Consolidation would weaken agencies

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has proposed a merger of five independent government “watchdog” agencies into a single super-sized agency to be called the Office of Government Accountability. Every governor since William A. O’Neill has suggested similar, superficially appealing legislation. But when those bills were examined in public, they were defeated because they would create a more expensive bureaucracy, result in less rather than more transparency and accountability and effectively gut some of the best and most well-regarded government agencies.The five agencies to be merged are the Freedom of Information Commission, the Office of State Ethics, the Elections Enforcement Commission, the Judicial Review Council and the State Contracting Standards Board. They have no common areas of responsibility; each keeps an eye on a distinct element of government activity.The merger of these agencies will not eliminate any front-line or supervisory staff positions because each operating division within the new agency will still require a high degree of specific technical expertise and leadership. On the other hand, the new government accountability agency would create an unnecessary, yet expensive, additional top level of bureaucracy to lord over each of the former agencies. This includes an executive director as department head and undoubtedly one or more deputies and administrative support staff members. All this will easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars extra for salaries, space and office furniture.In addition, the merger will necessitate an expensive, integrated computer system. It will have to be programmed with internal “firewalls” to guarantee the confidentiality of the highly sensitive information kept by the accountability agency’s separate divisions, while ensuring that their public records are readily available under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. This could add perhaps a million or more dollars to the proposed agency’s cost.Substantively, the Freedom of Information Commission is the only body that enforces the state’s open government laws. The laws governing all the other agencies to be included in the accountability agency mandate a significant degree of secrecy and confidentiality. So, if a citizen brings a freedom of information case against the other divisions of the new agency, the freedom of information division must adjudicate the claim.Similarly, the ethics division of the accountability office would be responsible for detecting and investigating ethical lapses by the officials and employees of the other divisions of that agency. It will look highly suspicious to state residents when one division of the consolidated agency adjudicates the actions of the other divisions. Their credibility would be lost.Finally, and perhaps most crucially, the proposed bill would make the executive director of the accountability agency a political appointee — that is, one who serves solely at the pleasure of the governor and who can be fired summarily without cause, simply because the governor does not like a decision of the agency. Currently, with the exception of the contracting standards board, the executive directors of the other agencies are appointed by their boards based on established professional qualifications. Their performance is evaluated by their boards and they cannot be fired for political or other improper reasons. They can be fired only for good cause.Without such protections, anyone who becomes executive director of the accountability agency would be at risk of losing the job if any agency decision embarrasses the governor, or if it blows the whistle on any government employee who decides a matter based on political or other inappropriate considerations. I suspect that few people are in a position to accept such a risk.Sometimes bigger is better and cost-effective. Sometimes it isn’t. This is one instance where bigger is neither better nor cost-effective.Although each administration must set its own course once it assumes power, inevitably adjustments to that course must be made as mistakes are made and lessons are learned.Gov. Malloy has pledged to set a course for greater transparency and accountability in his administration. Unless that pledge is a hollow one — and I sincerely believe that it is not — a thoughtful and objective evaluation of these arguments should convince him and the General Assembly that the proposed merger of the principal government watchdog agencies would be costly and a public policy disaster of the first magnitude. Mitchell Pearlman was executive director and general counsel of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission for more than 30 years, teaches law and journalism at the University of Connecticut and is the author of “Piercing the Veil of Secrecy: Lessons in the Fight for Freedom of Information.”