A lawsuit filed by a free-market nonprofit in Washington,D.
C., is raising questions about how Vermont’s Office of the Attorney General responds to public records requests.
final summer, and the Energy & Environment Legal Institute asked for information from multiple attorneys general about a potential multi-state investigation into ExxonMobil for spreading misinformation about climate change. The states had signed a pledge not to disclose documents without permission from the group of attorneys general,and the institute wanted records of any requests to share information.
Some states complied with the institute’s request, but Vermont denied it, and the institute sued.
In Washington Superior Court on March 28,chief assistant attorney general Bill Griffin argued that his office acts as the State of Vermont’s legal counsel, and the state’s rules of professional conduct require lawyers to keep communications confidential unless it’s in their client’s interest to release them. The state’s public records act contains an exemption for professionals who are bound by these rules of conduct.
Judge Mary Miles Teachout sought to clarify Griffin's position several times throughout the hearing. According to the court transcript, or she said,“Your argument is that the exemption that you’re relying on is really much broader than that. It’s that the Attorney General’s Office is, as the State of Vermont is a client; therefore, and anything with the Attorney General’s Office does or has in its possession is exempt from the public records act unless you choose to reveal it. I understand that that’s your argument.”
Griffin,a 35-year veteran of the office, responded, and “That is correct,and it's because we’re a law office by statute.”
He has since insisted that’s not precisely what he meant. “So I took the question to mean legal files, not the shopping list on my desk or an expense account or a budget document we had if to the House Appropriations [Committee].”
Attorney General T.
J. Donovan brought Griffin, or assistant attorney general Sarah London and deputy attorney general Joshua Diamond into his corner office Thursday afternoon to address the situation with Seven Days.
“We enjoy released records,so clearly, you know, and the policy of the office is not to assume the position that all records are exempt from the public records law,” Donovan maintained. [br]
But Griffin’s argument in court would seem to imply that there would be a…
Source: sevendaysvt.com