Bill seeks to make sure whistleblower complaints stay secret

Whether or not you liked the outcome of the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, you’d have to agree the allegations about his intimidation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would have never surfaced in the same way if not for a whistleblower complaint made public.

Indeed, The New York Times published the entire whistleblower complaint against Trump in September 2019, months before the impeachment trial began.

It is the best example I can think of why complaints of government malfeasance and malpractice should be made public, to assure that allegations by insider whistleblowers get a proper airing.

The Connecticut state auditors, with an endorsement from Attorney General William Tong, would, however, like to make sure that whistleblower complaints about government misdeeds here never see the light of day.

The auditors have proposed, in Senate Bill 1154, which gets a public hearing Monday, that the complaints be exempt from disclosure laws. The law would also accomplish some other policy changes on the auditors’ wish list.

The auditors tried to exempt the whistleblower complaints in the last session of the General Assembly, but the bill died in the House after clearing the Senate.

I have a strong personal interest in making whistleblower complaints public since it was a report of a whistleblower complaint at the Connecticut Port Authority that provided the first clue of the corruption at that agency that is now part of a wide-ranging federal criminal investigation.

In fact, the auditors’ public testimony about the proposed secrecy law for whistleblower complaints begins with a description of the complaint I filed with the Freedom of Information Commission after the auditors and the attorney general refused to make the port authority whistleblower complaint public.

The FOI commission ruled in their favor, saying release of the complaint against the authority, which a FOI hearing officer reviewed, could have led to informed guessing of the identity of the whistleblower, which is protected under existing state law.

They won, but it seems it was too close a call for the auditors and Attorney General Tong, who apparently would like to be sure the FOI commission never again even gets a chance to consider whether a whistleblower complaint is made public.

Auditor John Geragosian told me Thursday that he believes keeping the complaints from the public

will encourage more whistleblowers to come forward. I disagree and believe there are adequate provisions in the law to shield their identity and protect them from retaliation.

After all, whistleblowers are trying bring attention to wrongdoing. I suspect the last thing most of them would want it is to let the folks who run the government keep a lid on their disclosures of wrongdoing.

Geragosian sent me the office’s report on the 60 whistleblower complaints it handled last year, with a brief, tantalizing description of each.

I filed FOI requests for three of them, one about nepotism and employee not working at the office of Secretary of the State, one about questionable bidding practices by the state treasurer and another about nepotism and improper promotion at the Department of Transportation.

It could be my last chance to request and see them. And you can see clearly why the Democrats who run Hartford want to see how things like that remain locked away for good.

I put calls in about the whistleblower secrecy bill and never heard back from the co-chairs, Democrats Mae Flexer and Matt Blumenthal of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, which takes up the matter Monday.

I also asked the eastern Connecticut senator who serves on the committee, Martha Marx, to comment on the proposal to keep whistleblower complaints secret, but she never got back to me either.

Connecticut residents have long depended on federal authorities to uncover and prosecute wrongdoing and corruption, since the Democrats who run the state are often prepared to sweep it under the rug.

This time they are going to have to vote and reveal for the record what they think about letting the pubic know what whistleblowers uncover.