ANOTHER F.O.I. LOSS FOR THE "TRANSPARENT" PEREZ ADMINISTRATION

After receiving several calls from people questioning the frequent purchases of food and beverages by Superintendent of Schools Stephen Adamowski on his City of Hartford credit card, and the continuing word that the City of Hartford pays for Adamowski's aprtment at Hartford 21, I submitted an FOI request to the office of Adamowski at the Board of Education. The request was for "any employment contracts or employment agreements","housing and or agreements regarding any living expenses covered by the City of Hartford and/or the Hartford Board of Education" as well as "any documentation regarding use of any City credit cards and/or expense reports or requests for reimbursement submitted to the City of Hartford and/or the Hartford Board of Education." On March 20, 2009 I received a fax from the Board of Education containing a six page employment agreement and a one page summary of Adamowski's city credit card with one line of detail showing the total charged year to date. The employment agreement clearly referenced other documents and supplemental agreements, which were not provided as outlined in the request. Also, since I had previously received detailed documents outlining Adamowski's credit card use from other sources, I knew that the item they had provided was far from what was available as a public document.

Based on my belief that the Board of Education and the City were being far from open and transparent, I filed a complaint with the Freedom of Information Commission. The hearing was scheduled for Monday, July 27, 2009. On Friday, July 24, 2009, less than one business day before the hearing, the City of Hartford's Corporation Counsel's office apparently suddenly saw the light and provided me with what they claim was all of the requested Credit Card information I was looking for. Attorney Melinda Kaufmann from John Rose's office assumed that since they had provided the documents I would now withdraw my complaint. My response to her was "absolutely not", that a delay of several months in providing the documents was unacceptable, and I intended to proceed with the hearing and let the FOI Commission decide if the City's actions were proper and lawful. Apparently the FOI Commission agreed with me and on August 6, 2009 issued a proposed Final Decision, the details of which are below in the PDF Document, and in a rare move by the Commission, a fine is recommended against Jill Cutler Hodgman, the person that the Commission determined was the one responsible and in the care and control of the documents and is the official directly responsible for the denial of my FOI rights (line 49 in attached decision). The decision further goes on to describe the unusual civil penalty "would have a deterrent effect... should Ms. Cutler Hodgman and the other respondents believe that their actions to stonewall the provision of public records can be entirely cured by a last minute offer of documents days before an FOI Commission hearing and that no adverse consequences will flow from that action" (line 50 in FOI proposed Final Decision)

Unfortunately, rather than pay the fines, John Rose and his followers will probably run true to form and appeal this decision , costing the taxpayers another $100,000 as they have done with their court appeals of FOI Complaints brought by Jeff Cohen and the Hartford Courant. They just don't get it, maybe they might want to take an FOI training course offered free by Tom Hennick of the FOI Commission.

And the question still hasn't been answered as to who pay's for Adamowski's apartment in Hartford 21.

Foi Decision Bd of Ed