249 Conn. 291 | Conn. | 1999
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting. Article first, § 2, of the Connecticut constitution provides in part that “ [a]ll political
In an effort to hold our government accountable to the inherent authority of the people, the legislature enacted the Freedom of Information Act (act), General Statutes § 1-200 et seq. (formerly § 1-lSa).
In the present administrative appeal, the Appellate Court held that the act tolerates the following sequence of events: several members of a public agency conspire behind closed doors in order to hammer out a secret plot to determine a substantive decision that will be made at a subsequent public meeting. More specifically, the Appellate Court held that the act tolerated the actions of four members of the Windham board of selectmen (board), who conducted a secret meeting at which they conspired to go into executive session in
The Appellate Court decided this case on the following basis: the selectpersons who convened the secret meeting did not constitute a quorum of the board and, therefore, there was no meeting within the meaning of the first sentence of § 1-200 (2).
Instead, I would reverse the Appellate Court on the following ground, which has the benefit of actually having been litigated by the parties: the selectpersons are mistaken in their claim that the secret meeting is beyond the reach of the act because, pursuant to the second sentence of § 1-200 (2), a “ ‘[mjeeting’ shall not include . . . communication limited to notice of meetings of [a] public agency . . . ,”
“[The secret meeting was] clearly not limited to notice of an agenda item. The discussion considered the merits of the motion and gathered support for the motion.” Windham v. Freedom of Information Commission, supra, Superior Court, Docket No. CV96005256S, p. 3.
As the trial court cogently pointed out, “the reasons why the landfill contract was to be considered in executive session should have been discussed in open public
In my view, neither the act nor our democracy can tolerate the conspiracy that occurred behind closed doors in the present case.
Accordingly, I dissent.
Since the meeting at issue in the present case, minor technical changes have been made to the act; those changes axe not xelevant to the present case. In the interest of clarity, references herein are to the current revision of the act.
It is highly significant that the agenda of the secret meeting consisted of forcing the board to go into executive session. By orchestrating an executive session — which is not open to the public — the four selectpersons who convened the secret meeting managed to conceal both the substance of the decision-making process surrounding the landfill contract and the means by which they took that process behind closed doors.
The first sentence of General Statutes § 1-200 (2) provides: “ ‘Meeting’ means any hearing or other proceeding of a public agency, any convening or assembly of a quorum of a multimember public agency, and any communication by or to a quorum of a multimember public agency, whether in person or by means of electronic equipment, to discuss or act upon a matter over which the public agency has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power.”
Although the record before us is unclear on this point, it appears that the selectpersons who conspired at the secret meeting to go into executive session to discuss a landfill contract constituted a quorum of the landfill committee. For all we know, the entire landfill committee may have been present at the secret meeting. General Statutes § 1-200 (1) defines a “public agency” as, inter alia, “any . . . board ... of any . . . political subdivi
Significantly, the Appellate Court declined to reach this issue. Windham v. Freedom of Information Commission, supra, 48 Conn. App. 531. From this silence, I infer that the Appellate Court was unable to devise even a plausible argument to the contrary, let alone a persuasive one.
Lead Opinion
Opinion
After examining the record on appeal and considering the briefs and oral arguments of the parties, we have determined that the appeal in this case should be dismissed on the ground that certification was granted improvidently.
The appeal is dismissed.
In this opinion CALLAHAN, C. J., and BORDEN, NORCOTT and PETERS, Js., concurred.
We granted the named defendant’s petition for certification to appeal from the judgment of the Appellate Court; Windham v. Freedom of Information Commission, 48 Conn. App. 529, 711 A.2d 741 (1998); limited to the following issue: “Did the Appellate Court properly determine that the gathering of four members of the Windham board of selectmen to discuss an upcoming meeting of that board was not a ‘meeting’ for purposes of General Statutes § 1-21 because the four members did not constitute a quorum under General Statutes § l-18a (b)?” Windham v. Freedom of Information Commission, 245 Conn. 913, 718 A.2d 18 (1998).