Colchester’s superintendent of schools violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in two separate complaints involving records on a phone he uses for both personal and public matters.

Colchester Public Schools improperly redacted superintendent Daniel Sullivan’s phone number and withheld text messages Sullivan claimed were not related to public business according to two separate findings from the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC). While Sullivan’s phone is paid for by the district, he transferred a private number he previously used for over a decade.

In the first complaint, on March 26, 2024 Deanna Bouchard requested a complete log of text messages sent or received by Sullivan from the day he was hired until the day processing the request was complete. On April 8, 2024, Bouchard was provided with some responsive records, but, according to the complaint she filed with the FOIC, not all.

According to the FOIC’s finding, cell phone billing records she had previously obtained showed Sullivan had sent over 13,000 text messages during the time period covered by the request, while she had received only 9 messages.

When Sullivan was hired as the superintendent, Colchester Public Schools agreed to pay for his personal cell phone, which he used for both business and personal use. Bouchard alleged that Sullivan was improperly destroying text messages because his executive assistant told her they were being deleted on a daily basis. Bouchard argued Sullivan should be ordered to retrieve backup messages from a cloud storage system.

During a hearing on the complaint, Sullivan testified that he “frequently deletes personal text messages and conversations and ‘transitory’ text messsages from his cell phone and that he does not store backups of such text messages.” He also testified that he avoids conducting public business via text, except for “transitory” messages, and had not deleted any text messages from his phone during the time period covered by Bouchard’s request. The FOIC found both statements to be credible. It also does not have jursidiction over the state’s record retention schedule.

After the hearing on her complaint, Bouchard shared a statement from Colchester Board of Finance member Andrea Migliaccio, who alleged that she had conducted public business via text message with Sullivan. Bouchard also provided copies of the text messages.

Sullivan did not dispute the text messages, or that they were not “transitory” in nature. He argued that a text message sent to him by Migliaccio on April 21, 2023 related to Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance business, not to Board of Education business. He also argued another text message sent to Migliaccio on May 1, 2023 was related to the status of legislation and the state budget rather than Board of Education business.

While Sullivan argued that since neither text message was a Board of Education “public record” and therefore did not need to be disclosed, the FOIC found that Bouchard’s request did not limit her request to text messages about the Board of Education. She requested all text messages sent and received by Sullivan that related to public business. As the text messages with Migliaccio were related to his official position, the FOIC found they were responsive to Bouchard’s request and should have been disclosed.

The FOIC found Sullivan violated FOIA by improperly narrowing the scope of the search and therefore did not conduct a diligent response to records. He was ordered to search his text messages again and provide records, including “transitory” text messages, free of charge within 14 days.

In a second complaint, Bouchard requested a “complete cell phone directory including cell phone numbers and corresponding named employee” for all Board of Education members and Colchester school system employees who had been issued cell phones.

Sullivan’s executive assistant, who acknowledged the request and was not named in the FOIC’s finding, later followed up to inform Bouchard that they did not have a cell phone directory and phones were labelled by position. The executive assistant also stated that Sullivan’s phone number and the school resource officer’s phone number would be redacted. When Bouchard asked why, the executive assistant stated it was because both individuals have unlisted phone numbers and FOIC case law allows phone numbers to be exempt from disclosure when state employees have taken steps to make them private.

Bouchard filed a complaint with the FOIC. In a hearing on the complaint, Bouchard argued that Colchester schools had violated FOIA by redacting the phone numbers of school system phones and the superintendent’s phones in Verizon invoices provided her in response to a request. Whether the invoices were responsive to Bouchard’s request for a cell phone directory was disputed, with Bouchard arguing they were responsive to that request and the school system arguing they were responsive to a separate request. The school district maintained it had no responsive records to Bouchard’s request for a cell phone directory.

At a hearing on the complaint, Sullivan testified that he believed Bouchard’s request was seeking a directory, which he interpreted as a “document that would be shared with employees or posted on a bulletin board and, based upon that definition, the respondents do not maintain a directory of the cell phone numbers for the CPS issued cell phones.”

The FOIC found that the Verizon invoices Bouchard was provided included lists of numbers owned by the school districts and included Sullivan’s cell phone number, the cell phone number for the school research number, and the cell phone numbers of other principals and assistant principals in the school district.

The FOIC found that while Bouchard’s request mentioned a directory, it was seeking phone numbers and associated names and that the request should be interpreted broadly and understood “as by a lawman.” While the Verizon lists didn’t name employees, they did name employee positions and made it possible to determine which employees the numbers were issued to.

The FOIC also found that, while the school district contended that Sullivan’s cell phone number fell under an exemption in FOIA that specifies disclosure is not required of personnel, medical or “similar” files that would constitute an invasion of private.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has created a two-part test for determining when that exemption applies that requires someone who is claiming it first establish that files are personnel, medical, or similar files and that disclosure of records constitutes an invasion of privacy. To determine whether disclosing something would invade a person’s privacy, someone claiming that exemption must show the information does not pertain to matters of legitimate public concern, and that disclosure would be highly offensive to a reasonable person.

Sullivan also testified that he transferred the number he had used for personal use to his district-owned phone because he was able to use one phone for both personal and business matters and that the number is not generally made public.

The FOIC found that the number of the phone in question was purchased by the school district and that it did not meet the definition of personnel, medical, or similar files. They also found that the school district failed to meet the requirements of the personal privacy test.

“With respect to whether the disclosure of the number for the CPS owned cell phone issued to the Superintendent would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, the Superintendent testified, and it is found, that he treated the [district] owned cell phone number like “a home phone number.” However, it is found that such cell phone was not, in fact, his personal cell phone or a home phone number; rather such cell phone is CPS owned and issued equipment and utilized by him for government purposes.” the hearing officer’s report found.

The FOIC found that the district violated FOIA by redacting the superintendent’s cell phone number in the Verizon invoices and directed the district to provide the unredacted number.

Sullivan has been the subject of allegations over a possible conflict of interest with a company the Colchester Board of Education contracted with to redo athletic fields at Bacon Academy.

It is not the only allegation of wrongdoing against Colchester officials in recent years. In April 2024, the town’s finance director was terminated over allegations she misappropriated town funds.

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