This week marks the final date for the Government Administration and Elections Committee (GAE), one of two committees that reviews legislation impacting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), to vote to advance bills to the legislature for final action. The deadline for the Government Oversight Committee (GOC) passed last week.

Looking at the bills affecting FOIA GOC voted to advance, one would be hard-pressed to understand how the new committee is living up to the “oversight” portion of its task. Of the five bills the committee voted to advance, two would add new categories of exempt information. Two bills are effectively neutral, with one implementing largely technical changes to FOIA the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) has been trying to put into effect for years and a second allowing police departments to charge requesters for the cost of redacting body and dash camera footage.

Only one bill, a proposal that originally came from Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, but which was advanced as a committee bill, to direct the Office of Policy and Management to study state agency response times to FOIA requests, is arguably a step in the right direction for transparency advocates. GAE hasn’t taken final action on a number of FOIA bills, but the majority of them subtract records from public review rather than add to them.

Outside a few agencies whose officials include information about FOIA responses in their annual reports, there is currently little public-facing data about response times. But should Sampson’s proposal become law, it will only confirm what those of us who file FOIA requests already know: for many state agencies, the response times are abysmal. Wait times for multiple requests filed by Inside Investigator staff stretch into the years. Outside the hassle of filing FOIC requests, we’ve found the most effective way to get agencies to respond to requests they’ve clearly been sitting on is to publicly complain about wait times.

What would be particularly useful to know is more information about the breadth of requests agencies are receiving. Time and again, public officials, all the way up to Gov. Ned Lamont, chalk long wait times up to broad requests and act like narrower requests are some magical cure-all.

There are a number of problems with this.

First, since requests are handled in the order they’re received, the scope of your request really doesn’t matter if you’re sitting at the end of a long processing queue. Second, public agencies are perfectly capable of turning over batches of responsive records as review of them is completed. Third, narrow requests aren’t necessarily processed faster. Depending on the records someone is seeking, the process of reviewing and redacting them can be more time consuming than for a larger request. I have a request for police reports–limited to a single person on a single day–from the Connecticut State Police that dates to last May. That is by no means a large request and yet, even though I’ve paid the fee the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection demands prior to processing a request–I’m still waiting for it ten months later.

Lastly, and more importantly, despite continued attempts from public officials to undermine the legitimacy of large requests, there’s nothing wrong with filing them, particularly in a state like Connecticut that hides so much data from the public view.

This October marks 50 years since FOIA became law in Connecticut. At its heart, FOIA reaffirms that public records belong to the public. It’s why categories of records must be exempted from disclosure–because the presumption is the public has a right to them.

But despite that, public officials more often than not act like the law is a burden, bemoaning the number and breadth of requests or arguing requests that come from certain individuals or groups are abusing the law and need to be stopped. An increasing number of bills–namely the recurring bills to exempt the majority of requests directed at the state’s public universities and an ever-widening list of categories of public officials’ residential addresses–are aimed at preventing “abusive” FOIA requests. Couple this with complaints about requests that are too broad and the perception that requests from certain news agencies or interest groups are slow-walked, and it’s hard not to get the perception that what public officials like is not so much FOIA but requests when they come from the right people or are directed at certain pieces of information that seem less threatening.

Listening to public officials, whether it be legislators in committee or members of the executive branch, you may get the perception many of them have never filed a request and have no idea how the law works in practice. At the same time, they’re claiming that narrowing requests are the best way to get requests faster, they’re stating outright falsehoods. In an April 2024 interview with CT Mirror, Lamont made a number of outright false statements. He claimed erroneously that he’s the only governor in the nation subject to FOIA (while Connecticut is one of only a handful of states where all three branches of government are subject to public records requests, that’s because most state laws don’t apply to the legislative branch) and that Connecticut has the “strongest” FOIA rules around. In reality, Connecticut is one of only a few states with no time limit on how long a request can take to be fulfilled.

It’s also hard to square exactly how Connecticut could have the country’s “strongest” FOIA laws when there are an increasing number of bills being introduced each legislative session that either add to the number of FOIA exemptions or make changes to FOIA that make obtaining information more difficult.

Just last year, a law was passed allowing state agencies to deny FOIA requests if they have public records but are not the agency from which they originally came. In public testimony, they tried to claim state agencies couldn’t navigate whether information provided to them by other agencies was releasable. OPM then refused to answer media questions about whether any information had ever been inappropriately released. The year prior to that, Lamont’s office was ordered to undergo FOIA training because they did not comply with a request for communication from the pandemic for over two years.

As someone who regularly files large requests, my message is this: don’t be intimidated into thinking requests gain or lose legitimacy on the basis of how broad they are. This is a state where requests take forever to process. Knowing that it will likely take me upwards of a year to get requests, regardless of their size, I sometimes file requests with broader time frames to prevent finding out from responsive records that the information I’m looking for is outside that scope. Because a number of state agencies don’t put a lot of public information online, I also sometimes have to file requests because I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for.

These two situations run counter to a lot of the advice I give people about filing FOIA requests. But given the reality of public access to information in this state, they are an unfortunate necessity.

Lastly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to file large requests. A lot of public policy goes on behind closed doors. Things like working groups that recommend legislation can run over the course of a year. When they don’t hold public meetings, or when you want to know what public officials are talking about regarding departmental policy that develops over a long period of time, it’s perfectly legitimate to file a large FOIA request to collect as much information as possible. One example that springs to mind is a request I filed over a year ago with the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE). After I narrowed the request, it covered two months of email communications containing keywords about the Right to Read bill.

I wasn’t going to budge on further narrowing that request just because there were a lot of responsive documents. But CSDE has provided batches of responsive emails as they’ve been reviewed, and I’ve written several stories about that bill, even though the request was technically pending. And that’s fine. Documents take time to collect, review, and redact. That’s fine too. What’s not fine is the insinuation that requests need to be narrowed in order for documents to be provided in a timely manner.

Have your own frustrations about obtaining information through FOIA? Email katherine@insideinvestigator.org.

Transparency Note: Katherine Revello is a member of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information’s board of directors. CCFOI submitted testimony on several of the bills mentioned.

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