Thomas Hennick was the public education officer for the FOI Commission from 2001 until January 2024. Hennick has traveled to 160 out of Connecticut’s 169 cities and towns during his time working for the Commission, educating people across the state about the laws. Prior to that, he worked as a journalist. He has also served on the Board of Education in Durham. Recently, he was appointed to the Connecticut FOI Commission, which hears complaints and makes rulings.
Interview by Miah Green, SCSU JRN ‘25. Answers have been condensed and edited.
Can you give a bit of background as to what your role at FOIC included?
The role as public education officer was actually a new role that was created that I stepped into. No one had ever served it before. They had found that compliance with the law around the state, both municipally and in the state agencies, was not very good. So, they felt that more education would be a good idea. I stepped into that role. I answered phone calls, questions, anywhere from 20 to 30 a day. “What do we do under this circumstance?” “How does this work?” And then I also did a lot of workshops. I traveled around the state. When people called, I would set up a time – morning, afternoon, evening – it didn’t matter. I like to tell people there’s 169 towns and cities in Connecticut, and I visited all but nine of them in my 23 years doing it.
How were you introduced to FOI?
I was a journalist for 25 years, so I had some knowledge of the law and how it worked. It was enough to know the different aspects. But then once I joined Freedom of Information as a full-time staff member, I obviously had to learn the law and took lessons and then wound up passing it along in my 23 years there.
What are some complexities to accessing public records?
The complexities come when if you’re not a lawyer. I am not an attorney, I’m not trained as an attorney, and many of the people we deal with are not. They are volunteers in their towns, especially in the local level boards and commissions.You have to try to sort it out. There’s a lot of legislative speak and attorney speak in the law. And the question is, well, this document, it seems like it should be one we should give out. But there’s an exemption to disclosure and that sort of thing. So what makes it complex is that intuitively, it’s a record you think should be given out. But then the law says, no, you can’t, or you shouldn’t.
So you’re forced to make that decision, on the fly sometimes. And that’s why the training is so helpful, so they’re not fumbling around. And a lot of the violations that are cited are unwitting. People just don’t realize. Their intuition takes them this way, but the law takes them that way.
What should people do if they feel they are wrongly denied information?
The process is pretty user friendly. You do not need an attorney to go to the Freedom of Information Commission. So, if you say, “OK, they’re withholding this record on me, and I believe I should have a right to it.” If you believe that, and you can’t work it out with the agency – state or municipal – you file a complaint against the agency with the Freedom of Information Commission. It’s a formal complaint, and we at the FOI Commission then try to mediate it. We try to bring the parties together. A lot of times it’s a misunderstanding, and maybe there’s a compromise that can be worked out. If that fails, then it goes to a formal hearing. At the hearing, both sides tell their story to the unbiased commissioner.
Have you witnessed any significant change in regard to how FOI works?
When I joined the staff in 2001, the big question was, “What do we do with emails?” Now people are talking about mega data and they’re talking about text messages. Technically, any time a public agency creates a record in the conduct of the public’s business, it’s defined globally as a public record.
What does FOI mean to you?
I’ve seen it from three different levels – as a journalist, as a staff member, and as a public official. What it means to me is that it’s really what keeps our democracy going. James Madison had a quote: “Democracy doesn’t work without the knowledge that we need to have.”
The one thing that I would stress is that it’s a law that we should all take advantage of. We only operate effectively if we’re informed.
So even if you don’t go to a meeting, the law requires a board to create minutes. Read the minutes. If you’re interested in the topic – you have an unfortunate situation and there’s a police report – you have a right to get that police report. Something’s going on in town that you’re not familiar with, well, there’s records about it. Someone’s putting up a huge distribution center in your town, the plans are there regarding where the traffic is going to flow. All of those things, you have a right to see that. The more we know, the better off we are.
