Scott Coleman
1/4/2006
Rocky Hill---
Well thank God ... there is a Council and a Rules Committee with some smarts. Last night, after hearing from the public, the Wethersfield Town Council unanimously voted to reject a proposal from the town clerk to implement Rocky Hill's 'Faux' Minutes concept.
In case you haven't been following the story, Rocky Hill's brilliant Rules Committee and Town Council adopted a bizarre new concept in an effort to circumvent the state Freedom Information Statutes. Under RH's new rules, the traditional motions (votes) have now been renamed "minutes", and the traditional minutes have now been made optional and renamed "working notes". Following so far? Under this concept, if you were now to request a copy of the minutes in Rocky Hill, you would only receive a list of the votes of the committee members. And, to add insult to injury, committees have the option to decide whether they want, at all, to provide any working notes (formerly the minutes). Basically, they have removed our ability to find out what happened at a meeting. So much for "open" government promised under the La Rosa regime!
The purpose of this little ploy, is work avoidance; to avoid having to comply with the Freedom of Information Act which mandates that government bodies make available to the public copies of their meeting "minutes" within 7 days. Now, under the new rules, all that has to be provided is a list of the votes. We have only to [thank the] town manager and Ed Peruta for concocting this little ruse (scheme) to beat the system and fly under the radar of FOI. Clearly, it does NOT serve the interests of the people of this municipality!
Every effort will be made to reverse this decision, either at a local level or at the state level.
