Interesting Editorial About State Government Secrecy

October 9, 2015

Keeping Secrets Bad Business For UConn Foundation

Hartford Courant Editorial
October 9, 2015

It’s ridiculous that the UConn Foundation — the fundraising arm of Connecticut’s public university — can keep much of its operations hidden from public view by being granted private nonprofit status by the state.

The foundation is a public entity if ever there was one.

Its only mission is to support the decidedly public purposes of a public university. It’s shocking that the foundation is therefore not subject to the state Freedom of Information Act.

The General Assembly, which grappled with the issue last year and in previous sessions, should at long last acknowledge the foundation’s public nature and enact legislation in the 2016 session to make it subject to the FOIA.

The latest skirmish between the secrecy-prone foundation and freedom-of-information advocates came when state Sen. Michael McLachlan of Danbury asked for a list of all UConn Foundation employees, their salaries and their duties. His entirely appropriate request was denied, even though Mr. McLachlan is a member of a body — the legislature — that dumps millions of public dollars every year into the foundation’s development office to help it raise money.

Why shouldn’t foundation salaries be public?

The foundation argues that exposing donor information would hurt fundraising.

Perhaps exposing foundation salaries would hurt fundraising as well?

“They [the foundation] are losing friends doing what they are doing. They need to recognize they are becoming tarnished because they are just insisting on not telling people what they are doing,” Mr. McLachlan said.

The public — and the legislature — should be able to monitor the foundation’s performance to see how well it manages the public’s money and whether there are conflicts of interest in any of the donations the foundation receives.

Many successful foundations supporting public universities are subject to such scrutiny.

So should UConn’s be.