Lawmakers weigh changes to CT open records law. What does it mean?

State lawmakers are considering a number of bills this session that could alter what types of information journalists, lawyers and average citizens can obtain from state agencies, local police departments, public colleges and universities and Connecticut’s 169 municipalities.

The legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee forwarded several bills to the House and Senate earlier this year that would exempt state employees’ home addresses, information related to academic research, and portions of police body camera footage from public disclosure.

The debates surrounding those bills are emblematic of the perpetual push and pull over the state’s Freedom of Information Act, the state law that enables all residents to inspect or obtain records from public institutions and to access government meetings.

The state’s attorney general, local police chiefs, public employees and university professors pushed for the bills this session by arguing that more limits on Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act, also known as FOIA, are necessary to protect people’s privacy or to shield individuals from harassment or threats.

But other state officials and outside groups that advocate for government transparency warned lawmakers that portions of the bills will make FOIA requests more difficult to navigate and may cut off access to records that are necessary for people to hold state and local officials accountable.

Here’s what to know.

What is the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act?

The Connecticut Freedom of Information Act was passed by lawmakers nearly 50 years ago, in 1975.

The law allows anyone from the general public to review or obtain copies of public records from both state government and local municipalities.

It also presumes that a record maintained by a government body — think police departments, boards of education, state health department or even the governor’s office — is considered a public record, unless there is a specific law on the books that blocks that record from being disclosed or shared.

Connecticut already has a significant number of exemptions in state law that prevent the public from obtaining specific types of documents and information. There are protections for things like medical records, trade secrets and certain documents tied to ongoing criminal investigations.

When lawmakers gather in Hartford each year, however, they often propose bills that seek to expand the types of government records the public is blocked from seeing.

In 2023, for instance, lawmakers passed a law to ensure the public can’t access whistleblower complaints that are sent to state auditors.

What changes to FOIA are lawmakers considering this year?

One bill that lawmakers could take up by the end of this session — SB 394 — would create a significant new FOIA exemption for records maintained by the faculty or staff at Connecticut’s colleges and universities.

That legislation would block anyone from obtaining records tied to “teaching or research on medical, artistic, scientific, legal or other scholarly issues” — in essence, many records that professors or other university staff keep on file as part of their jobs in higher education.

Another bill — SB 431 — would add to a preexisting list of circumstances in which state and local police can withhold footage from the body cameras that troopers and officers are now required to wear while on duty.

Among other things, the bill would enable police to redact any body camera footage that is captured inside a private residence, even if the police are serving a warrant or arresting someone inside that home. It would also allow them to charge up to $100 per hour to redact, pixelate or mute the camera footage that is requested.

There are also two related bills that would prevent the state from releasing the home addresses of state employees.

The first — HB 5447 — would prevent the state from releasing the home addresses for employees at the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office, if they ask for confidentiality.

And the second — SB 436 — would take that even further by preventing the state from releasing the home addresses of any state employee.

Who is supporting that legislation and why?

The proponents of those bills are largely government officials and public employees —the people who may see their records turned over via a FOIA request.

The bill that would exempt records related to teaching or research at colleges and universities, for instance, was pushed this session primarily by the University of Connecticut’s faculty union.

Michael Bailey, the Executive Director of UConn’s American Association of University Professors, argued that the law change is necessary to protect professors from harassment from outside groups who may seek to discredit or attack their research.

In his written testimony to lawmakers, Bailey specifically noted academic research into climate change, stem cells, vaccination and abortion as areas where professors face “interference” via public records requests.

“The proposed language gives the university administration the necessary tools to
immediately deny malicious requests that only intend to harass, intimidate, or discredit scientists whose research or teaching they simply don’t like,” Bailey said of SB 394.

In a similar fashion, it is largely local police chiefs that are advocating for HB 431, the legislation that would exempt body camera footage from inside people’s homes.

The testimony submitted by several police chiefs doesn’t explain why it would be necessary to restrict the release of body camera footage from private residences. Instead, their testimony largely focuses on the parts of the bill that would allow local police departments to charge a fee when redacting such videos.

Among the people who are advocating for the bills that shield state employee addresses from public disclosure are state employee unions and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.

Both pointed out in written testimony that a long list of public employees — including judges, court officials, police officers, public defenders and fire fighters — are already guaranteed that their addresses can’t be released through via FOIA.

But Tong and union leaders argued that hundreds and thousands of other state employees need to have their home addresses shielded in the same way because of the damage that information could cause if someone used it to target a public employee.

“Public employees do critical work for the people of Connecticut, and I would never want that work to put any of us, our families, or our co-workers at risk because someone abused the FOIA process,” Carl Chisem, the president of the Connecticut Employees Union Independent, SEIU Local 511, told lawmakers.

[OPINION: Protect CT public legal professionals from harassment]

Who is opposing that legislation and why?

There are a handful of organizations that frequently raise objections to bills that seek to limit disclosure of public records.

They include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information and, in many instances, the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission, which is responsible for adjudicating disputes over the state’s open records law.

There is a recurring theme in the arguments those groups make when opposing restrictions to FOIA: namely, that limiting access to government records will lessen transparency and undermine the democratic system of government.

That notion pervades many of the arguments the groups made against the specific bills this session.

In the case of SB-394, the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information argued that professors and other people who work at public universities should be subject to public records requests.

“The faculty members who would be covered by this legislation work on billion-dollar
campuses paid for by the public, the research they perform is paid for with public monies — be they state or federal dollars — and their salaries are paid by the public,” Michele Jacklin, CCFOI’s legislative co-chair, wrote. “Yet this bill blocks public access to just about everything in public higher education with the exception of financial records.”

The ACLU used a similar line of attack against the bill that would allow police departments to redact body camera footage from inside homes.

“When government agencies, especially institutions of policing, deny access to records or conduct business in shadows instead of the public view, we all lose,” Jess Zaccagnino, the policy counsel for the Connecticut branch of the ACLU, wrote.

As for the bills restricting access to home addresses, the opponents of that legislation concede that a law passed in 1995 prohibited the state from sharing addresses for judges, magistrates, prosecutors and other officials considered to be “at risk.”

But CCFOI and others said the number of state employees covered under that law has continued to swell in years since, slowly eroding the state’s public records law.

Even more, they argued those bills would do little to protect the home addresses of public employees in the internet age, when you can find a host of personal information online.

Colleen Murphy, the executive director of the CT Freedom of Information Commission, said the same home addresses that people want to make confidential via FOIA will still be available to the public through land records, voter records and local property tax records.

[OPINION: CT’s attack on freedom of information has escalated]