Three Seymour police commissioners violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act by allowing two high-ranking officers to remain in an executive session for the full duration of a closed-door meeting.
The information comes from a proposed final decision prepared by Valicia Dee Harmon, a hearing officer for the state’s Freedom of Information Commission.
Her proposed decision will be adopted or rejected by the full commission at a hearing scheduled for Sept. 11 in Hartford.
The complaint was filed by Ronald Goodmaster — a detective sergeant with the Seymour Police Department who has since retired — against commissioners Lucy McConologue, Stephen Chucta and Frank Conroy.
Goodmaster has a separate complaint pending with the state’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, alleging brass within the police department used his age as a way to push him out of the department after he repeatedly criticized department management.
Goodmaster’s FOI complaint involved a Nov. 8, 2012 meeting of the Seymour Board of Police Commissioners. The commissioners were conducting interviews to promote an officer to replace Goodmaster. The commissioners went into executive session — a type of meeting closed to the public — to conduct interviews.
Executive sessions are allowed when officials are discussing specific employees, legal strategy, real estate deals, or security matters. State law states “the agency may invite persons to present testimony or opinion in the executive session, but their attendance must be limited to only the time necessary for that testimony or opinion.”
And that’s where the police commission messed up, according to the FOI hearing officer.
Seymour Police Chief Michael Metzler and Lt. Paul Satkowski were in the closed-door meeting for more than an hour while the commissioners interviewed cops. The police commissioners failed to prove that Metlzer’s and Satkowski’s presence in the closed-door meeting was limited to providing testimony or opinion — a violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Goodmaster’s complaint pointed out this wasn’t the police commission’s first go-around with Freedom of Information regulations. In fact, the commissioners received FOI training in January 2011 in order to settle a complaint brought against them by the Valley Indy.
Goodmaster’s complaint pushed for civil fines against the three commissioners named in the complaint and for the executive session itself to be declared null and void.
However, Harmon, the hearing officer, determined the commissioners didn’t know the rules, despite past training. She is not recommending fines and said declaring the executive session void is “unnecessarily punitive.”
