Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label Kennan

Freedom of Information and the Public Good

Governor Dannel Malloy, hoping to save some small change, has proposed to fold the Freedom of Information Commission into a new administrative agency that would house the Freedom of Information Commission, the Office of State Ethics, the Elections Enforcement Commission, the Judicial Review Council and the State Contracting Standards Board. This proposal has run into a buzz saw, particularly as it affects The Freedom of Information Commission. News publications rely on an independent commission to shine a light on decisions made by various agencies that affect the welfare of the entire state. The possibility of changing decisions that restrict liberty or violate the precepts of justice depends upon a faithful distribution of facts that, in some cases, state agencies hope to thwart. In most cases, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan well knew, secrecy is the enemy of good government, which is why, when the state legislature passed the Freedom of Information bill in 1975, it used in de...