Accountability and openness the way to go

Among the agency consolidations proposed in Gov. Malloy’s budget is the merger of the state Freedom of Information Commission, the Elections Enforcement Commission, the Office of State Ethics, the Judicial Review Council and the Contracting Standards Board into something to be called the Office of Government Accountability. The projected savings would be small and might not materialize for a few years, since consolidation would impose its own costs, like installing new computer systems.

Since nobody in authority yet seems able to identify large savings in state government, savings based on changes in policy, even small savings have to be pursued vigorously.

But there’s still a big problem with this particular consolidation. It’s that four of the five agencies involved are adjudicative agencies often dealing with politically sensitive issues, and the consolidation would put them all under the supervision of an executive appointed directly by the governor and serving at his pleasure.

At present the agencies are run by boards on which some political minority representation is assured and on which there are some fixed terms. Thus the boards have diverse memberships and are insulated against partisan influence, precisely because of the political sensitivity of their adjudicative functions. This insulation bolsters their independence, integrity and public confidence in them.

That insulation cannot be maintained if those agencies are consolidated under the direct control of one gubernatorial appointee.

So how much is integrity in government worth? Even in these hard times it should be worth something.

Once upon a time, Connecticut didn’t want to be a place where you couldn’t find out why people were dying or disappearing.

So state government maintained in each county the office of coroner, whose job was to review and issue a public report about every untimely death. The work of the coroners provided accountability, for those who may have caused untimely deaths and for government itself, lest government not handle untimely deaths properly.

Back in the 1960s, it was a coroner’s report that began the unraveling of the murder of two unarmed burglars by state police and their planting of a gun — false evidence — at the crime scene, a school in Norwich. Thanks to the coroner’s report, the police were convicted.

But 30 years ago, in the name of efficiency, state government abolished the coroner’s offices and transferred their responsibilities to the office of the chief medical examiner, and soon the records of the chief medical examiner, including autopsy reports, were sealed away from the public on the grounds that they were too sensitive. As a result, the public is lucky to get the chief medical examiner’s office to disclose even the cause of an untimely death.

Now Connecticut’s most sympathetic crime victim, Dr. William A. Petit Jr., whose wife and daughters were murdered at their home in Cheshire by two career criminals on parole in 2007, has gotten a bill introduced in the General Assembly to give parents a veto over disclosure of autopsy records involving their children and even a veto over disclosure of the cause of death.

Autopsy records are already exempt from disclosure, except when they become evidence in court or when a death has occurred in state government’s custody. The proposed legislation apparently would allow a parent to block disclosure of any autopsy-related information even if the parent himself had murdered his child.

The problem with autopsy records in Connecticut is not disclosure but the lack of it. As long as records of untimely deaths are secret, accountability is thwarted and the public has to rely on police and prosecutors, who are often not just opposed to accountability but opposed to it because they are guilty of misconduct themselves.

Just the other day, New Haven’s police chief had to apologize for the arrest of someone whose only offense was to videotape officers brutalizing people at a bar last October.

In 2009, police in East Haven arrested a priest for videotaping their harassment of Hispanics and then lied about it, filing a report claiming that they thought that the priest was pointing a weapon at them. The audio recording showed that the cops had known all along that the object involved was a camera. But the cops were never disciplined, and now a federal grand jury is investigating the East Haven Police Department.

A legislative hearing on the autopsy secrecy bill was held last week. If he’d been able to get away, Moammar Gadhafi might have spoken in favor of it.

 Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.