Hartford panel discussion on Oct. 28

Hartford-area residents can learn how to access public meetings and public records at a free panel discussion on Tuesday, Oct. 28 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the UConn Hartford campus at 10 Prospect St. It will take place in Room 208 of the Hartford Times Building.

The panel, “Empowering the Public: How to Unlock Government Records,” will include practical tips on how residents can use the state’s Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. The act enables the public to access meetings of public agencies, including local town councils, boards of education and planning and zoning commissions, and many public records. These range from state records to town and school budgets to meeting minutes to police reports and police body-camera footage.

The event is sponsored by the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government and the CT Society of Professional Journalists chapter. CFOG is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 by residents of Connecticut interested in promoting government transparency, the First Amendment and the public’s right-to-know. Its board of volunteers, drawn from journalism, the law, academia and business, is putting on a series of FOI workshops around the state to mark the 50th anniversary of the FOI Act in 2025.

The panel discussion will be moderated by Mike Savino, a CFOG board member and NBC Connecticut’s political reporter.

The panelists are:

Russell Blair

• Russell Blair, the director of education and communications for the state Freedom of Information Commission. He manages the agency’s training programs and answers questions from state and local officials, journalists and members of the public about all things FOI. He is former journalist who worked in a variety of roles at the Record-Journal in Meriden and the Hartford Courant. He also served as the director of communications and marketing for the Hartford Public Library.

 

Jacqueline Rabe Thomas

• Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, an investigative reporter with Hearst Connecticut Media Group. Her reporting has led to home health care workers getting reimbursed for wages illegally taken from them, changes to the state’s open record laws, rules to collect state disability pensions being updated to root out fraud, undocumented immigrants being able to access outpatient dialysis treatment and the leader of the state’s university system resigning. She has also been a housing and education reporter with The Connecticut Mirror, a reporter in ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network and an investigative reporter with WNPR’s Accountability Project.

 

Sam Smink

• Sam Smink is the chief investigative reporter for WFSB Channel 3 and a CFOG board member. She previously worked as an investigative reporter for 7News in Boston and in West Palm Bach and For Myers, Florida. She started her career as anchor/reporter in Elmira, New York. Sam’s reporting in Boston on the city’s citizen review board for police complaints led to the creation of a new and improved board. In Florida, Sam’s reporting changed Florida health policy after she found unsafe food being delivered to day-care centers, putting children at risk. Her investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation inside Palm Beach County Fire Rescue led to the firing and forced retirements of three chiefs.