This town’s Freedom of Information battle has played out in relative slow motion over the past four years.
Democrat Frank Loda and Republican First Selectman Robert J. Koskelowski have gone back and forth through Freedom of Information complaints and court appeals about videotaping town meetings since 2005.
After the issue appeared to have died in May, when Superior Court Judge Henry Cohn dismissed a legal appeal in the case, the matter has been reopened at the town’s request.
It’s a move that will likely extend an already lengthy and tedious fight over Freedom of Information laws, pride and politics in Seymour.
But if the attorney representing the Freedom of Information Commission in the court appeal process has his way, the issue will end soon.
Victor Perpetua, the FOI attorney in the case, is upset that the court so readily decided to reopen the case this month. Perpetua has filed motions to have the matter closed again.
“I just don’t see what remains to be done in this case,” Perpetua said. “They should pay their fine and stop paying their lawyer.”
VIDEOTAPING
The fight is over videotaping town meetings. But more specifically, it’s about Loda videotaping town meetings – how he does it and where he stands in the basement meeting room in Seymour Town Hall.
The Freedom of Information Act allows all public meetings to be recorded and broadcast. However, the act says it should be done in a non-disruptive manner under any rules or regulations the town has created on the topic before that meeting.
Loda and Koskelowski have argued each of those respective points throughout their fight.
Loda says Koskelowski personally singles him out – making him stand clear of one aisle while the town attorney sits in another, or allowing television cameras to stand near doorways he is asked to stay away from.
“It’s OK to have Channel 3 News there with a camera that’s 20 times bigger than my camera, that’s practically sitting on (Town Counsel) George Temple’s lap,” Loda said recently. “But here I am forced into a two-by-three section with a camera that sits in your hand, practically.”
Koskelowski says he objects to Loda blocking fire exits with his personal camcorder and tripod, and claims Loda is disruptive when he tapes because he often whispers comments into the camera during the meeting.
“I haven’t stopped him,” Koskelowski said recently. “He can go anywhere in that room as long as he doesn’t block a doorway and doesn’t disrupt. He’s never been denied. Never ever. That’s what he’s trying to say happened.”
Koskelowski has also objected to partial videos of town meetings appearing on local public access television.
Loda tapes each meeting to place on the Democratic Town Committee Web site and air on his weekly public access show. The videos do often appear in part on the show. But Loda said his program is only one hour long, so anything that happens more than an hour into town meetings can’t appear on the show.
“What’s at stake here is the First Amendment right,” Loda said. “Does a person have a right to go videotape meetings?”
IN THE BEGINNING
The argument officially began on Dec. 21, 2005.
The Board of Selectmen meeting for that night was advertised as a mild enough meeting: the 10-item agenda alluded to preliminary discussions about the following year’s budget, routine appointments and tax refunds.
But within 30 seconds, the board of selectmen moved to make rules about the videotaping of meetings under the agenda item “Adopt Rules for Board of Selectmen Meetings.” That action has reverberated over the past four years, in the form of written complaints, spoken testimony and legal filings.
A videotape of the December 2005 meeting, posted on the Seymour Democratic Town Committee Web site, shows how the vote played out. A copy is posted below.
Selectman Yashu Putorti made a motion to have the cameras moved to the back of the room, and Selectman Patrick Lombardi seconded.
The five Republican members of the board voted for the motion and the two Democrats voted against it.
“So please set up in the back of the room,” Koskelowski says calmly, looking directly into the camera.
Loda eventually agrees, after asking the board for the statute that shows he must move to the back of the meeting room and requesting the board wait to continue the meeting until he sets up the equipment again.
That night, the board also voted to allow members of the public to say whether they wanted to be video taped before they speak at meetings, and to require videos of town meetings be show in their entirety on public access, or to run with a disclaimer that the video is edited.
Loda filed a complaint with the Freedom of Information Commission six days later.
THE COMPLAINTS
As is the way with legal proceedings, the complaint took time to work through the system:
Hearings were scheduled, attended. Follow-up meetings dragged the weeks into months. Hearing officers wrote reports, filed them with the full Freedom of Information Commission, which scheduled another meeting to discuss the issue all over again.
By the time Loda’s first complaint was decided by the Freedom of Information Commission, it was almost one year to the date from the December 2005 meeting.
The commission determined that the board violated the Freedom of Information Act by approving the videotaping policy at that meeting, and said the board members were “unreasonably targeting the complainant and subjecting him to arbitrary, and even discriminatory, treatment with respect to the videotaping of the respondents’ meetings.”
Four of the five Republican members of the Board of Selectmen, including Koskelowski, were ordered to collectively pay a $500 fine, and the policy was thrown out.
But the process became even more drawn out, after Koskelowski again relegated video equipment to the back of the meeting room. His statement came at the board meeting immediately following the FOI Commission’s first decision on the taping policy.
(View a video from the Jan. 2, 2007 meeting here)
Again, Loda filed a complaint with the FOI Commission, starting over the long process toward a decision.
Around that same time, Koskelowski appealed the first decision in the state court system. In August 2007, the FOI Commission again ruled against Koskelowski, fining him another $500 for Loda’s second complaint. Again, Koskelowski appealed.
The same tedious legal process started over in a different venue.
THE APPEAL
Now, through the appeal, the attorney for the Freedom of Information Commission and the state’s judicial system have been dragged into the lengthy dispute.
Victor Perpetua, the attorney representing the FOI Commission, soon tired of the battle when the judge asked him to develop a set of videotaping rules for Seymour to adopt. It was a move toward a settlement in the case.
“He thought two fines was one fine too many,” Perpetua said of Judge Henry Cohn’s request. “He asked if there was some way we could settle it, to eliminate one of the fines. I initially said ‘I don’t think so.’”
But Perpetua agreed to work with the town on the rules, and under the judge’s direction, drafted up sample rules to have Koskelowski and Town Counsel George Temple look at.
“The rules, they were unbelievable,” Koskelowski said of the proposal. “We had to contact every newspaper in the state; every radio, TV station. Had to have them air what the rules are. They wanted to have a person be able to walk around the room with a camera and shine it on someone’s face. That can’t happen.”
Perpetua said he received some requested changes from the town, and was ready to move forward when Loda contacted him with his own proposed changes to the rules.
“That was the point at which I lost interest in settling it,” Perpetua said. “And I sort of waited around to see what would happen.”
What happened was Judge Cohn threw out the appeal in May, after the town failed to withdraw its appeal. Temple said he was waiting for a response from Petpetua. Perpetua said he wasn’t partial to the settlement in the first place, so he wasn’t upset if the case got dismissed.
“I said to myself, that sounds good to me because dismissing it means I win,” Perpetua said.
The dismissal didn’t come to light to the public until the middle of July, when Loda sent out e‑mail blasts to reporters about the issue. Koskelowski called the timing political, as it came right before election time.
But Loda said he had been waiting to see if Koskelowski was going to tell the Board of Selectmen on his own. Koskelowski claims he found out about the dismissal from reporters.
“I didn’t know until the press called me and told, me,” Koskelowski said. “We had no clue it was dismissed.”
Now, the town’s request to have the case reopened in court has been approved. But Perpetua said he has no interest in settling the case now.
“It’s simply too late,” Perpetua said. “The time has passed.”
Temple did not return calls made to his office several times this month.
PASSION, PUBLIC RIGHTS, PUBLIC WRONGS
The argument is fueled by two passionate men, each fighting for what he believes is right, legal and best for the people of Seymour.
“I’m willing to pay the fine if the judge says I am wrong,” Koskelowski said. “I don’t believe the town of Seymour and the selectmen were wrong on any of this. Anything we might have been wrong on was corrected.”
But Loda says the board’s actions are trampling First Amendment rights of Seymour residents.
“This was nothing more than an attempt to shut down the voters’ right to know what was going on at Board of Selectmen’s meetings,” Loda said. “The video tapes were disclosing many of their inappropriate activities.”
Each points to the other as wasting taxpayer money on the lengthy dispute.
Loda has said he believes the town spent $15,000 in legal fees defending the two complaints, and a third one that was filed by Democrat Melanie Kalako about another issue.
Koskelowski didn’t offer an estimate, but said he doesn’t believe the cost to be anywhere near $15,000. And, Koskelowski said, Temple will represent the town for free on the issue from now on.
Koskelowski fears the FOI complaints by Loda will set a legal precedent that would create a hardship for town boards trying to keep order in public meetings.
But Perpetua, the FOI attorney, said Seymour is the only town that has a conflict regarding video-taping of meetings.
“We don’t have any problems with any other towns about video taping, because they all get it,” Perpetua said. “Some of them have rules, but they tend to be reasonable rules. You can have reasonable rules….. Seymour’s rules – you can’t record public comments, can’t edit for broadcast – that’s baloney.”
