The Freedom of Information Commission, the backbone of transparency in Connecticut government, has experienced pandemic-related increases in its case backlog and proactively sought money in its latest budget request for a new position, just under $100,000.

The FOI Commission's funding request, from a watchdog agency, is supposed to pass to the legislature without changes by the Executive Branch.

But the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont, true to its guiding principle of secrecy in government, cut the request for a new position before sending the FOI Commission's budget ask on to the legislature.

Democratic state Sen. Cathy Osten of Sprague, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, who explained the move to cut the request, assured me last week that the FOI Commission's request for another position likely will be restored by her committee and go to the full legislature for a vote.

But the sneaky move by Lamont's administration is especially galling considering the amount. Some $100,000 to improve government accountability and transparency is a tiny drop in the oceans of money, more than $150 million, that the governor is lavishing on rich utilities Eversource and Ørsted for their State Pier boondoggle.

It also made me think of all the unflattering things I and other Connecticut opinion writers and journalists have learned about the Lamont government because of Freedom on Information requests.

Mind you, the governor has endlessly stalled and openly fought many of those FOI requests. But despite all that stonewalling, we did learn some things.

Some of them, pertaining to all that State Pier spending, include:

[naviga:ul]

[naviga:li]The FBI and a federal grand jury are investigating the governor's former deputy budget chief and many millions of dollars in state spending by the Lamont administration on school construction and the governor's pet project for the utilities, the $240 million State Pier renovation. Subpoenas were served in October but were only disclosed by Lamont officials this year, after media FOI requests.[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]The Lamont administration sought but did not get $57 million in federal funding assistance for the State Pier project. No one ever publicly disclosed that federal grant funding request and failure. It surfaced in emails from an FOI request.[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li] David Lehman, the governor's economic development commissioner, sided with the rich utilities instead of New London Mayor Michael Passero in talks to give the city a better host deal for the State Pier project. "I told (the mayor) he is supposed to play the Long Game here," Lehman wrote in an email suggesting New London not get the better deal it finally wrangled for itself by threatening a legal battle.[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li] Lamont's hand-picked chairman of the Connecticut Port Authority, David Kooris, asked the governor's chief of staff for permission to hold back material from auditors examining a whistleblower complaint about a $750,000 success fee to the company of a former port authority board member. "They've now asked for the invoice ... and I'm thinking of pushing back," Kooris wrote to the chief of staff about his communications with investigating auditors.[/naviga:li]

[naviga:li]It turns out Gov. Lamont, all the while he was crafting plans to expensively accommodate the utilities' offshore wind plans, had no strategy at all as to how to position the state in the emerging industry. Emails from October 2020, obtained through FOI requests, revealed that planning for "building a roadmap to understand the offshore wind outlook" had stalled and remained dead through the middle of 2021. "We realize we have plenty more to do until we can make some suggestions on a path forward ... we are currently searching for experts who may be able to help," wrote Lamont adviser Mikal Lewis, a full nine months after Lamont signed the pier makeover deal assuming all cost overruns on the now $240 million wind industry project.[/naviga:li]

[/naviga:ul]

Trying to cut the budget request of an overworked agency so important to good and open government — a cut that his administration does not even have the authority to make — seems to me especially, well, for lack of a better word, weaselly.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com