Open government laws not optional

It’s a funny thing about freedom of information in Connecticut. It’s not about guidelines or best practices. The business of open government is covered by laws. Public officials are bound to uphold those laws, whether it’s convenient or not.

If anyone, in any public office, should be well-versed in the question of open government, it’s Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim. He was returned to office in 2015 on expansive promises of transparency and accountability. He vowed over and over that his administration would be responsive and that his books would be open.

Given his history, he had a good reason for doing so. Rebuilding trust after his abortive first run as mayor, ending in 2003, was key to his appeal.

But all those promises of openness meant very little. According to an extensive Hearst Connecticut Media investigation, Ganim’s administration is among the worst when it comes to abiding by open government laws, routinely ignoring requests for public records on a variety of topics. Whether it’s voting records, accounts of payments to employees or information about police investigations, the city has continually dragged its feet and delayed responding, to the point that enforcement of freedom of information laws is nearly broken.

In a sign that the city was well aware of its issues, it took only hours after the publication of the first story on Bridgeport’s slow response times for a response from City Hall that all those problems were on the way to being solved.

“In order to more efficiently and timely respond to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and to reduce middleman bottleneck delay, the administration has authorized and directed the City Attorney’s Office to initiate a new FOI program to become effective in the coming weeks,” the city wrote in a news release.

That’s welcome news, but Ganim has been in office for seven years, not counting his previous 12-year run. He and his staff are well aware of the law, and the pledge to do better is by itself meaningless. Only actions will suffice, which means a prompt response from this day forward on any reasonable request for public information. It cannot be too much to ask.

Other cities don’t have anywhere near Bridgeport’s problems. Bridgeport accounts for 4 percent of Connecticut residents but 17 percent of all public records violation rulings against municipalities by the Freedom of Information Commission. Most of those involve the Police Department, which has a relatively new police chief. The new leadership team must ensure that problems of the past do not continue.

None of this was inevitable. Ganim himself promised to do better, vowing to create an “office of public integrity and accountability” upon his return to office that would promote transparency. That office appears to have never been created.

Open government laws exist so that people can trust that public money is being spent the way it’s supposed to be spent. We have seen too many public corruption cases over the years, including in Bridgeport itself, for anyone to simply trust that elected officials can do what they want without scrutiny.

More than that, it’s the law. It’s not optional. Bridgeport, and every community, must make a new commitment to open government.