Whether teachers’ residential addresses will be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) remains up in the air after the Government Oversight Committee (GOC) delayed action on a bill that would add them to a list of exempt public employees. The bill was one of four bills affecting FOIA set to be voted favorably out of committee, with the meeting agenda indicating the committee would vote for a joint favorable report.
The bill to add grade school teachers working for public schools to the list of public employees whose residential addresses are exempt from FOIA disclosure is one of several bills that would add to the categories of public employees covered by the exemption. While this is the first year a bill has proposed adding public teachers to the list, other bills extending that exemption to other categories of public workers have occurred have gone before the Government Administrations and Elections Committee in previous years. To date, none has made it to final passage.
It is not the only proposed expansion to the exemption for public workers’ residential addresses in the current session. During its February 25 meeting, GOC voted to advance a joint favorable substitute report for a bill that proposed to add attorneys employed by the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP) and the U.S. District Attorney for Connecticut.
The bill, as originally written, also extended an exemption in FOIA that prevents the disclosure of the addresses of shelters and transitional housing for victims of domestic violence to include sexual assault. Additionally, it would have required public agencies to enter executive session to discuss matters that involved the location of shelters.
According to committee co-chair Rep. Lucy Dathan, D-Norwalk, the substitute bill the committee voted to advance stripped out most of the bill and left only the section that applied to expanding the exemption for sexual assault shelters. Updated language was not publicly available prior to the GOC’s vote.
Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, thanked the GOC chairs for conversations during the bill’s public hearing that led to the substitute language and added that while the portion of the bill relating to residential addresses had been removed, he was uncertain whether it would come back in another form. He also said he wasn’t “100 percent certain” about the bill’s details, liked it as a concept, and was unsure if there would be further changes to the bill as it advances. The bill was placed on the consent calendar.
GOC also advanced two other bills that affect FOIA and which have appeared in previous legislative sessions. The first advances largely technical corrections to FOIA that the Freedom of Information Commission has recommended. The bill has previously been put forward three times. The second would create a fee schedule allowing police departments to charge requesters for the costs of redacting footage from body worn cameras and dashcams.
Transparency Note: Katherine Revello is a member of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information’s board of directors. CCFOI submitted testimony on these bills.
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