When the General Assembly adjourned sine die at midnight on May 6, legislators left multiple bills exempting information from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on chamber calendars and in committee, effectively killing them.
It was not the first year several of those bills, including a proposal to exempt most records produced by public universities from FOIA disclosure and bills expanding the list of state employees whose residential addresses may not be disclosed under the law, failed to make it to final passage.
For the last several years, legislators have advanced a bill to ban most records produced by public universities “arising out of teaching or research” in a variety of subject areas from FOIA disclosure. Language in the bill, supported primarily by teachers’ unions who argue FOIA requests are being used to harass professors and undermine scientific research into politically controversial areas, has for the past several years proposed excluding research and teaching documents related to medical, artistic, scientific, legal “or other scholarly issues” from FOIA disclosure. It further specified that records from legal clinics or centers would also be exempt.
This year, HB 5548, the bill featuring the proposed ban, also included another proposal that has appeared in the last several legislative sessions: expanding an existing exemption in the FOI statute to cover the residential addresses of all state employees. Current statute contains a limited list of state and municipal employees whose addresses are exempt from disclosure. The proposed bill would have specified that all public employees for whom residency was not a condition of employment are covered by the exemption.
HB 5548 died on the House calendar without being taken up for debate by either chamber.
In addition to the university records exemption bill, a separate bill introduced this year would have added a new FOI exemption specifically for public university course syllabi. It also died on the House calendar without being taken up for debate by either chamber.
In addition to the broader address exemption bill, SB 325 was aimed at exempting the residential addresses of public school employees from FOI disclosure. Public testimony was largely in favor of the bill, mostly from public school teachers testifying to harassment they had faced outside the classroom as a result of increasing political attention on issues like school curricula. The bill also included a proposed task force to study how artificial intelligence is being used to draft FOI requests en masse. It was passed by the Senate on April 22, but died on the House calendar.
Another bill proposing to expand the state’s vexatious requester law also failed to make it to final passage. SB 466 would have expanded the vexatious requester law, which allows public agencies to petition the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) to temporarily disregard requests from requesters who are abusing the law by filing excessive requests or using requests primarily not to obtain information but to harass public officials, to include “harassing or threatening conduct” regardless of whether it was related to a FOIA request. The bill also would have expanded the length of time for which a public agency can ignore requests from an individual if they are found to be vexatious from one to three years.
The bill died on the Senate calendar without being taken up for debate by either chamber.
Another returning bill, which would have allowed police departments and other public agencies to charge for fees associated with redacting dashboard and body-worn camera footage, also died on the Senate calendar without being taken up for debate.
The bill has previously appeared, and the FOIC has previously worked on the bill to create a “reasonable” fee structure. Under the bill, public agencies could not charge for the first four hours of employee time spent redacting a video and would only allow agencies to charge the hourly rate of the lowest-paid employee trained to perform redaction. The bill also specified that certain individuals, such as those who were involved in a police interaction that was the subject of a request, could not be charged fees.
This year, the attorney general’s office submitted testimony opposing the bill on the grounds that they believe the FOI statute allows for hourly fees related to work done by public agencies to prepare records for release. That argument is at the center of several pending court cases, brought by the attorney general’s office and the Office of Policy and Management, appealing FOIC decisions rejecting that interpretation of the statute.
Another bill to study state agency response times to FOIA requests also died on the Senate calendar without being taken up for debate by either chamber.
Several new FOI exemptions did pass earlier in the session. A provision exempting data generated by automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras from FOIA disclosure, part of a broader bill to limit the use and sharing of ALPR data, was signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont on May 6. In March, legislators passed a bill that closed a “loophole” in existing law allowing for sample ballots to be disclosed through FOIA and also restricted access to the state’s voter file, making only a voter’s year of birth releasable and specifying that information could only be requested for limited purposes.
A bill aimed at reforming access to health care in Department of Correction facilities, which makes findings from the Correction Ombuds exempt from FOIA, reached final passage on May 4.
Another bill fixing a bill passed earlier by the House that exempted meetings of the state cannabis enforcement board from FOIA disclosure was also passed through both chambers on May 5.
Was this article helpful?
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
