Whatever else people might say about Susan Bysiewicz’s campaign for Attorney General here in Connecticut, it certainly is raising some interesting questions. First and foremost in many people’s minds are questions about the qualifications to become Attorney General. On the one hand, there are the legal requirements and on the other there are the requirements of the voters. The courts are currently considering the first, and depending on their decision, the voters may or may not get a chance to express their own opinions at the polls.

The other question is about what information is public information and how that information can or should be used. The Friends of Susan 2010 campaign filed a Freedom of Information request with the Secretary of State’s office to retrieve her contact management database and allegedly used that information for emailing potential supporters. This is also being investigated and much has been written about it.

I, along with a few other reporters, and interested citizens requested the same information. I promptly received a copy of the database and I’ve spent a lot of time exploring it. I’ve also offered it to anyone that is interested and several people have grabbed my copy of the database. Eliot Gersten, the attorney for the Republican Party, was one of the people that called to get access to my copy of the database.

Yesterday, I heard that he has now filed a Freedom of Information request asking for a list of everyone that has filed a Freedom of Information request asking for the database. I haven’t verified this, and I’m considering filing a request for a list of everyone who has filed a request for a list of everyone who filed a request for the database. This could go on forever.

Yet what I’m more interested in is getting a better understanding for what public information various parts of our government has and how they respond to requests for such information. On February 8, 2010, I sent a request to the Governor’s office, the Lt. Governor’s office, the Attorney General’s office, the Secretary of State’s office, the Treasurer’s office and the Comptroller’s office asking for their copies of their constituent databases.

The first to reply was Deputy Secretary of State Leslie Mara. Through emails and phone calls, the nature of my request was quickly clarified and I received the data quickly. The next to reply was Catherine LaMarr, General Counsel for the Treasurer’s office. She checked various divisions of the Office of the Treasurer. Each division has different ways of handling requests from people interested in the operation of the Office of the Treasurer and there is no centralized database. She did say that if I wished to receive copies of written or email chronological correspondence, I should follow up with her.

Next to reply was the comptroller’s office. Like the other two offices, the comptroller’s office responded within a few hours of receiving my request. Steve Jensen, the press director for the Comptroller’s office responded letting me know that they did not have a database like the Secretary of State’s office but they do have a log of constituent inquires. He asked if that would satisfy my needs.

On February 10th, I received a response from the Attorney General’s office. In very helpful discussions with the staff, they explained that they have an extensive database containing around 70,000 records. They receive several Freedom of Information requests each month, some of it is from the media. Other requests are from law firms, including out of state lawyers investigating similar issues that the Attorney General’s office is investigating, and sometimes companies being investigated by the Attorney General’s office in an effort to find out what the office knows already.

Their calculations were that it would take around four hours to extract the requested data and make it available to me. The Freedom of Information Act provides for them to charge the person requesting this information the costs to the agency. By their calculations, it would cost between $200 and $300. At this point, the data is not worth that much to me, so I have withdrawn my request until such a time that it becomes worth it.

On February 12th, Bryan Cafferelli, Chief of Staff for Lt. Governor Michael Fedele responded. They said that they had never had a request like that and it would take them some time to investigate with their technology staff. On March 11th, I responded asking for a follow up. On April 16th, Cafferellli finally responded saying that the information should be available sometime in the middle of the following week and asked if delivering it via email would be acceptable. I indicated it would be. On Monday, April 26th, I sent another email asking if there was an update, and have not yet heard a response.

Governor Rell’s office has been the most interesting to deal with. I received a read receipt very soon after I sent my request. The next day, I received an email from Anna Ficeto, Legal Counsel for the Governor’s office. She also said they had not received a similar request and were investigating it.

On February 18th, I received an email from Ms. Ficeto. It included various emails that she had sent to people in the Governor’s office. She had asked Nuala Whelton if it was possible to obtain the data I am looking for. She said that Denise Jones told her that Leo Boulanger was looking at the system they use “to determine whether the documents could be downloaded in another format to give to the State Library at the end of the Gov’s term”.

Ms Whelton noted that “There are over 200,000 records in the Provue database – it goes back to 2004, and includes not only names of folks who wrote to the Governor but where their correspondence it was referred to, etc”.

On February 11th, Mr. Boulanger informed Ms. Whelton that “We can perform the export next week between Tuesday and Thursday”. On February 22, Ms. Whelton wrote, “Leo has the database on a memory stick. It is a microsoft access database. It is rather large database. Can you discern from the requestor what field he/she wants? All or just some? There are 82.”

I responded to the email on the 23rd stating that I simply wanted the simplest and easiest access to the data and that I was interested in all of the different fields. Some of the fields that were of interest were House Bill # and Senate Bill #, Issue, Position (none, pro, con, undecided), US Congress referral, US Senate Referral as well as various fields about referral to different agencies.

I subsequently received a phone call asking for additional information. The person calling informed me that Ms. Ficeto was no longer with the Governor’s office. They explained that some records, such as home addresses of State Judges would need to be redacted, which I understand and agreed to. Then, I never heard anything more.

In light of the news that Republican lawyers had sent an Freedom of Information request to the Secretary of State’s office asking about who had requested that database, I contacted the Governor’s office again. I received an email stating that the address I had for Ms. Ficeto was now an unknown user.

Today, I received an email from Stacey Serrano, Associate Legal Counsel in the Governor’s office. It said,

Thank you very much for your patience with this FOI request. There is a significant amount of data included in the Governor’s constituent database and your request represented a new undertaking by our legal office. After much deliberation and effort, we are denying your request for a copy of the Governor’s constituent database due to the fact that data contained in such database does not relate to the conduct of the public’s business with the meaning of Section 1-200(5) of the Connecticut General Statutes. As basis for such determination, our office is relying on several determinations by the Freedom of Information Commission which held that correspondence from constituents to members of the General Assembly need not be disclosed under FOI. Such communications were deemed to be part of a “political constituent service, unrelated to the constitutional or statutory duties of a member of the legislature or of a state official.” See FIC 1997-205, FIC 2000-161

In another ruling, the FIC opined that “individual legislators, as the elected representatives of their respective constituents, are frequently requested by constituents to assist them with, or intervene in, personal matters, particularly as they relate to some arm of government. Although this constituent service is, as a practical matter, one that is expected of legislators, and is recognized as such, it is not part of the constitutional or statutory duties of individual members of the General Assembly…the Commission believes that correspondence relating to such personal matters, unrelated to enacting legislation or law-making, is of a private nature and does not constitute a public record for purposes of the FOI Act.” FIC Declaratory Ruling #90 Similarly, the Governor, is asked by constituents daily to assist in matters of a personal nature, in ways unrelated to the constitutional or statutory duties of her Office. These matters are not of public import.

Lastly, another troubling aspect of attempting to comply with your request is Section 1-217 of the Connecticut General Statutes, which requires that addresses of certain federal and state employees be kept confidential. There is practically no way to assure that such addresses would be kept confidential in a database containing over 150,000 entries.

I have responded, urging Ms. Serrano to reconsider her position. It seems clear that the former legal counsel of the Governor’s office did not consider this data exempt from a Freedom of Information request and there was even consideration about making providing this information to the State Library. The fields in the database, such as those referring to bill numbers indicate are in fact the records are related “to enacting legislation or law-making” and “the conduct of the public’s business”.

As to the concern about “Section 1-217 of the Connecticut General Statutes, which requires that addresses of certain federal and state employees be kept confidential”, it would seem as if the Title and Organization fields in the database should make it fairly easy to remove information about such employees. If they cannot easily be removed, it reflects very poorly on the Governor’s office, since this information about officials is fairly clearly discernable in the Secretary of State’s database. If they are unable to do something as simple as this, instead of using this as grounds for a blanket rejection of providing important information about who is contacting the Governor’s office about which legislation, the two address fields could be removed to comply with Section 1-217, while still providing essential information.

In speaking with various lawyers and reporters about this, there have been several possible explanations suggested. Some have suggested that the Governor’s legal staff is trying to stave off a possible Freedom of Information Commission complaint against their handling of the case. Others have suggested it is simply because they are short staffed. Either way, it seems to be that the Governor’s office, and for that matter, the Lieutenant Governor’s office is not particularly interested in providing information to the public about how their offices work, such as in terms of who is contacting the offices about various forms of legislation.

Yes, there are privacy issues that need to be considered. Yes, people can argue about how the Bysiewicz campaign is using the data it has obtained, or even whether or not the data was collected appropriately. We can talk about whether or not it would be better to have a better, more centralized database for tracking who is contacting the State Government and elected officials. Yet the fact remains, whichever way the Governor’s office and the Lieutenant Governor’s office choose to deal with information about citizens contacting them about important issues of the state, they are currently doing a disservice to the public by not making important public information available.