Submitted by Lucy von Brachel
If you haven’t read about the conflict over filling a vacancy on the Board of Education, you should. It is comic that the First Selectman is attacking them using the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), when he has conveniently ignored FOIA for one of his own pet projects.
So before you accept any of First Selectman Fred Camillo’s spin on the BOE vacancy controversy, you should know that while attacking the BOE Democrats, claiming that they have violated FOIA, he has been willfully violating FOIA in connection with another BOE matter.
To give you a little background, earlier this year, Camillo appointed a committee whose mission, as he described it, is to solicit, review, and recommend proposals for the commercial use of the Havemeyer Building, possibly the town’s most valuable asset and current home to the BOE administration. The Request for Proposals (“RFP”) Committee would also, per public comments, find office space to move the BOE to.
Shortly before the RFP was issued, Camillo went before the BOE to sell them on moving out of the Havemeyer Building and into a $3 million per year office space. The BOE had been excluded from any discussions about Camillo’s venture. Some BOE members asked reasonable questions about this idea and were hesitant to accept the idea. In response, Camillo published an accusation, in the press and on official social media accounts, that Democrats on the Board of Education “threatened” to derail his plans.
What’s happened since then is hard to know because the RFP Committee has been meeting secretly and, therefore, illegally. Under FOIA, they need to notice meetings with agendas, and produce minutes that the public can have access to. They have done none of that. Furthermore, there is no list of committee members anywhere on the Town website.
It is clearly problematic for a town committee to act without the public’s knowledge, without keeping any records, without any oversight, and without a single drop of public input.
Given this, I reluctantly filed my first ever FOIA request on August 5th. I deliberately tried to keep it simple. I asked for meeting notices, agendas, and minutes from the RFP Committee’s meetings as well as the committee’s roster. This does not require any significant effort by the Town to dig through emails or old files. I simply asked that they post this information where all of the First Selectman’s other advisory committees are listed on the Town’s website, and that the committee follow public meeting laws in the future.
By law, the Town is obligated to fulfill FOIA requests in a timely manner. On September 7th, I asked for an update and got no response. With no other way to get the Town to follow the law, I filed an appeal to the FOI Commission on September 19th. I also filed a “meeting complaint”, which is a separate process for reporting meetings that were not publicly noticed.
I hoped the appeal would nudge the Town to make those records available, follow the law going forward, and that would be that. But on October 3rd I got a letter from the Town’s outside counsel saying they “deny any and all allegations that there were violations of the FOI Act”. To avoid issues like this going to a hearing, the FOI Commission first tries to work with the parties to come to an agreement. Two months later, with nothing more done, it’s clear the Town is dragging its feet.
There is a great deal of irony, and even greater hypocrisy, in Camillo asking the Freedom of Information Commission to nullify the BOE’s actions given that I have a pending complaint in front of them over his RFP committee’s breaking the law.
If you’ve heard Camillo’s spin on this, consider that he complained about the BOE using taxpayer money to hire an attorney after he himself had hired outside counsel to fight my FOIA appeal. Consider that he hired outside counsel (the former BOE chair’s husband, no less) with taxpayer money to escalate his fight with the BOE in an unprecedented and possibly illegal decision to install a buddy on the BOE. Consider that he has said he “had no choice” but to take action against the BOE, that he was simply following the law and process, yet his RFP committee continues to violate FOIA.
Mr. Camillo might respond to this letter accusing me of being another Democrat conspiring against him. He’d be wrong. What’s motivating me is his blatant disregard for the law, transparency, and constituent interests.
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Below is my FOIA request in its entirety:
I would like to request the following documents under the Freedom of Information Act:
1. A list of membership of the First Selectman’s Havemeyer Building RFP Committee. Posting information about this committee listing its membership on the First Selectman’s page on the Town’s website under “Special Committees Appointed by the First Selectman” would satisfy this request”.
2. Records of meeting notices, agendas and minutes, including voting records, for all the Havemeyer Building RFP Committee meetings held to date. Posting these materials in the Agendas & Minutes page on the Town’s website would satisfy this request.
If no records of the meetings of the Havemeyer Building RFP Committee can be produced, I would like to request the following:
-1. Email correspondence between the First Selectman’s Office (First Selectman, Assistant to the First Selectman, Town Administrator, et al), Andy Duus, and RFP Committee members between December 1, 2023 and August 4, 2024 that pertain to the Havemeyer Building RFP committee, the Havemeyer Building, the recently posted Request for Proposals No. 7871, and the leasing of office space for Greenwich Public Schools administration/Board of Education.
The impetus of this request is an article by the Greenwich Free Press (BOE Recap: Representation on Havemeyer Committee, Cell Phone Policy, Super’s Salary Increase Aug 3, 2024) recapping a recent meeting of the Board of Education. My purpose is to ensure that the public has access to the information, records, and meetings it is entitled to under the FOIA. I am aware that my name and this request will be published on the Town’s Website and circulated by the First Selectman.
In the article, the GFP describes a conversation regarding the RFP Committee for the Havemeyer Building, which has been referenced in the press and in public comments by the FS and RFP committee chair, in which a lack of transparency was noted. It was pointed out by a BOE member that the meetings of this committee have not been publicly noticed. I myself had previously looked for agendas or minutes relating to this committee recently and was unable to find the names of committee members or any record of its existence.
Andy Duus, the chair of this committee, stated in a response to an inquiry by the GFP [emphasis added]:
“The Evaluation Committee will follow a process and format established by the State, and administered by the Town’s Purchasing Department, to solicit and review proposals for the redevelopment of the Havemeyer Building. The Committee’s meetings and deliberations will not be open to the public; its rankings and its recommendations, however, will become public.”
Details on the “process and format established by the State” were not provided, but in any case, the Freedom of Information Act must be followed. FOIA has a very expansive definition of what a “public agency” is and this RFP committee falls under that definition (Sec. 1-200(1)).
This committee is not exempted under the definition of “meetings” (Sec. 1-200(2)) from meeting publicly. All meetings of this committee are open to the public, must be noticed (Sec. 1-225(a)) and agendas and minutes for regular and special meetings must be filed with the clerk and made available to the public. If this committee has reason to discuss committee business that is legitimately exempted from FOIA, they must publicly make a motion and take a vote in order to enter executive session and they must publicly announce the reason for said executive session (Sec. 1-225(f)). This is true even if all of the agenda items are discussed in executive session.
The motions and votes to enter into executive session, the reason stated for doing so, and those motions and votes taken in executive session must be included in the record of votes/minutes (Sec. 1-225(a)) and filed with the Town Clerk.
The RFP committee should retroactively post its agendas and minutes including motions and recorded votes to reassure the public that the committee embraces the transparency requirements for public agencies as is required by law.
*References to the Freedom of Information Act can be found here
[https://portal.ct.gov/foi/regulations/the-foi-act/2024-foi-act].