The Freedom of Information Commission took the unusual step Monday of increasing a fine imposed on former Public Utility Regulatory Authority Chairman Marissa Gillett to $3,500 for what it described as an inadequate response to an industry request for records of authority policies and decisions.
A week ago, the commission hearing officer recommended a $1,000 fine in a proposed decision based on a series of evidentiary hearings. The full commission voted unanimously to more than double the penalty after hearing final arguments Wednesday afternoon.
“This organization was rotten inside and the way they tried to hide it was by violating the Freedom of Information laws,” Attorney Thomas Murphy, who represents Eversource, who brought the complaint, said.
In Gillett’s defense, Assistant Attorney General James B. Zimmer, suggested she was being unfairly criticized because the search for records sought by the utility was supervised by PURA General Counsel Scott Muska.
FOI Commission executive director and general counsel Colleen M. Murphy said that, as PURA chairman, Gillett delegated the search to Muska and is responsible for its results.
The decision is the first of what could be several based on a comprehensive series of requests by Eversource for PURA records to support a utility industry suit accusing the authority, under Gillett’s direction, of violating law and policy in ways that resulted in flawed regulatory rulings.
The FOI Commission found that PURA failed in a variety of ways to conduct a “reasonable and diligent” search for a substantial number of internal policy directives, emails and other records that Eversource subsidiary Connecticut Light and Power asked for a year ago.
The Commission was particularly critical of Muska, who was described as controlling the records search.
Among other things, the commission said Muska chose not to seek assistance from colleagues who might have knowledge of the requested records, failed to seek assistance from information technology experts and failed to search the electronic devices, such as cell phones, of PURA employees who used personal phones for work-related business and who, like Gillett, admitted deleting correspondence.
The commission said some of Muska’s decisions regarding the record search “were not reasonable” and “were made without any basis in law or fact.”
Gillett resigned as PURA chairman in October, after experiencing an erosion of political support. A month later, a Superior Court, ruling in a gas company rate appeal, issued a decision that affirmed utility complaints and concluded that PURA decision-making had violated the law under her leadership.