What Selectmen Say (or Don't) on Letting You See Texts [UPDATE]

Update 7:29 a.m., Tuesday:

Selectman Jerry Nielsen says he's on vacation and First Selectman Jayme Stevenson says she too has taken some days off, which meant their responses to Darien Patch's questions about town policy on documents have been delayed.

Nielsen said he didn't receive the message left on the answering machine for the phone number he lists on the Darien town website, but later found out about the message. He was then emailed the same questions (reprinted below) that were sent to Stevenson.

In response to Patch's questions (should the Board of Selectmen regularly and to the extent possible make available to the public electronic versions of documents sent to board members just before public meetings and why or why not?) Nielsen wrote in an email time-stamped 8:53 p.m. Monday:

As you have been informed, our packets are hand delivered on the Thursday before our meeting containing both public information and confidential information for our executive sessions. This has been the custom for quite some time.  

The agenda is posted and the First Selectman's office is providing this to you electronically going forward. It has been available to you at the FS [First Selectman's] office in hard copy in the past including our last meeting.  Openness in our Town Government is important and I feel the FS office has done an admirable job.

Stevenson wrote at 9:34 p.m. Monday:

I do think its only fair to acknowledge to the Patch readership that the First Selectman is on a short 4 day vacation and doesn't have the ability to give this dialogue her full attention. 

David, you never answered my questions to you. I look forward to your reply.

Stevenson didn't specify when the vacation began and ended. She had asked these two questions (in an email shown below at the 2:02 p.m. update):

David, I'm wondering if your concern is as a result of you publishing the original instead of the amended agenda for our last meeting?  Does your employer provide you with a document a scanner?

The second question is answered in the same update. The answer to the first question is: No.

Update 2:17 p.m., Monday:

Darien Patch has sent this follow-up email to First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, asking her to clarify her response:

My questions were whether documents should be made available at some point before the meetings, not whether they should be available before or at the same time that selectmen see them. That seems to be the only reason you've given as to why you'd prefer that they not be available in electronic form.

So here's a follow-up question: Should these documents, when available in electronic form (and I assume they almost always are), be made available to the public in that form between the time selectmen get their copies and the start of the board meeting? And why or why not?

Update 2:02 p.m.:

First Selectman Jayme Stevenson sent the following email to Darien Patch at 1:28 p.m.:

Board of Selectmen meeting information is not aggregated nor distributed in electronic form.  Meeting information is provided in hard copy to all Selectmen and local press on the Thursday before a Board of Selectmen's meeting.  I believe my board should have an opportunity to view meeting information before it becomes available to the public.   

David, I'm wondering if your concern is as a result of you publishing the original instead of the amended agenda for our last meeting?  Does your employer provide you with a document a scanner? Jayme

Perhaps one day we will change to all electronic distribution, but my current preference remains paper.  Should we make the change in the future, the change would need to apply to all boards and commissions.  Paper remains the distribution method for RTM [Representative Town Meeting], Board of Finance and Planning and Zoning although the RTM recently agreed to distribute minutes electronically. 

Jayme

Stevenson sent copies of the email to the rest of the Board of Selectmen and to Karl Kilduff, the town administrator.

Stevenson was asked by email on Thursday (in an email shown below) whether documents the town had in electronic form and sent to Selectmen before board meetings should also be made available to the public in that form, either on the town's website or in emails, and why or why not.

Sarah Seelye, moderator of the Representative Town Meeting said documents in the RTM packet are made available to members in paper format, and the Town Clerk's Office isn't currently organized to send them out electronically, although she would like to have that done at some point in the future.

Darien Patch does have a document scanner (currently not working). If it were working, it would not be used on a regular basis to turn documents which the town already has in electronic form back into electronic form.

Original article:

Why doesn't the Board of Selectmen make the documents it sees just before board meetings available to the public either on the town's website or by email?

Darien Patch asked each of the five members of the board early Thursday afternoon whether the documents sent to board members several days before board meetings should be either posted on the website or emailed to the news media so that the public could see them before meetings.

Two board members—Democrats David F. Bayne and John Lundeen—immediately responded, saying that they had no objections to regularly releasing documents this way. Three other selectmen, Republicans Jayme Stevenson, David Campbell and Gerald Nielsen, did not respond to Darien Patch's question.

"I would think so," Lundeen said when asked whether the documents generally should be made available electronically to the public before board meetings.

Lundeen said he would be concerned if posting documents to the town website took up too much staff time. "I don't care so much whether it's posted by the media or posted on the town website."

Bayne said he hasn't considered the issue in detail, but added, "My personal feeling is that if the document is in the packet for discussion at a public meeting, it's a public document." Bayne said.

He did not see why documents couldn't be made available electronically to the public at some point before board meetings when possible, he said.

"I think there might only be a problem if the documents are somehow in less than final form," he said. But that isn't an insurmountable problem either, he said. "If they really are draft documents, they sould be labeled 'Draft.'"

First Selectman Jayme Stevenson announced last week that the board would make the "packet"—the set of documents sent out together to board members before each meeting—available to news organizations in town by 3 p.m. on the Thursday before regular Monday meetings of the selectmen. Agendas would also be emailed to news organizations, Stevenson said in the emailed announcement.

But the documents in the packet would be made available regularly in paper form, Stevenson wrote, not electronically. According to Lundeen and Bayne, they mostly get documents in paper form, hand-delivered to the selectmens' homes on Thursday afternoons before meetings. Some documents are also sent by email, they said.

Everyone in town can see a document posted on the town's website. Documents emailed to news organizations or the public before board meetings can be seen by everyone if the news organizations then post them on their websites. That public availability is more difficult if the documents—almost always created electronically—are made available only in paper form.

To make the documents available in paper form, they must be printed out, collated, stapled and often placed in order with paper clips, then moved from the First Selectmen's Office office. To make them available on the website is another procedure. To email them is a simpler procedure.

On Tuesday, March 12, Stevenson emailed a statement to news organizations stating the Board of Selectmen's policy on making the packet available before meetings. According to the statement, the packet would be available to news media to pick up at the First Selectman's Office. It didn't mention availability of the packet to the public at large.

The First Selectman's Office would email agendas of board meetings to the news media regularly, Stevenson said. Attaching copies of documents available when the email was sent out was not mentioned as part of the policy.

Under the state Freedom of Information Act, documents are available to the public when requested, but not necessarily immediately.

On Thursday, Darien Patch asked each of the selectmen whether the documents, when available in electronic form, could be eithe posted on the town website before meetings or emailed to news organizations. Telephone messages were left with most selectmen. Here is the text of questions emailed to Stevenson:

Hi Jayme,

For a follow-up story, I'm asking each of the selectmen these two questions. Please either respond by email or by calling me at 203-822-2603:

1. When they're in electronic form, should documents in the packet sent to selectmen before a Board of Selectmen meeting be made available to the public online at some point before the meeting? (This applies to public documents, not sensitive documents for executive sessions.)

2. Why or why not?

If you send it by email, I'll publish your full response (or the parts of it directly on the topic of the question).

I plan to pubish the story very early Friday morning. If your comments come in later, I can add them to the article.

-- David

Neither Stevenson, Campbell nor Nielsen responded to the request for an explanation of the board policy, either on Thursday or, after Darien Patch delayed publication of this article, on Friday or over the weekend. 

"I have no problem with the public being informed," Bayne said. "I think that the more informed people are about our discussions, the more opportunity they have to make known their views and participate."

Editor's note: This article originally was published at 5:57 a.m. Monday.