may have helped sway the outcome of the Democratic mayoral primary was dismissed this month by the state Freedom of Information Commission.
The panel ruled that the “script” that former city Councilor Ellen Zoppo wrote to guide Mayor William Stortz and most of her colleagues through a crucial meeting about downtown almost a year ago did not violate open government laws.
There was never a secret session “to plan how to manipulate discussion” at the January 4 public meeting or to dictate its outcome, the commission ruled.
The state’s decision clears Zoppo of wrongdoing in the case brought by resident Jay Meisinger.
Zoppo, the Democrat’s endorsed mayoral candidate, lost a September 11 primary to challenger Art Ward, a longtime city councilor who went on to win the general election in November. She no longer holds a political position.
The case arose because of an Ordinance Committee meeting in January that Zoppo chaired.
Zoppo wrote out a detailed “script” for the meeting that gave the City Council’s approval to the new downtown corporation. She later called it “talking points” and expressed the wish that she’d never used the word script.
In its ruling, the FOI Commission said that Zoppo’s “use of the term ‘script’ and the level of detail that the script contains reasonably gave rise to the complainant’s suspicion of a secretly manipulated meeting and pre-determined decisions.”
But the panel determined that Zoppo and other city leaders did not actually orchestrate the session improperly.
However, the commission advised Zoppo and the city “to re-evaluate such use of scripted procedure and discussion in public meetings” in the future.
The panel said that it believed Zoppo “prepared the script in an effort to keep the January 4, 2007 meeting ‘on topic’ and to make sure that council members would have an opportunity to express their views on the agenda topics in an orderly manner” rather than to dictate the outcome.
Zoppo gave copies of the script to Stortz and to every city councilor except Ward, who was deliberately iced out.
The commission determined that Zoppo “did not share the script” with Ward “because she believed it would be counter-productive, in light of her experience that he had behaved with hostility toward her” and other city leaders.
It said that Zoppo “testified that she wanted to avoid ‘another verbal barrage’ by” Ward so she kept the script secret from him.
The incident came to light in June when the Press received, in response to a Freedom of Information request, copies of emails between Stortz and Zoppo that discussed the script. Zoppo readily provided copies of the script when the Press asked her about it.
Here is the link to the state's ruling.

For background, check out these earlier Bristol Blog posts:
Is Ward behind the FOI complaint? (Aug. 10, 2007)
Mocabee speaks out on FOI complaint (Aug. 10, 2007)
FOI complaint lodged against Zoppo, Stortz, city (Aug. 10, 2007, includes text of FOI complaint)
Council hopeful Rich Kilby weighs in on script controversy (June 10, 2007)
McCauley defends Zoppo (June 8, 2007)
Zoppo stands by scripted meetings (June 6, 2007)
What do you think about scripting city meetings? (June 5, 2007)
Scripting city meetings (June 5, 2007, includes the script used for the January meeting)

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

It's 7 a.m., why aren't you at the Industrial Committee meeting?

Well, it's certainly not dark at 7 a.m.
But, then again, it's not light either.
The streetlights are still on and it's a bit murky.
In any case, it's no time for a municipal meeting like this morning's Industrial Committee on-site session at the new industrial park beside the former Superior Electric.
You can't shine a light on government in the murk before sunrise.

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
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Meeting at 7 a.m. Wednesday

Yes, that's not a typo, for a change.
The BDA's Industrial Committee is actually holding a meeting at 7 a.m. tomorrow to do a "walk through" of the new industrial park project next door to the former Superior Electric factory.
That would be shortly after sunrise, for those keeping track.
Now I'm sure that officials could come up with some kind of rationale for why this is a needed meeting at a necessary time, but c'mon.
A truly open government doesn't hold public meetings at 7 a.m. That's so obvious that it seems scarcely worth mentioning.

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
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Preliminary ruling on "scripted meeting' FOI complaint

The state Freedom of Information Commission will decide Wednesday whether or not it agrees with the preliminary decision of its hearing officer in the FOI case brought against the city and former city Councilor Ellen Zoppo by resident Jay Meisinger.
The preliminary decision, which favors the city, can be downloaded here:

Page one

Page two

Page three

Page four

Probably the easiest way for most people to read the documents is to print them or download them and view them with a picture viewing program.
The FOI Commission will likely make its decision at a 2 p.m. Wednesday meeting. Most of the time, it backs preliminary rulings.

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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
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Tax dollars flushed away?

Republican mayoral hopeful Ken Johnson just sent this along:

I’m unhappy that the initial hearing for Freedom of Information complaint about scripted meetings happened yesterday. I state again: we are all aware that the complaint served one purpose and one purpose only- to poke a political stick in the eye of Mr. Ward’s opponent in the Democratic primary. I’ve repeatedly asked my opponent to ask his friend Mr. Meisinger to withdraw the complaint and last Monday Mr. Ward publicly refused to do so. I’ve warned that this could cost the taxpayers money to defend this frivolous case. Sure enough, a hearing took place in Hartford yesterday and we’ve now running up the tab for the cost of outside counsel at taxpayers’ expense for the city to defend the case.
I understand that Mr. Meisinger showed up with no attorney and presented no evidence -- is the complainant even taking this seriously? I guess they’ve got to see it through to give it the appearance of legitimacy. Public disgust at watching our tax dollars being flushed away is completely justified.

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