Category Archives: Freedom

Don't let those new year's resolutions to be a better saver and a smarter spender evaporate just yet.

Spokane's nationally known financial expert Kumiko Love, perhaps better known as The Budget Mom, is here to help with the release of her new book, My Money My Way: Taking Back Control of Your Financial Life.

While Love's collection of Budget Mom-branded products (financial planners, budget-management workbooks and more) have been helping her tens of thousands of followers for years, this new tell-all outlines in detail how to develop a lasting and successful budget-guided lifestyle.

Starting with Love's personal journey and the life-altering moments the birth of her son, her divorce and struggling to make ends meet as a single mom that initially set her on the path to financial freedom, My Money My Way is formatted to help individuals and families navigate a similar path to success.

The crucial key to successfully managing one's money, Love explains, is not even the money itself, but all the complex human emotions that prompt a person to spend it. After discovering this truth for herself, Love applied it to create her customizable Budget-by-Paycheck system. Using this method, she was able to pay off $77,000 of debt in less than a year, and more recently saved enough to buy a brand-new home with cash.

Through sharing her own story alongside those of Budget Mom followers from varying financial backgrounds in My Money My Way, Love dives deep into the psychology of budgeting, spending, saving and more. Whether you're saving up for a vacation, buying a house or paying off debt, the book offers helpful tips and tools for budgeters at any stage even those who already use The Budget Mom's methods.

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A Path to Financial Freedom | Home | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander | News, Politics, Music, Calendar, Events in Spokane, Coeur d'Alene and...

Bethesda released the second episode of its Into the Starfield series today. The developer diaries provide glimpses into the games development with discussions from the designers about what the game entails while sprinkling concept art and even some light game footage.

You can catch the first episode of Into the Starfield here. This second installment sees game director Todd Howard sit down with design director Emil Pagliarulo, lead quest designer Will Shen, and lead artist Istvan Pely to discuss Starfields open-world design and how it gives players the freedom to carve their own path. Accomplishing that relies in part on how players can interact with the games factions as well as individuals, with the team chatting up Starfields more sophisticated persuasion system. Check out the full video below.

Bethesda has slowly rolled out information on Starfield over the last severalmonths, but a gameplay trailer remains elusive.If you havent been keeping up, Bethesda has thus far divulged details ofStarfields lore and backstory and shown off a few locations. All of that has been helpful, but were anxious to see how it all comes together in-game.

Starfield launches November 11 for Xbox Series X/S and PC and launches day one on Game Pass.

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Starfield Developer Diary Discusses The Game's Open World Freedom - Game Informer

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We join the New England Newspaper & Press Association and New England First Amendment Coalition in marking Sunshine Week focused on open and easily-accessible public meetings.

Massachusetts Open Meeting laws date back to 1958 and they faced a significant test in 2020 when COVID-19 social gathering prohibitions made Zoom and remote household words and forced government meetings to retreat to computer screens.

The pandemics abeyance will start to open meeting rooms in city and town halls and we think this is a good time to refresh the publics and elected officials and town board volunteers understanding of the law.

The Attorney Generals office states the Opening Meeting laws purpose as promoting transparency with regard to deliberations and decisions on which public policy is based.

The law sets requirements for posting public meeting notices. It lays out specific conditions for public bodies meeting behind closed doors in executive session, and specifies the process for holding closed-door meetings.

Coalition Executive Director Justin Silverman expanded on this goal by noting how late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis used a metaphor to describe government transparencys importance.

Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants, Brandeis said. Open government and unfettered freedom of information, in his view, are the best ways to keep democracy free from corruption and despotism.

North Shore government bodies have faced Open Meeting law challenges during the pandemic.

Peabody City Councilor-at-Large Anne Manning-Martin filed an Open Meeting law complaint in November 2021 challenging the Peabody Zoning Board of Appeals compliance with the law.

Deliberations and decisions are not to be cavalierly made out of public view as if this is now the new norm. Such relaxed standards come with the risk of abuse, which is dangerous and causes our residents not to trust us, she stated in her complaint.

Although not the subject of an Open Meeting law complaint, the Nahant Planning Boards vote on Dec. 21, 2021 to stop recording and posting meetings to YouTube sparked an editorial in this newspaper (Item, Jan. 11) recommending board members resign if they could not commit to exercising the highest transparency standards.

An Open Meeting law complaint filed this month alleged the Lynnfield School Committee conducted serial deliberations with Superintendent of Schools Kristen Vogel outside the laws parameters.

How these complaints will be resolved remains to be seen but we point to them as examples for why now is a good time for public officials to take a refresher course in the Open Meeting law and recommit to adhering to its tenets for the public good and the good of democracy.

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Let the sun shine in on open government and freedom of information - Itemlive - Daily Item

The hijab judgment has struck a blow against each of these principles liberty, equality, and fraternity

The hijab judgment has struck a blow against each of these principles liberty, equality, and fraternity

Our social contract is built on an edifice that grants pre-eminence to individual choice. The Constitutions Preamble recognises this when it places an onus on the state to secure to all citizens, among other things, liberty, equality and fraternity. The last of those values is fortified by a further commitment. The state, the Preamble says, will guarantee fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.

The chief architect of the Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar, saw the standards contained in these words as forming a triumvirate of values. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, he said, were principles of life, a union of trinity. Divorce one from the other and the very purpose of democracy will be defeated. The Constituent Assembly believed that it was only a deep commitment to these principles that can help usher in a social revolution in the country. The structures of Indias democracy the various minutiae of administration that the Constitution spells out were each built on the idea that securing individual happiness required the state to foreground these standards.

In that picture, independent courts, the framers thought, would stand as a guardrail against any effort to undermine social democracy. But far from acting as sentinels on the qui vive as a former Chief Justice of India once described the Supreme Court of Indias role the judiciary has time and again enforced the popular morality of the day, treating values of individual freedom as dispensable trifles. Tuesdays judgment by the Karnataka High Court, in Resham vs State of Karnataka, is the newest addition to this litany. It upholds a ban imposed on the use of hijabs by students in classrooms across the State (Karnataka), and, in doing so, strikes a blow against each of the principles contained in B.R. Ambedkars union of trinity.

The judgment is premised on three broad conclusions. First, the court holds that the wearing of a hijab is not essential to the practice of Islam, and, therefore, the petitioners right to freedom of religion is not impinged; second, it finds that there is no substantive right to free expression and privacy that can be claimed within the confines of a classroom; and, third, according to it, since the Governments order does not by itself ban the use of a hijab and since it is otherwise neutral, there is no discrimination aimed at Muslim women students.

These conclusions suffer from one flaw or another. In rejecting the plea that the wearing of a hijab is a legitimate exercise of religious freedom, the court refers to a plethora of precedent that points to only essential religious practices enjoying constitutional protection. According to the court, the petitioners failed to produce any evidence to show that the use of a hijab was essential to Islam. Yet, despite this, it proceeds to perform a theological study which one would think it is ill-equipped to do, especially without conducting a full-fledged trial and concludes that Islam does not make the wearing of a hijab mandatory.

This is an extraordinary finding for a secular court to make. No doubt, similar leaps of judgment have been made by the judiciary in the past for example, in 2004, the Supreme Court concluded that the performance of the Tandava dance was not indispensable to the Ananda Margis faith, even though the followers of that religion believed it to be so. But if the Karnataka High Courts inference is partly based on flawed doctrine, it must take the blame for posing to itself the question of whether at all a hijab was essential to religion.

Unlike many of the cases in which the doctrine of essential practice is invoked, this was not a case where individual freedom was at odds with group rights. On the contrary, this was a case where exercise of free choice was curtailed by state action. The petitioners had contended that they wore the hijab as a matter of conscience. Article 25 of the Constitution guarantees to all persons not only an equal right to profess, practise and propagate religion but also a freedom of conscience. Counsel pointed to the Supreme Courts judgment in Bijoe Emmanuel (1986), where the rights of Jehovahs Witnesses who refused to partake in the singing of the national anthem was protected. There, the Court ruled that so long as students conscientiously believed that they must not participate in the recital, their rights could be abridged only in the interests of public order, morality or health.

In Resham, the Karnataka High Court draws a facile distinction from Bijoe Emmanuel. The judgment holds that there is no evidence in this case that the petitioners conscientiously believed in the necessity of the hijab this is anomalous given that once a pleading is made on affidavit, the onus ought to have been on the state to establish that the petitioners were not, in fact, wearing the hijab out of a sense of conscience.

The court then proceeds to make an even more astonishing assertion: all cases where a right of conscience is pleaded, according to it, are ipso facto cases of religious freedom, and, therefore, ought to be subject to the test of essentiality. This conclusion ignores the fact that Bijoe Emmanuel was explicitly decided based on conscience and that conscience need have no direct relation to religious faith. It is possible, for example, that the hijab might not be essential to Islam, and yet that Muslim women choose to wear it as an exercise of their own individual beliefs.

That the court was simply unprepared to grapple with this difference is even more evident in its rejection of claims based on free expression. The petitioners argued that in choosing to wear the hijab, they were merely exercising a form of identity relatable to their rights to freedom of speech and privacy. The court counters this by holding that classrooms are qualified public spaces, where individual rights cannot be asserted to the detriment of general discipline and decorum. In spaces such as these and the court draws a remarkable analogy with prisons substantive rights, the judgment holds, metamorphose into derivative rights. It is unclear what the ruling means by all this, except that these apparently derivative rights are incapable of being invoked in protected environments.

In all of this, the court ignores the classic test for determining when and how the right to free expression can be legitimately limited: that is, the test of proportionality. There is, according to the judgment, no need to dwell on legal doctrine, because the petitions we are treating do not involve the right to freedom of speech & expression or right to privacy, to such an extent as to warrant the employment of these tests for evaluation of argued restrictions, in the form of school dress code. In this manner, the court also brushes aside requests for reasonable accommodation.

Kendriya Vidyalayas, for example, as the petitioners claimed, allow for hijabs within the contours of the prescribed uniforms. But the judgment holds that to make such an accommodation would defeat the very purpose of uniforms. This finding fails to recognise that even within the existing dress code, many accommodations are, in fact, made. For instance, religious and cultural marks on the forehead and accessories on other parts of the body are not disallowed. If the purpose of the uniform is to allow for no differences, surely every exhibition of faith in the classroom must be stamped out. Therefore, we can only see the failure to provide for a reasonable accommodation for the hijab as deliberate discrimination wrought on Muslim women.

The judgment makes repeated references to constitutional secularism. But secularism, properly understood, demands precisely what the petitioners here were pleading for: the rights to agency, choice, and equal treatment, and, more than anything else, a guarantee of fraternity undergirded, as the Preamble says, with dignity to every individual.

Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising in the Madras High Court

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Treating values of individual freedom as trifles - The Hindu

The Freedom to Teach

School districts, the most active battlefield in the American culture wars today, are facing an unprecedented number of calls to remove books from schools and libraries, false claims about obscenity invading classrooms, the elimination of teaching about evolution and climate change, challenges to the need for making sense of and critiquing our world in mathematics classrooms, and legislation redlining teaching about racism in American history. These actions are putting excessive and undue pressure on teachers, who are caught in the crossfire of larger political conflict, motivated by cultural shifts and stoked for political gain.

Teachers are being maligned as harming children and are subjected to constant scrutiny (and even direct surveillance) by many parents, school administrators, and activist groups. Some are afraid to offer their students award-winning books that may violate vaguely stated laws about teaching the history of racism or that may be misleadingly labeled as pornographic. As a result, teachers very ability to do their job is under threat.

In their zeal, activists of the current culture wars unfortunately treat teachers as if they are enemies. The truth is that teachers are uniquely important leaders who, in educating current and new generations of students, bear responsibility for this countrys future. They are trained professionals with one of the hardest and most demanding jobs, a job that requires deep commitment, but brings little financial reward.

Teachers need our support; they need our trust; they need to have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment. And that freedom includes the freedom to decide what materials best suit their students in meeting the demands of the curriculum, the freedom to discuss disturbing parts of American history if and when they judge students are ready for it, and the freedom to determine how to help young people navigate the psychological and social challenges of growing up. In short, teachers need the freedom to prepare students to become future members of a democratic society who can engage in making responsible and informed contributions and decisions about our world.

The stakes are too high. We cannot let good teachers leave the field because they no longer have the freedom to do their jobs. We cannot let the education of our children and young adults become collateral damage in partisan political machinations.

National Coalition Against CensorshipNational Council of Teachers of EnglishNational Council for the Social StudiesNational Council of Teachers of MathematicsNational Science Teaching Association

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NCAC and National Teacher Organizations' Statement on The Freedom to Teach - Blogging Censorship

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Without freedom of the press: Life behind an Iron Curtain - Williston Daily Herald

Only twenty-seven days remain before the first round of the French Presidential election, but it wasnt until the beginning of March that the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron, got around to formally entering the race. There were strategic reasons for the slow rollout, but, as Russias assault on Ukraine intensified, a showy announcement seemed inappropriate, leading Macron to cancel a rally in Marseille. The contrast between Macrons schedule and those of the other candidates was kickoff enough. On Monday, conservative candidate Valrie Pcresse (Les Rpublicains) visited the iconic Salon de lAgriculture, a national farming fair which takes place every year in the south of Paris, Gilles Paris noted, in Le Monde. Communist candidate Fabien Roussel also wandered among cows, sheep, wines, cheeses, and other delicatessen producers. Emmanuel Macron for his part, spent his morning in a national security council meeting in the Elyse palaces war room and talked on the phone for ninety minutes with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

The above passage required no translation: Paris was writing in a daily report called The French Test, the first column that Le Monde, Frances leading center-left newspaper, has published in English. It aims to guide Anglophone readers through the twists and turns of a French campaign, presuming an audience of international readers, in addition to, as Paris explained recently, people living in France with not that good French. The idea is to be useful and, if possible, funny. So be it if Paris must patiently identify the main players and their parties, explain the two-round voting system, remember not to use liberal to describe someone who favors minimal government, and emphasize that the heavily regulated French campaign-financing system renders the Presidential contest roughly equivalent, financially, to a Senate race in South Dakota. Neither is the occasional infelicityEric Zemmour can hardly be accused of antisemitism as he is a Jewish of North African descentan obstacle. Im totally comfortable with the fact that Im a French guy writing in English, Paris said.

The column is published each day at 1 P.M. Paris time7 A.M. in New York. We are obviously targeting the East Coast, Paris said. The U.S. is the Anglophone country he knows best, having just returned, last summer, from a seven-year stint as Le Mondes Washington correspondent. He travelled to forty-seven states (still missing: Hawaii, Alaska, Maine), took several R.V. trips, and came to love drip coffee (I know! I know!). The French Test is inspired, in part, by the kind of pithy, aphoristic political writing that Paris learned from reading Beltway commentators. When I was much younger, I loved William Safire columns, he said. He was so funny, so cruel. And Maureen Dowd also is this kind of columnist, except when shes writing about Thanksgiving lunch with her Republican brother.

The center-right president of the French Senate has already complained that the abbreviated campaign risks creating a crisis of legitimacy. Paris, however, sees this election as the most consequential in decadesnot in terms of the personalities involved but in its potential for completing the restructuring of French party politics that began when Macron, a former minister in Hollandes Socialist government, blew up the party to start his own movement, in 2016. This year, the center-right Rpublicains may meet their end if they fail, for the second time in a row, to field a candidate who progresses past the first round of voting. If that happens, the two pillars of the Fifth Republic will be done, Paris said. As he grapples with the passive forms of English verbs and scans WordReference.com for the closest English equivalent of such French idioms as avoir le cul entre deux chaises (to have your ass between two chairs), i.e., to be undecided, the stakes are changing quickly. Some people believe the war in Ukraine might stifle the electoral campaign. On the contrary, it takes all its meaning. It brings issues of life and death to the forefront and the voters will give their opinion during the two rounds of the presidential election, in April, he wrote earlier this month, without forgetting, amid the turmoil, to flag the two-round system once again.

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Translating the French Election for the Freedom-Fry Audience - The New Yorker

Most citizens dont know that Republican leaders in Iowa, Utah, Kansas and Florida are limiting journalists access to open-to-the-public legislature and gubernatorial sessions. This begs the question What issues and policies are GOP elected officials trying to hide?

Furthermore, what is there about the First Amendment to the Constitution specifically freedom of the press Republicans dont understand? Maybe GOPers are demonstrating their anti-democracy intentions, giving favor to control the media as witnessed by fascist countries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Venezuela.

According to information published by Freedom of the Press Foundation, 72 media access denial incidents occurred in the last four years. Republicans denying or limiting journalists access to government events appears to be retaliatory or done without meaningful justification (U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, Feb. 2).

In Florida, the GOP governor blocked multiple journalists from covering the signing of a controversial election bill (ibid, May 6, 2021). Journalists in Iowa, Utah and Kansas were kicked out by Republican leaders of their historic press benches on the senate floor and moved into a gallery. The press bench permitted reporters to observe debate, have immediate access to legislators and report the facts. The new rules allow legislators to duck out and run away from journalists, avoiding being held accountable by their constituents (ibid, Jan. 4, Jan. 7, Feb. 2, Feb. 15).

Steve Morris, who led the Kansas GOP from 2005 to 2013, wrote in a Kansas Reflector editorial, Placing restrictions on journalists in the Senate chambers suggests there is something to hide or that leadership is taking unwarranted and unnecessary retaliation against reporters (The Inquirer, Feb. 18).

After Parker Higgins of the Freedom of the Press Foundation spoke with Iowa and Kansas reporters about the restrictions and said . . . in terms of doing your job quickly and effectively, you cant get that from the public gallery (ibid, Feb. 4).

Richard Gilbert, press secretary for Iowa Gov. Robert D. Ray (Rep., 1969-1983) wrote an op-ed for Julie Gammacks Potluck (OkobojiWriters, Jan. 9). Reflecting on Republicans restricting access to the media, he stated . . . it is enough to set off alarm bells for anyone who cares about clean and open government at all levels.

Gilbert continues as (Gov.) Rays press secretary . . . my job was not to control access to what went on in the state government. It was to make the information accessible. Gilbert lays it on the line for voters who are witnessing freedom of the press restrictions: which brings me to the obvious question whats the objective of stonewalling or making it more difficult for the reporters covering deliberations of the Iowa (and other states) senate? What dont these elected officials want the people . . . to know or see?

Gilberts candor is refreshing: if legislators want to extract petulant payback on the press corps because the coverage of their august body is often embarrassing, then perhaps they should quit doing and or saying so many stupid things.

Iowa, Utah, Kansas and Floridas elected GOP officials media access restrictions blatantly counters free press, a cornerstone of democracy. Voters need to confront Republicans as well as Democrats seeking election or re-election and ask their deep-seeded beliefs on freedom of the press.

Whenever Republican leaders restrict press access, it appears their goal is to abandon democracy and adopt dictatorial and totalitarian rule. If GOPs anti-First Amendment actions are permitted to continue, who knows whats next. Maybe well see something like neo-Nazi banning of books, disinformation about critical race theory, anti-LGBTQ legislation, using public taxpayer funds to support private education and invoking voter suppression.

Oh, wait! Were already witnessing those draconian measures in GOP-controlled states. The next authoritarian action by Republicans should be of no surprise.

Steve Corbin is an emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer.

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Republicans curtailing freedom of the press | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

Heres a quiz: Whats the greatest danger facing Americans today? The war in Ukraine? A new COVID-19 variant? Book banning in dozens of states? Open threats of violence by white supremacists?

Answer: None of the above. Watch any newscast. Read any newspaper. Listen to any talk show. They all trumpet the same thing: The greatest danger for Americans today is the price of gas.

Dont stop there. Do what I did this week. Pull up gas prices on your favorite search engine: Google, Safari, Bing or whatever. Trust me. All you will find are articles claiming that the price of a gallon of gas is higher than ever before blaming it all on the war in Ukraine or President BidenJoe BidenUngar-Sargon: Working class hit hardest by inflation Nevada county to consider counting all ballots by hand Biden to announce B in Ukraine military aid: report MORE or both followed by scores of leads on where to find cheap gas at a station near you. Nowhere will you find any in-depth analysis of why gas prices are so high and how long they may so remain.

Its time to set the record straight about gas prices. First, as difficult as it may be for some people to believe, theres nothing in the Constitution that says the price of gas must never exceed $2 per gallon. In fact, compared to other countries, were actually getting a bargain at the pump. As of March 13, the average price of gas here had soared to $4.43. Thats still far below what drivers were paying, even before the Ukraine war, in Amsterdam ($6.48), Milan ($5.96) or Stockholm ($5.80). Remember also that a big chunk of the price of gas is federal taxes (18.4 cents per gallon) and state taxes (average 30.6 cents per gallon).

Second, its not Bidens fault. In November 2021, Donald TrumpDonald TrumpNevada county to consider counting all ballots by hand Omarosa hit with K penalty over failure to file financial disclosure Trump says he's 'surprised' Putin ordered Ukraine invasion MORE told Fox News: Gas was at gasoline, $1.83 or $1.86 when I left, a gallon. And now its $7.70 in California. Which is just another Trump big lie. According to AAA, the national average for regular gas on Trumps last day in office was $2.39 per gallon. Aside from one remote station in Gorda, Calif., the price of gas in California has never hit $7.70. On March 13, it was $5.74.

Third, gas prices actually started to climb under Trump and continued to climb under Biden. Why? COVID-19! Its that old law of supply and demand at work. When COVID-19 hit and people stayed home and stopped commuting, demand for gasoline fell, major producers cut back on production, supply went down and prices started going up. It happens every time. Thats especially true when it comes to gasoline prices. The price at the pump depends on the price of a barrel of crude oil, as determined by the global market, not by what any one country does in terms of energy policy.

Which is why, all fears to the contrary, not even cutting off oil imports from Russia will have that negative an impact, certainly not here in the United States, where Russian imports counted for only about 3 percent of our oil and gas supply, compared to 19 percent for France and 30 percent for Germany.

Bottom line. Yes, todays high price of gas is tough on American consumers. But its only temporary. Analysts predict gas prices will fall to an average $3.30 by December. Meanwhile, its the least we can do to help Ukraine against Russian President Vladimir PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinSenate passes resolution supporting Putin war crime probe Trump says he's 'surprised' Putin ordered Ukraine invasion Lawmakers back Biden on potential economic penalties for China MORE. You dont have to like how much more youre paying at the pump, but stop complaining about it. Think of it as the price for freedom.

Press is host of The Bill Press Pod. He is author of From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.

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Press: The price of gas is the price of freedom | TheHill - The Hill

Two years ago, a mystery was unfolding inside Avon Town Hall.

Long-time police chief Mark Rinaldo was abruptly placed on leave in November 2019, and town officials were tight-lipped about the decision, saying only that allegations had surfaced about his conduct.

Rinaldo retired a few months later, signing an agreement that allowed him to cash out more than $80,000 of unused time off, and three months worth of additional severance pay.

Watching from one town over, Farmington resident Joseph Sastre wanted to know more about the reasons behind his departure. Sastre, a lawyer who frequently uses the states open government laws to access public information, contacted the town manager with a request for documents.

It really got me wondering how much of the police department's time had been devoted to whatever was going on, Sastre said last week. If they're distracted with something other than police work and public safety, I think that the public has a right to know.

Under state law, citizens have the right to view a wide range of government records, from police reports to emails and body camera videos. But getting them isnt always straightforward; the law contains numerous exemptions, which allow public officials to keep sensitive materials out of public view.

In Connecticut, an independent body called the Freedom of Information Commission plays a key role in settling disputes over whether records should be released.

In Avon, town officials provided Sastre with some of the relevant documents he requested including a copy of the severance agreement with the chief but said they would be withholding one document because they didn't believe it was a public record.

Tyler Russell

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Connecticut Public

The records Sastre did receive were silent about the allegations against the police chief, and he believed the public has a right to know what happened, so he filed a complaint with the FOI commission to determine if the town was inappropriately withholding the record.

During the hearing before the Freedom of Information Commission, Avon Town Manager Brandon Robertson attempted to make the case that an 11-page log and photo of troubling incidents that another town employee observed of the chief was not public because of attorney-client privilege. The town manager is not an attorney, but told the concerned employee he planned to share the log with the towns attorney.

That attorney, Michael Harrington, said the town's not interested in sharing what happened.

For us, it's very important the town resolve this issue without making it a further issue. And that included not only not publicizing the nature of the allegations, but also not even publicizing the individual" who created the log, he said.

The FOI commission eventually determined the log was a public document.

But it took more than a year and a half for the commission to reach that decision, which was finalized in November 2021.

That long wait isnt unusual. A review by Connecticut Public found it usually takes the commission around eight months to issue decisions in contested cases. And once the pandemic hit, that time shot up to more than a year.

Mike Savino, a reporter at television station WFSB, and president of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information, says those delays have an impact.

If you win, suddenly, how valuable are those public records if it's two years after the fact?" he asked. "It's creating a situation where things that you should be entitled to, to highlight what a public agency is doing, they may not even be relevant anymore.

State law gives the commission one year to process each complaint. But that deadline was relaxed during the pandemic. The commission is now working to address what it calls a serious backlog of cases.

Executive Director Colleen Murphy told Connecticut Public the agency aims to reduce the time it takes to render decisions, but its unclear how quickly that will happen, given its limited resources.

Eight months we think is too long, Murphy said.

Over the last decade the volume of complaints being filed with the commission has been on a roller coaster ranging from 660 to 941 though spending and staffing levels remained largely unchanged.

At the same time, cases have grown more complex as state and local governments adopted a host of new measures in response to the pandemic. More cases now require an in-depth review of the records at issue, which can span thousands of pages. A somewhat new state law also allows public agencies to seek relief from frivolous requests, which has increased the workload.

The commission is also facing pushback to filling a vacant attorney position to help with the "serious backlog," according to a request it submitted to the governors budget office earlier this year.

The administration of Gov. Ned Lamont stripped that request out of the budget it sent to lawmakers. The commission contends thats a violation of state law since the governor is not supposed to alter the commissions requested budget - a power that rests instead with the legislature.

"It's very problematic for us in terms of trying to ... do better by the people of Connecticut," Murphy said.

"We're talking about information, information that's important to people," she said.

Officials at OPM did not respond to a question from Connecticut Public about why the staffing request was removed.

State Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly believes the commissions process is too slow.

I think that diminishes the public domain, Kelly said, and it needs to be rectified.

Kelly uses open records laws to get information from state agencies. When he was denied access to communications about a controversial health insurance merger back in 2016, the Republican legislator filed a complaint that eventually landed in court.

When these documents came to light four years later, Kelly says it was too late.

We shouldn't be able to use a Freedom of Information Act to withhold information through dilatory tactics so that people don't have timely information during a public debate," he said.

If the public agency or person seeking the records doesnt like the commission's decision, they can appeal the case in state court a process that can tack on several years to getting access to information.

About 20 commission decisions are appealed in court each year.

The Avon police chief case was one of those cases and so Sastre is still waiting to find out why the police chief retired so abruptly.

Avons town manager declined to answer questions about the case, and instead referred to the towns court filings. Rinaldo, the former police chief, did not respond to requests for comment last week.

As much as it feels good, in this case, to be handed a victory of sorts, well, look where it got me, Sastre said. I still don't have the documents. And it's two years later.

Before the commission's hearing officer ruled on the case, she pointed out how unorthodox it is for a town to keep something like this secret.

"It's kind of unusual to have a public official, like a police chief, put on leave and not be able to understand what underlies that decision. I've never seen it," Valicia Harmon said during the hearing. "It's unusual for someone of that level, or anybody, to be placed on leave or suspended, and for the public not to understand the underpinnings of that.

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Long delays at Connecticut's Freedom of Information Commission leave public in the dark - Connecticut Public