The town of Thomaston has nearly $150,000 on legal fees related to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and complaints filed by resident Nancy Griswold. Griswold has won most of those complaints.
Invoices shared with Inside Investigator show monthly charges stretching back to 2021 related to FOIA requests filed by Griswold, complaints filed with the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC), and an attempt to label Griswold as a vexatious requester totaling roughly $148,000.
The invoices, from the Law Offices of Byrne and Byrne, LLC., were sent to several town departments and offices, including the Planning and Zoning Commission, Land Use Department, Water Pollution Control Authority, First Selectman’s Office, and the town itself and reference over a dozen specific FOIC cases.
Expenses related to Griswold account for roughly 31 percent of the total amount contained in the invoices, which date back to 2019.
Griswold has won a series of FOIC complaints against the town, many related to improperly convened executive sessions and other failures to follow FOIA’s open meeting requirements. In 2023, the FOIC declined to grant the town’s petition to have Griswold and her son labelled as vexatious requesters.
A majority of the invoices, totaling approximately $76,806, were sent to the Thomaston Planning and Zoning Commission. Griswold and the commission, along with former Zoning Enforcement Officer Stacy Sefcik, have a contentious history, including a zoning enforcement action the town brought against Griswold. Records related to that were at issue in a series of requests that served as the basis of the vexatious requester petition the town and Sefcik brought against Griswold.
Last year, the Planning and Zoning Commission was also fined $250 over its repeated mishandling of FOIA requests submitted by Griswold. The commission cited eight complaints filed by Griswold in 2025 and 2026 alone.
According to the invoices, the town spent the most money related to Griswold’s FOIA requests and complaints filed in 2023. Expenses Byrne and Byrne labelled as related to that year total over $22,000. One invoice sent in 2023, labelled as expenses related to FOI involving Griswold totaled $6,499.
Another invoice, which did not specifically reference 2023 in its subject but which was sent in 2023, totaling $4,215, was for services related to the town’s vexatious requester petition against Griswold.
Of the invoices that named specific FOIC cases, expenses for each case ranged from nearly $11,000 to $1,180. Byrne & Byrne sent invoices totaling $10,913 to the town for work done in one complaint brought by Griswold against the Land Use Department and the First Selectman’s Office. The case was an appeal to the commission that the the town had failed to comply with orders in another case.
In that underlying case, the commission found Sefcik responded to Griswold’s request for records by stating she was under no obligation to make copies of records and that Griswold needed to physically come to the town office to inspect them. In a 2024 ruling, the FOIC rejected the town’s claim that offering Griswold the chance to inspect record fulfilled their FOIA requirements and ordered records to be turned over within 30 days. More than two years elapsed between Griswold’s request and the commission’s ruling and the town had turned over no records.
In a 2025 appeal, Griswold contended the town had not complied with the FOIC’s order and still had not turned over any records. While the town turned the records over 41 days after the FOIC’s order, and cited staff turnover at the Land Use Office following Sefcik’s departure as the reason for the delay, the commission issued a civil penalty over the town’s conduct.
While the town was billed $10,913 for expenses related to that appeal, the actual cost related to that case are higher due to costs associated with the underlying case. While no invoices contain the number of Griswold’s complaint assigned by the commission, invoices from 2023 and 2024, the years the case was active, total over $22,000.
In total, invoices that name FOIC case numbers—all of which substantiated Griswold’s complaints at some level—total just under $82,000. One of those complaints is still pending before the commission.
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