Erin Stewart’s recent legal and political woes are, in some respects, a story of journalistic oversight.
After an independent investigation from the Crumbie Law Group called into question a number of purchasing card (P-Card) uses during Stewart’s time as mayor of New Britain, Stewart suspended her campaign for governor just days before the Republican convention. In the weeks since, multiple stories shedding more light on Stewart’s alleged financial misdeeds have broken in quick succession, much of that reporting based on public records requests. Stewart is now under investigation by the Connecticut State Police, the attorney general’s office, and the Department of Consumer Protection.
That, following the initial report from Crumbie, so much more information about specific alleged P-Card misuse has come to light is a testament to Connecticut journalists and to the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
But, at the same time, one can’t help but wonder why these stories, which document multiple alleged financial misdeeds occurring over a prolonged period of time, are just now becoming public. For example, documents alleging Stewart had New Britain taxpayers reimburse her $32,000 for graduate school tuition date back to 2021. How has that not previously been reported, particularly with Stewart campaigning for governor, which should bring her political record under extra public and journalistic scrutiny?
If you’re going to use FOIA as a tool to obtain public information, you should be filing requests frequently and routinely — that’s a piece of advice FOIA experts will often repeat. And the scandal surrounding Stewart’s alleged financial misdeeds shows why.
Clearly, with the amount of records-based reporting that has come out in recent weeks, the records are not hard to find or obtain. But someone still needs to put in the work of looking for them. And that means filing routine FOIA requests, proactively managing them to ensure they’re fulfilled, and sifting through responsive documents.
And that is genuinely a lot of work. But it’s also work that anyone, inside or outside of the press, can do. And should be doing. Because if it isn’t done proactively, there’s a chance that stories like this break at a time where it’s too late for the public to do anything about it — a few days after the Republican convention, for example, instead of a few days before.
The delay is, without doubt, to some extent a function of the death of local news and the lack of dedicated reporters whose job it is to cover things like city government meetings.
And that’s what makes FOIA all the more important. Even if reporters or local residents can’t be there in person to follow city government proceedings or ask questions, public records allow for continued access to the conversations and decisions local officials are making, either in open meetings or behind the scenes.
So, how does someone who’s interested in more closely monitoring what’s going on in their hometown get started?
The first step is to identify what types of records are worth obtaining and get into the habit of filing routine requests.
Documents like expense reports are a great place to start because they are filed routinely, are easy to identify in simple request language, and don’t contain a lot of information that is exempt from public disclosure.
To obtain them, find the appropriate person who handles FOIA requests in the relevant municipal office and submit a request regularly, say on the first of every month, for expenses submitted in the last 30 days. You will likely need to name the relevant city official and may have to submit individual requests if you are interested in obtaining expense reports for multiple people, say, every member of the city council. If you’re interested in obtaining those reports for multiple departments, you may also have to file requests with separate departments, depending on how your town handles FOIA requests.
Once the requests are filed, figure out a system for managing them proactively. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet that notes the date a request was filed, where it was filed, what information was requested, and the date you last communicated with public officials about it (this is how I track my FOIA requests). Get in the habit of checking on requests routinely, every few weeks to a maximum of 30 days.
And when you get documents back, use a note-taking system that makes sense to you to keep track of anything of significance you find in documents. This can help flag potential issues, which can be raised in communication with public officials, at public forums, or in groups of concerned citizens, and track information over time.
Odds are, most of the time, those requests won’t turn up any kinds of political bombshells — and that’s okay, too. You’re still building a picture of how your government works, and that’s a public good. I have sat on seemingly irrelevant FOIA documents until they’ve become relevant to a story that’s broken years down the line.
But, without records in hands, it’s impossible to know what’s salient now or what might just be useful to have down the road.
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