Lamont can’t fight invisible enemy in secret
We are fighting an invisible enemy. Our government must be transparent as we battle on.
Gov. Ned Lamont announced on April 13 that he is creating a committee to create plans for lifting the restrictions on the ordinary life we enjoyed until a world pandemic descended upon us. The Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group, by design, will conduct its urgent business in secret. This is a blunder that Lamont must remedy.
We are living through an extraordinary time. The governor has exercised vast unchallenged authority under a March 10 declaration of emergency that is contrary to our democratic tradition but is authorized in law by this public health crisis. Connecticut residents, measured by any standard, have risen to the challenge of this disorienting time. From indomitable health care workers to bus drivers to grocery store employees to people donning homemade masks, the people of this virus hotspot continue to answer the call of service and compliance.
We answered Lamont’s requests and commands at each misery-filled step through this emergency. Lamont should be pleased that the public trusts him to lead us. There have been mistakes, we know that. It makes no sense, for example, that passengers were not required until recently to wear masks on those vessels of virus transmission, MetroNorth trains. Common sense tells us that the regulators in the state Department of Public Health were not prepared to provide the assistance that nursing homes, the killing fields of this pandemic, required to keep vulnerable residents safe.
Lamont has adjusted policies with changing circumstances. There will be time for a comprehensive review when this storm subsides. Reasonable people do not expect perfection. The public supports the governor’s leadership. We trust him.
It is a jarring revelation that Lamont does not trust us.
If he did, he would want the public to see how a plan for the way forward takes shape. Instead, the governor imposes and defends secrecy.
The governor wants a plan to lift the far-reaching restrictions we are obeying. He is using a sleepy nonprofit economic development organization, AdvanceCT, as a shield from the public. AdvanceCT, which receives much of its funding from state taxpayers, is not subject to the state’s open government laws that have served us for 45 years. The Reopen Connecticut Advisory Committee is similarly situated. Putting the committees outside the public’s view was a connivance to accommodate its members and a rebuke to the people Lamont serves — us.
In normal times, a committee performing the functional equivalent of a government body could be challenged before the Freedom of Information Commission and state court. The commission and courts remain suspended for most purposes. We must rely on the benevolent exercise of unchecked power by Lamont, and here he has failed us because he lacks faith in the people who raised him to high office.
Last year, I requested and received under the Freedom of Information Act hundreds of emails between Ann Huntress
Lamont, the governor’s wife, and two of the governor’s top staff members. The governor’s office’s compliance included messages to and from Indra Nooyi, the former head of sugary drinks titan PepsiCo. In thousands of pages I reviewed, the most frequent redactions were those involving Nooyi, who now serves as co-chair of the committee in charge of formulating a plan to reopen Connecticut.
People who make $20 million or more a year in the corporate world, as Nooyi did, come to expect deference and privacy that is incompatible with the exercise of public power. There is nothing ambiguous about the job Lamont has given Nooyi: It is a position of immense influence because the governor intends to rely on the committee’s recommendations.
We know Lamont makes the ultimate decisions, but how the choices before him are reached is the people’s business. Its urgency ought to subject it to more public scrutiny, not less. Fear of the public seeing emails and meeting records should not prompt this insult.
We cannot be indifferent to the rule of law in these perilous times. Together, we have kept our healthcare system from collapsing in the face of a historic threat. That was our urgent mission. We know our common effort and the sacrifices they require must continue. Lamont should not meet our success with a thick veil over what is next. He must trust the people.