This week, Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) celebrates its 50th birthday. The law first went into effect on October 1, 1975.

Passage of the law was a triumph for government accountability and transparency. It passed both chambers of the General Assembly unanimously and was signed by governor Ella Grasso. Connecticut was one of over a dozen states to pass laws codifying the public’s right to know in the 1960s and 1970s, following passage of the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Federal FOIA was first introduced in 1955 and was opposed by every single federal agency. When the bill was signed into law on July 4, 1966, then president Lyndon B. Johnson forewent a public signing ceremony, instead opting for a signing statement that largely focused on the law’s exemptions in an attempt to undermine it.

Nearly a decade later, the federal law was overhauled, introducing some of its most recognizable and important elements: fee waivers for journalists and certain nonprofit groups, time limits on responses, and sanctions for agencies that abused the law’s exemptions. Though then president Gerald Ford tried to veto the overhaul, both chambers of Congress overrode the veto in an extremely rare move.

The story of unanimous support for Connecticut’s law by legislators stands in stark contrast to its federal equivalent.

“The legislature finds and declares that secrecy in government is inherently inconsistent with a true democracy, that the people have a right to be fully informed of the action taken by public agencies in order that they may retain control over the instruments they have created; that the people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them; that the people in delegating authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for them to know.” the preamble to Connecticut’s FOIA reads.

That last sentence, in particular, sticks out. One of the law’s truly good aspects is its neutrality: the law does not care who you are or why you are seeking information. It simply protects you against government officials’ desire to hide records.

But, in the past 50 years, how well has the government–simultaneously the body checked by the law and which enforces it–upheld the lofty ideas that drove its passage?

As an advocate of the law, I have to say I find it to be sadly lacking in several areas. Based on my experience filing FOIA requests, my fellow Inside Investigator reporters’ experience filing requests, and my coverage and aid of the general public in filing requests, I see two major issues: the lack of a limit on how long public agencies have to respond to requests and the inconsistency between agencies.

I’m hardly alone in complaining about the first issue. Notably, Connecticut is one of only a handful of states–and two in New England–that don’t have limits on how long public agencies have to respond to records requests. Connecticut’s law only states that agencies must respond “promptly.” While the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) does find violations of the law based on long response times, that’s only in cases where complaints are brought. And it’s simply not feasible to bring a complaint every time an agency is taking a seemingly unreasonable amount of time to provide records.

Sadly, I have found that invoking the FOIC is sometimes enough to prod public agencies into turning over records. And that’s a telling response that public agencies aren’t taking seriously the culture of openness to which FOIA commits state government officials. When, as I and my fellow reporters here at Inside Investigator have done multiple times, you give an agency an end of the week deadline to produce records before filing an FOIC complaint, and they make that deadline at the last minute, while apologizing for the delay and stating it was due to collecting documents or the process of review, it’s simply not believable.

Either that agency was sitting on records it had already collected or rushed to compile and review them, increasing the chances it didn’t properly conduct a search, and that redactions were made improperly. In neither case is it possible that agencies are taking their FOIA responsibilities seriously.

Nor is it the only way in which it’s become clear that certain agencies need public pressure put on them in order to produce records. I’ve also mentioned an outstanding FOIA request in print and had records produced the day after publication. These situations are made possible by FOIA’s lack of an enforceable time limit on response times for agencies. It’s incredibly frustrating, not just as someone who works under a publishing deadline, but also because I have written a number of stories about private citizens’ quests to obtain public records. Those people don’t have the same public platform that journalists like myself and other organizations who utilize FOIA have.

And that’s a huge problem because it’s a fundamental betrayal of one of FOIA’s most crucial tenets: its neutrality and promise to turn over public information without deciding what is good for them to know. It’s specifically exacerbated by the law’s lack of a deadline.

The second issue I see with the law is a lack of consistency between public agencies, particularly state agencies, in how they handle records requests.

Those issues become apparent in several ways. For example, there’s no consistency in how agencies direct you to file a request. While you can technically file a FOIA request with any employee of a public agency, this does risk slowing down how quickly your request is received and processed. Generally, you want to file a request with the person or address the agency has designated.

The majority of state agencies will direct you to GovQA, an online platform used to manage requests. But not all state agencies use it. And to find the designated public records officer, you may have to do some digging.

Public records officer is not a term that has a specific meaning in Connecticut. I used to work in Maine–another state that does not have a time limit on how long public agencies have to respond to requests and which has multi-year wait times–and there, each state agency has a designated public records officer who handles requests.

Despite other issues in the state, this does make managing requests easier. For one, the state maintains a central website where the public records officer of each agency are listed. That saves a lot of time.

But it also essentially creates a standard job description for the contact person you’re dealing with when you file a request. And that’s helpful for a number of reasons, but primarily because it creates consistency.

In Connecticut, many public records officers are legal professionals in some shape or other. That’s helpful because they are often involved in records collection and have reviewed the documents before they’re released, which makes it easier to get answers to questions about redactions.

But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, an agency communications employee is facilitating your request, and they can’t answer those questions or questions about the thoroughness of a search because they weren’t involved, and that’s not their primary job responsibility.

That’s frustrating because it can make it harder to get questions answered when you think a request isn’t being handled properly, and because there’s no consistency in the process between agencies, which can make it harder to wrap our heads around successfully navigating FOIA.

Because there’s so great a variation in how agencies handle this based on the point person, there’s unfortunately a greater ability for the law to be abused by those who don’t want to comply. There are good public records officers in the state who are communicative, ask clarifying questions that help narrow down searches for records and shorten wait times, and who turn over records in batches as they are reviewed. There are also agencies whose public records officers do not respond to follow-up requests for communication, who do not ask questions when there is a lack of clarity in requests, and who otherwise let requests sit for indefinite time periods.

FOIA doesn’t really do anything to mitigate this variation in responses or to limit the ability of agency personnel to exploit and abuse the law. And, of course, the lack of a time limit makes all this easier.

But there are things that I think Connecticut’s law gets right. For a start, the law limits how agencies can charge for records production. Most notably, agencies can’t charge for the time employees spend searching for and reviewing documents, with some limited exceptions. That’s not true in other states–and the fees for requests add up quickly, effectively putting a cap on certain documents you may want. That’s a problem not just for the culture of openness FOIA is supposed to promote, but it’s especially a problem because the burden of those fees is borne more by private citizens than by journalists like me who can expense FOIA fees. And that undercuts the idea that FOIA is neutral and treats all requesters equally.

Because I mostly request documents electronically, I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve paid for FOIA requests in Connecticut. And that’s one of the law’s better elements, particularly for the average resident who wants answers about their local government but doesn’t have a lot of spare cash.

Another thing the law gets right is the creation of an independent body that hears complaints the law has been violated and issues opinions. About half of states have some sort of ombudsmen or review process for FOIA complaints, but many of them don’t issue opinions compelling agencies to follow an order if they’ve been found to violate the law. In many states, you have to go to court in order to address an alleged FOIA violation, a process that is timely and costly and beyond the means of many, including private citizens. The FOIC’s complaint process is much more publicly accessible.

That, I think, is the most important element of the law: public accessibility. FOIA is not just a tool for journalists. It’s a tool for the whole public, and no one should need special knowledge in order to file a request or obtain documents.

Had your own issues with FOIA? Contact katherine@insideinvestigator.org with tips or for help navigating requests.

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