A presentation by Town Counsel Ira Bloom to the Board of Selectmen on Monday night, Apr. 6, about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), board authority and meeting practices evolved into a broader discussion about governance, transparency and how board members conduct public business in Wilton.
While Bloom did not explicitly connect his remarks to any specific issues, the discussion that followed — including questions from selectmen and comments from First Selectman Toni Boucher — reflected ongoing concerns about communication, procedure and public access.
Bloom emphasized that FOIA governs nearly all aspects of local government, including meetings, subcommittees and communications.
“The public’s business should be done in public,” he said. “That’s what they tell you at [the CT FOIA Commission].”
He said it was important to make sure that officials understand the requirements of the law, including providing all documents to the public in a timely manner.
Bloom said that with reliance on email and digital communications, it’s become more difficult to determine what constitutes a public meeting and, therefore, must be made public. He said the key aspect was when a quorum of members — three or more in the case of the BOS — come together and communicate on a substantive matter over which they have some control as elected officials.
“One-on-one technically is not a quorum … but I would be very careful,” Bloom said, noting how conversations between two people can evolve into broader discussions — including email exchanges — that involve three people and technically become a public meeting.
He cautioned that even informal conversations can quickly become subject to FOIA statutes.
“It’s the exchange of ideas that creates the meeting,” he added, advising the selectmen to avoid back-and-forth communications outside of public meetings.
“If one person wants to put out an opinion as to what they will do at the public meeting, you can get by with that, but if there’s a response to that opinion then you’re getting close to creating a meeting.”
“And it just results in problems, and so really the best thing is to just avoid that and just wait until you’re at your [board] table … and have the meeting right there,” he said.
Bloom also shared thoughts on the mores and protocols of being a board member separate of the legal requirements.
“Once a substantive decision is made, it really is the chair of the board that should speak for the board,” he said. “Now is there a statute that says that? No, there is not. But there is something called ‘good boardsmanship’ that most of us learn about.”
“If you have a four-to-one vote on something and you’re reporting it to the Board of Finance, it’s considered inappropriate — I can’t say illegal — but it’s inappropriate for the one person who voted against it to get up and say, ‘I want to tell you why I voted against it.’ That’s sort of considered not the right thing to do.”
“It gets violated in some towns from time to time and it can cause confusion,” he said, citing what he learned from being a former Board of Education chair in Westport. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
Discussion highlights concerns over cost and volume of FOIA requests
The discussion also highlighted concerns from town officials about the volume and cost of FOIA requests — formal requests made by members of the public under FOIA statutes to access government records to ensure transparency and accountability.
Journalists often use FOIA requests as a tool to obtain public records and uncover information that may not be readily disclosed by officials.
“We seem to have more than our fair share,” Boucher said of FOIA requests and related litigation. “It seems like it takes a great deal of time, but also cost with regards to legal issues.”
Bloom agreed that requests can be resource-intensive, describing recent FOIA requests the town has received as “time-consuming.”
“We work hard to comply and make sure that everybody follows the rules, if they’re document requests … The FOIA requests are just increasingly commonplace and they do get very expensive, because you do have to end up going to Hartford for them,” he said.
“Sometimes we get claims that have zero merit,” he added. “Then we have to contest them and we usually win, frankly, but they do get costly.”
At the same time, Bloom said transparency remains the most effective way to reduce conflict.
“The best way to counter that was for town officials to do everything in public … and provide the documents that have to be provided,” he said.
GMW Editor pushes back on characterization of FOIA during Public Comment
Bloom and Boucher’s characterization of the costs and attention demanded by FOIA requests prompted a response during public comment from GOOD Morning Wilton Editor and Publisher Heather Borden Herve, who challenged their framing.
“FOIA is not a problem,” she said. “It is a fundamental right of the public, and I don’t think that that point was made very clearly tonight.”
Borden Herve and GOOD Morning Wilton have made fewer than eight FOIA requests of the Town over the last two years based on different story topics that GMW has reported on or pursued, in the process discovering missing or incomplete information provided to the public.
“Requests may be time-consuming for the town, but they are often a direct response to situations where information has not been fully presented or readily accessible to the public in the first place. When transparency is incomplete, formal requests become necessary,” she said.
Borden Herve told the selectmen that officials should avoid framing FOIA requests in a way that gives the public the impression they are negative or a burden.
“For journalists and residents alike, these requests are a vital tool to understand how decisions are made and to ensure accountability,” she said, adding, “Open government builds trust. FOIA is not an obstacle to that goal; it is one of the primary ways a government that serves the public can achieve it.”
Charter authority and governance questions remain
Bloom also responded to selectmen questions over how authority is divided within town government, noting that many questions depend on the specifics of Wilton’s Town Charter and that each town’s charter is different.
With regard to who held authority over the process of reallocating and transferring certain funds within the BOS budget — between the first selectman, BOS members or the Board of Finance — Bloom deferred answering pending a closer read of the Town Charter on the issue.
Similarly, he reserved giving a final answer on how authority and responsibility was divided on certain personnel matters within the town, specifically new hires and setting salaries.
He said the Board of Selectmen had purview over department heads, while the First Selectman has authority over hiring and setting salaries for other employees, though Bloom said how “department head” is defined would require further clarification.
“You’d have to go through the charter carefully … Some might be less obvious,” he said.
Not at all surprising that Ms “Behind Closed Doors” Boucher has an issue with FOIA.