Ethics panel met illegally: FOI Commission

 Monday, September 27, 2010

 Alex Wood

The Journal Inquirer published the following on Friday, September 24, 2010.

Ethics panel met illegally: FOI Commission
By Alex Wood
Journal Inquirer
The state ethics board violated Connecticut’s open meeting laws when it convened behind closed doors to discuss a procedural issue during last year’s hearing on allegations that Priscilla Dickman of Coventry violated the state ethics code, the Freedom of Information Commission ruled Wednesday.
By a unanimous voice vote, the commission adopted a proposed decision by one of its members, Sherman D. London, who presided over a hearing in the case last Dec. 30.
The decision came in response to a complaint by a Journal Inquirer reporter about the closed session of the Citizen’s Ethics Advisory Board, which occurred on the first day of the Dickman hearing, Sept. 11, 2009, in the same building where the FOI Commission met Wednesday.
The commission, the ethics board, and several other state agencies are housed in a building on

Trinity Street

in Hartford, facing the east side of the state Capitol.
The reporter requested no penalties against the ethics board, and the commission imposed none. But it did order the board to post minutes of the closed session, which lasted about 11 minutes.
The commission found that the closed session violated both the Freedom of Information Act and the provision of the state ethics code under which the Dickman hearing was held, which requires all such hearings to be open.
The ethics board, which is part of the Office of State Ethics, can appeal the decision to Superior Court.
The board has vigorously litigated the freedom-of-information case so far. It submitted an 11-page brief at the Dec. 30 hearing. And Barbara E. Housen, general counsel of the Office of State Ethics, read an additional eight-page legal argument to the commission at Wednesday’s meeting.
Housen argued that London’s proposed decision conflicted with provisions of the ethics code. She also stressed the unusual character of ethics board hearings, in which a semi-retired Superior Court judge presides while the board members fulfill a role comparable to that of a jury.
“This unique and new ethics hearing model, where a Superior Court judge presides, simply does not neatly fit the typical ‘meeting’ definition under the FOI Act,” she said.
After a number of days of hearings, the ethics board concluded in January that Dickman had violated the ethics code by running jewelry and travel businesses while working as a medical technologist at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington. It found that she used state time and resources, such as e-mail, in the operation of the businesses.
The board fined Dickman $15,000. She is appealing the decision in New Britain Superior Court.
The board also met behind closed doors to deliberate at the end of the Dickman hearing. The Journal Inquirer reporter has filed a second complaint with the FOI Commission over that closed session. A hearing on the complaint is scheduled for Tuesday.
In addition, Dickman is raising the issue of the closed deliberations in her court appeal of the ethics board’s action.