The following is an excerpt of an email I recently sent a member of the media which more or less covers Wethersfield:
The access of the public to information from and about the workings of their elected governments is critical. The healthy, detailed minutes which have for years been prepared by the office of the Town Clerk, both the current Clerk and her predecessors, are essential for the corporate and civic history of our Town.
It is almost pharisaic for the current Clerk, the Manager, and (at least initially) the Chair of the Council to say that that minutes of meetings are purely to satisfy the most elemental legal requirements: motions and votes and attendance. This flies in the face of "legislative history" which is practiced to the Nth degree by most US deliberative bodies at the State and Federal levels.
I do not for a moment believe that the Clerk's office is overworked (she has three assistant town clerks!); the Town's budget has been adjusted to encompass their labors and salaries. I don't believe that 'Nip/Tucking' the minutes will result in any saving to the taxpayers, but such political surgery will result in short and long-term detriment to the body politic in Wethersfield.
I also believe that their (Clerk's, Manager's, some Councilors' ) understanding and application of the FOIA/CT is flawed. As you review the CGS and the information posted on the FOIC's webpages on the State's website, it should be clear to you as it is to most of us on "this" side of the issue, that the reporting of the Clerk of the "motions and votes" (of Boards, Commissions, and Committees -BCC's- of the Town) within 48 hours is NOT the same as the reporting of the "minutes" which is due from the Clerk's office within 7 days (calendar, in the case of regular meetings, longer in the case of special meetings of the BCC's).
Just because it suits the purposes of Clerk, Manager and some Councilors to call the reporting of the "motions and votes" the "minutes" does not make it so! (I will grant you that I do not understand at present how the Town of Rocky Hill can persist in doing just that; I am convinced that it has not and does not serve the citizens of Rocky Hill either! Of course, it is at least, very convenient that Wethersfield should be attempting to switch to these flawed Rock Hill formatted "reports" - I just can't bring myself to call them minutes.)
As others on-line and around town, I am am anxious (in the true sense of the word) about the format of the minutes which the Clerk is going to present to the Council on Tuesday, 1/3/2006. More importantly, I am most concerned about how the Councilors, individually and collectively will respond to them. I wonder whether the majority Council has the gonadal fortitude to openly deliberate on them and then to table her "minutes" for further consideration and perhaps directed revisions.
In the time remaining before your departure, please see if you can arrange to have a colleague of equal skills review what I have presented to you here and on-line and to have him/her "cover" Tuesday's meeting at the Silas Deane Middle School's auditorium (7:00 PM). The public needs to be informed about what the Council is doing and what it has done in this matter.
The more meager the minutes, the more important the role of the Press to report the essential details of our meetings.
