The judicial and legislative branches have been fighting a behind-the-scenes battle for months over funding, and the issue spilled out into the public Friday during a legislative hearing.
The General Assembly’s judiciary committee is considering a bill – House bill 5148 – that would exempt the judicial branch from having various expenses cut in its budget. The bill relates directly to an ongoing battle between Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the Democrat-controlled legislature over the branch’s budget that developed because of the state’s dire fiscal situation. Rell vetoed a bill last year regarding the “other expenses” category that are important to keeping the judiciary functioning.
The issue has come to a head as the judicial branch has said it would close three courthouses and six law libraries. None of those closures has occurred yet, and some lawmakers have worked to avoid the closures at the last minute.
The state has 16 law libraries, including some that are larger and more modern than others. The law library at Middletown Superior Court, for example, has an extensive collection of legal information, as well as a spectacular view of the Connecticut River down below.
The bill says that Rell’s unilateral budget cuts, known under the Gold Dome as rescissions, would be subject to a hearing by the legislature, which would now have oversight over Rell’s current unilateral authority on certain budget issues.
Overall, the judicial branch’s budget represents less than 3 percent of the state’s projected $18.91 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.
Longtime state Rep. Arthur O’Neill, a Southbury Republican who often supports the Rell administration, had questions about the bill. He said he loves the General Assembly, but “speed, efficiency, and decisiveness are not its most outstanding characteristics.”
“Everybody keeps talking about a co-equal branch of government,” O’Neill said, looking at a copy of the state Constitution. “The word co-equal nowhere appears in here. … We can remove the governor [through impeachment]. In fact, we can remove all of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court if we choose to do so.”
“Your analysis, as we’ve come to expect, Representative O’Neill, was particularly erudite,” Rell’s budget director, Robert Genuario, said after O’Neill’s discussion about the constitution.
“The judicial branch was not the subject of any rescissions” during one of the multiple rounds when Rell cut the budgets of the executive and legislative branches by $51 million, Genuario said. “This year, there were no rescissions on the judicial branch.”
If the clashes continue between the branches, Genuario said, “We could get into a Marbury vs. Madison scenario somewhere down the road.”
Overall, 31 states do not allow any control of the executive branch over the judicial branch budget, said Barbara Quinn, the chief court administrator. In those states, the proposed judicial budget is sent directly to the legislature, which decides on allocating the money. In Connecticut, though, the governor’s office receives the judicial request and has a role in deciding the branch’s budget.
The judiciary committee also discussed a bill that would prohibit the disclosure of the personnel and medical files of current and former state correction employees, including their home addresses, to prison inmates. The department has not divulged the information to various inmates who have requested files, which has led to Freedom of Information Commission hearings in Hartford.
Parole officer Jennifer Sullivan spoke in favor of the bill, saying she deals constantly with a caseload of 20 to 30 sex offenders, including convicted rapists and child molesters. These convicted felons are high-risk sex offenders.
“A lot of them have a history of revenge,” said Sullivan, adding that any release of her home address would “compromise my family’s safety”
“They have means to harass me. They know what my state vehicle looks like. I’m constantly at their employers and their houses,” Sullivan told legislators. “I don’t think offenders, inmates, parolees should be able to get that information. When I do see these offenders, they are constantly trying to intimidate me. … I certainly don’t want to be a victim.”
Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, the longtime co-chairman of the judiciary committee, responded, “We’re all committed to making a change in this rule this year.”
Those on parole are not in prison and can move freely through society.
“They’re out here. They’re free in the community,” Sullivan said. “I take different routes to work. I’m constantly living in fear of me being a victim.”
Rep. Matthew J. Conway, a Suffield Democrat who had 20 years of experience in the Department of Correction under four commissioners, said officers not only have unlisted telephone numbers but also do not have their names listed in student directories at their children’s schools for fear of eventual disclosure to a former inmate.
“They do hold grudges, and they will continually tell you that during their incarceration,” Conway said.
John Pepe, president of AFSCME Local 391, said inmates can sell information to other inmates with the details on particular prison guards. Some cases in the long-running battles are now pending in the state Superior Court and the state Supreme Court. There are no cases in which an inmate received the personal information and then harmed anyone, he said. As such, the unions want to prevent anything from happening in the future.
Overall, 11 states have adopted similar prohibitions on releasing the personal information of prison guards. This type of information can include Social Security numbers and the names of the children of the guards.
“These folks have nothing but time on their hands, and this is a nice little cottage industry that is developing,” state Sen. John Kissel of Enfield said of the inmates – many serving 20 or 30 years – who file FOI requests.
“The time is right. The time is now,” Kissel said, asking why Connecticut can’t be the 12th state to block the release of the information. “There’s no possible good that can come from this, and there’s a lot of downside.”
The only reason for the FOI requests, he said, is to “harass and harangue” the correction officers.
“Local 391, you just do an awesome job,” Kissel said at one point.
“You have a job that most sane people would say, ‘I don’t know if I want to do that,’ ” Kissel said.
Prison guard David Caron said he did not take his name off his child’s school directory list, and he unexpectedly bumped into a former inmate at a father-daughter dance at the school. Shortly after the dance, he got a knock at the door from an investigator from the Department of Children and Families who was acting on an anonymous tip about problems in the house. The allegation was false, but Caron said he assumed that it was the former inmate who filed the complaint.
“The inmates are using freedom of information as a weapon of retaliation,” Caron said. “That’s all it is.”
But G. Claude Albert, a former high-ranking editor who spent decades at The Hartford Courant before retiring, said that most of the information in question – such as home addresses and insurance beneficiaries – already cannot be disclosed.
“I don’t at all discount the harassment factor in the filing of some, maybe many, of those actions,” said Albert, the legislative chairman of the Connecticut Council of Freedom of Information. “I guess nobody would advocate releasing the kind of personal data, like home addresses, that would put people in danger from what we all know are bad people. … I suspect the number of cases we are talking about are few.”
In an exchange with Albert, Kissel said that the DOC would not get a blanket FOI exemption in order to block public disclosure of issues with guards.
“I do not believe inmates in Connecticut are whistle-blowers,” Kissel said. “I don’t think the inmate needs to know about a disciplinary action with the correction officers.”
“I guess I don’t have as much confidence with the quality of the scrutiny of the correction department and other departments as I once did,” Albert said later to Rep. Conway.
Acting Commissioner Brian Murphy, who started as a prison guard in 1981 and then moved up the ranks of the department over the past 29 years, said that filing the request by a prisoner is “a means of retaliation” and is “a direct, clear and present threat” to the safety of his staff and a threat to the overall prison facility.
“It has become part of the inmate culture” to file an FOI request for the officer’s personal file, he said, adding that they have state-paid attorneys who can file a lawsuit regarding any problems at the prisons.
The requests, he said, are time consuming and costly. One of the cases that is on appeal in the courts cost about $10,000 to the department. Overall, the cost in 2009 was about $1 million for the staff time in various agencies to research multiple Freedom of Information cases in a large agency with thousands of employees and more than 18,000 inmates in 18 prisons across the state, officials said. In 2009, there were 50 hearings – nearly one per week – on these types of issues. In some cases, it amounts to boxes and boxes of information.
One inmate asked for all the purchase orders for the food ordered at the prisons.
“It’s hours and hours and volumes and volumes of material,” Murphy said. “We need to protect these folks.”
Some information is exempt under the state statutes, Section 1-210 (b) 18, in the state.
Two cases are pending at the State Supreme Court that were brought by an inmate, David Taylor, who was seeking the disciplinary records of prison guards, said Colleen M. Murphy, the general counsel and executive director of the state’s FOI Commission. Only four individuals have asked for such information through the years.
“It isn’t, from what we see, a rampant problem,” Colleen Murphy said. “Anybody, on a prisoner’s behalf, could ask for records. … I think prisoners are uniquely situated” to make complaints about what’s going on inside the prisons.
She noted that at least 125 employees at the DOC have either faced criminal charges or have criminal charges pending against them. At least 20 of the pending cases involve drunken-driving charges, according to The Hartford Courant.
“I believe … there’s a public interest in that,” Murphy said of the criminal records of prison guards.
“We issued a subpoena that was not complied with,” Murphy said regarding a case involving the DOC. “That is part of the frustration that came out in the finding in that case.”
Lawlor asked Murphy about a report by the DOC that a prison inmate made a telephone call to the state’s FOI agency that lasted for 3 1/2 hours.
“That sounds preposterous to me,” Murphy responded. “I’d be surprised that the DOC would allow a prisoner to remain on the phone that long. … It would be surprising.”
Lawlor said what the FOIC is doing could some unintended consequences and “could result in people getting killed.”
Kissel said he would not support, in any way, allowing the prisoners to obtain the information.
“I don’t want that blood on my hands – and it’s real,” Kissel said.