State House Takes Emergency Action on FOI Law

The state House of Representatives took emergency action this week and voted to change Connecticut’s Freedom of Information law without a public hearing.

The vote was made in an attempt to align the FOI law with a state Supreme Court decision last year concerning which public records must be released under that law and what information must be redacted, according to a report in the Hartford Courant.

The bill, which passed 120-11, seeks to protect police officers and parole officers, as well as correction guards like those at the Department of Correction facility in Cheshire, who might be subject to threats if their addresses were made public.

But it stops short of requiring that municipal officials who hold those records redact correction officers and other "protected" parties' information from all existing public documents like meeting meetings and land records. Only if there is a request for specific information about someone in the protected class could the information be redacted or withheld, according to the Courant.

State Rep. Al Adinolfi, R-Cheshire, said the bill is another expensive, unfunded mandate and therefore he did not support it.

Editor's note: This article was changed from its original version to more accurately describe the bill.