After a needless delay of almost a year caused by the town's intransigence, the people of Stonington have finally learned the details of how the town handled a case of workplace threats involving Highway Department employee Ernie Santos.

The information is troubling on a couple of levels. First, it appears that town officials did not deal effectively with prior misconduct issues involving Mr. Santos and, when they did take action, the penalty of a three-day suspension without pay was awfully light given the offense alleged.

Stonington taxpayers should also be upset with the money squandered on fighting the release of this information, which is clearly a public matter. Stonington has paid the town's labor attorney, Michael Satti, $5,200 for his work assessing a request for access to the documents and then legally opposing it.

Day reporter Joe Wojtas sought the information to determine the accuracy of reports he heard about the conduct of Mr. Santos. The final Freedom of Information Commission decision ordering the release of the documents makes it clear Mr. Satti did not do his job.

An objective legal assessment of the material sought by Mr. Wojtas would have made it clear from the start that the documents should be publicly available. Instead Mr. Satti simply said no, forced Mr. Wojtas to appeal, and racked up legal fees in the process. And not all the legal bills are in.

As for Mr. Santos, incidents recorded in 2006 and 2008 pointed to his bullying nature. He had confrontations with fellow employees and threatened retaliation. Finally, Mr. Santos was placed on administrative leave in January 2009 when he brought a large knife to the workplace, ostensibly to sharpen it, but which a fellow employee he clashed with saw as an act of intimidation.

The record shows Mr. Santos has since received counseling to improve self-control. Perhaps it worked and all will be well.

First Selectman Ed Haberek also needs to learn the lesson not to waste money with a knee-jerk reaction to block the disclosure of information just because an employee prefers to keep his conduct secret.