Big gift to public education should be handled in public

During his campaign last year, Gov. Ned Lamont declared, “Change starts now.” But his administration is turning out to be just as hostile to open government as that of his predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy.

The Lamont administration has approved a contract with the state police union that blocks public access to the personnel files of state troopers so the public can’t learn about complaints of misconduct on the job.

The governor will sign a bill just passed by the General Assembly requiring secret arrests in some domestic violence cases. This is utterly totalitarian.

And the administration’s state budget exempts from state freedom-of-information law the state agency being created to allocate the $100 million given to the state by billionaires Ray and Barbara Dalio for public education purposes. The agency’s members will be determined by state law, the gift will become public money, and its allocation to public schools will be the public’s business. So there’s no reason for the agency not to have to function like any other state agency.

Not surprisingly the legislature held no public hearing on exempting the new agency from FOI law. The provision creating the board was included in the state budget bill, which materialized only hours before it was voted on, precluding deliberation.

House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, rationalizes all this, arguing that the new agency will want to operate accountably and should be given a chance to do so before people complain about it. But Aresimowicz’s argument rejects the premise of all FOI law, since his argument could be made about all other state agencies. Of course they all should want to be accountable but sometimes they find it inconvenient and so they conceal things anyway.

It’s not clear where the idea to exempt the new education agency came from. The Capitol press corps seems to have failed to ask. Maybe the Dalios feared that the scrutiny of the agency’s operations might expose connections they have to potential recipients of the money or might raise questions about future contributions to the agency or the family’s influence on expenditures.

Too bad, for public education is already too cowed by teacher unions and the perpetrators of political correctness. It shouldn’t be intimidated by billionaires as well.

The General Assembly should repeal this exemption in its special session ahead.