WATERBURY TEACHERS ASSN. v. FREEDOM OF INFO. COMM., 42 Conn. App. 700 (1996)

682 A.2d 125

(14936) (14937) (14938)Appellate Court of Connecticut

Foti, Heiman and Spear, Js.

The plaintiff teachers association appealed to the trial court from decisions by the defendant freedom of information commission determining that hearings conducted by the defendant board of education on grievances brought by the plaintiff were subject to the open meetings provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (§ 1-21). The trial court rendered judgment sustaining the plaintiff’s appeals on the ground that grievance hearings before the board fell within the statutory (§ 1-18a [b]) exclusion applicable to “negotiations with respect to collective bargaining,” and the defendant newspaper, its defendant employees and the defendant commission appealed to this court. Held that the trial court accorded proper deference to the commission’s interpretation of provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and it properly concluded that the commission had construed the statute in a manner inconsistent with judicial interpretation; the phrase “with respect to collective bargaining” in § 1-18a (b) applies not only to discussions in connection with entering into an agreement, but also applies to discussions resolving disputes that may arise under the agreement, and the uncontradicted evidence before the commission demonstrated that the grievance hearings here presented a forum in which to resolve disputes through settlement.

Argued May 29, 1995

Officially released August 27, 1996

Appeal in each case from a decision by the named defendant determining that the plaintiff and the Waterbury

Page 701

board of education had violated the open meeting requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of Hartford-New Britain at Hartford and tried to the court, Maloney, J.;
judgments sustaining the appeals, from which the defendant Marc S. Ryan et al. filed a consolidated appeal, and the named defendant filed separate appeals to this court. Affirmed.

Pamela D. Siemon, with whom, on the brief, were John J. Cassidy, Jr., and Thomas G. Parisot, for the appellants (defendant Marc S. Ryan et al.).

Catherine Wassel-Nasto, commission counsel, with whom were Mitchell W. Pearlman, general counsel, and Justine C. Rakich-Kelly, commission counsel, for the appellant (named defendant).

William J. Dolan, for the appellee (plaintiff).

FOTI, J.

The defendants, Marc S. Ryan, James B. Craig, the Waterbury Republican-American and the Freedom of Information Commission (commission), appeal from the judgment of the trial court sustaining the appeals of the plaintiff Waterbury Teachers Association (union) from decisions of the commission.[1] On appeal, the defendants claim that the trial court (1) failed to accord proper deference to the decisions of the commission by substituting its own judgment in interpreting the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and (2) improperly concluded that the grievance hearings fell within the exclusionary provisions of General Statutes § 1-18a (b).[2]
We affirm the judgments of the trial court.

Page 702

The record reveals the following relevant facts. The union is designated as the exclusive representative of the teachers of the Waterbury board of education (board) within the meaning of General Statutes §10-153a.[3] Pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement between the board and the union, the union may file grievances on behalf of its teacher members against the board for any alleged violations of the agreement. At the time the hearings at issue were conducted, the defendants Ryan and Craig were members of the staff of the defendant newspaper, the Waterbury Republican-American.[4]

The first appeal to the trial court arose from the following facts. On April 29 and May 6, 1992, the board conducted hearings on grievances brought by the union. On May 26, 1992, Ryan, Craig and the Waterbury Republican-American filed a complaint with the commission, alleging that the grievance hearings were held without adequate notice and that members of the newspaper’s staff were wrongfully denied access to the meetings in violation of the FOIA.

On April 28, 1993, the commission ruled that the hearings conducted by the board’s committee on grievances were subject to the open meeting provisions of the FOIA,[5] and that, by not providing notice and not

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permitting the newspaper’s staff members to attend the hearings, the union and the board had violated the FOIA. The union appealed to the trial court from the commission’s decision pursuant to §§ 1-21i (b)[6] and 4-183
(a).[7]

The second appeal arose from grievance hearings held on December 15, 1993, while the union’s appeal was pending in the trial court. The board and the union again did not provide notice of the meetings and denied Ryan, Craig and the Waterbury Republican-American the opportunity to attend the meetings. On January 28, 1994, Ryan, Craig and the Waterbury Republican-American filed a second complaint with the commission. The commission, on the basis of its decision on the earlier complaint, ruled that the board and the union had violated the FOIA.[8] The union appealed that decision to the trial court.

On March 24, 1995, the trial court ordered the appeals consolidated. On June 8, 1995, the trial court found in

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favor of the union. The trial court held that the proceedings were not “meetings” as the term is used in the FOIA, but instead, were “negotiations with respect to a collective bargaining agreement,” a recognized exception, pursuant to § 1-18a (b), to the mandate of open meetings set forth in § 1-21. On the basis of that finding, the trial court determined that the grievance hearings were exempt from the public access provisions of the FOIA.

The dispositive issues on appeal are whether the trial court exercised proper deference with respect to the commission’s decision, and whether the trial court properly concluded that grievance proceedings between the board and the union were statutorily exempt from the open meeting requirement of the FOIA pursuant to § 1-18a (b).

Before addressing the substantive issues involved, we first set forth our standard of review. “Judicial review of [an administrative agency’s] action is governed by the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act [General Statutes §§ 4-166 through 4-189], and the scope of that review is very restricted. . . . Neither this court nor the trial court may retry the case or substitute its own judgment for that of the [administrative agency]. . . . Even as to questions of law, [t]he court’s ultimate duty is only to decide whether, in light of the evidence, the [agency] has acted unreasonably, arbitrarily, illegally, or in abuse of its discretion. . . . Conclusions of law reached by the administrative agency must stand if the court determines that they resulted from a correct application of the law to the facts found and could reasonably and logically follow from such facts. . . . Although the interpretation of statutes is ultimately a question of law . . . it is the well established practice of this court to accord great deference to the construction given [a] statute by the agency charged with its enforcement. . . .” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.)

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Hartford v. Freedom of Information Commission, 41 Conn. App. 67, 72-73, 674 A.2d 462 (1996).

The defendants first claim that the trial court failed to accord the proper deference to the commission’s interpretation of provisions of the FOIA. The trial court’s standard of review is governed by the same principles set out previously in discussing this court’s standard of review. Pursuant to our standard of review, we examine whether the conclusions of law reached by the trial court resulted from a correct application of the law to the facts of this case.

Section § 1-18a (b) was recently interpreted by our Supreme Court i Glastonbury Education Assn. v. Freedom of Information Commission, 234 Conn. 704, 663 A.2d 349 (1995). At the time the trial court ruled on the present case, however, neither the commission nor the trial court had the benefit of that analysis. Nevertheless, earlier judicial decisions have construed § 1-18a (b). See Glastonbury Education Assn. v. Freedom of Information Commission, 35 Conn. App. 111, 119, 643 A.2d 1320 (1994), aff’d, 234 Conn. 704, 663 A.2d 349 (1995) (arbitration hearings provided for in collective bargaining agreement as means to resolve disputes not meetings within § 1-18a (b) because they are continued negotiations) Bloomfield Education Assn. v. Frahm, 35 Conn. App. 384, 646 A.2d 247, cert. denied, 231 Conn. 926, 648 A.2d 161 (1994) (mere filing of grievance does not reveal any strategy or negotiations and therefore not exempt from FOIA disclosure requirements); Connecticut Employees Union Independent Inc. v. Board of Labor Relations, 43 Conn. Sup. 1, 635 A.2d 891 (1993) (grievance settlement agreement constitutes supplemental understanding of collective bargaining agreement); Fairfield v. IAFF, Local 1426, Superior Court, judicial district of Fairfield, Docket No. CV 93-0304287 (July 11, 1994) (grievance hearing part of ongoing collective bargaining agreement).

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Here, the trial court ruled that the commission interpreted the statute in a manner inconsistent with judicial interpretations. We must determine if, in light of our deference to the commission in interpreting the FOIA, the trial court properly concluded that the grievance hearings are excluded from the open meetings requirement of the FOIA.

Section 1-21 requires that all public agency meetings, with the exception of executive sessions, be open to the public, and that such meetings be properly noticed. Section 1-18a (b) excludes strategy and negotiations, with respect to collective bargaining, from the definition of meetings that are subject to these requirements. Resolution of this appeal, therefore, requires a determination of whether a hearing before the grievance committee of the Waterbury board of education fits within the “negotiations” exception to the open meetings policy of the FOIA.

“Inquiry into the scope of the statutory exclusion for collective bargaining contained in § 1-18a (b) must commence with the recognition of the legislature’s general commitment to open governmental proceedings. The overarching legislative policy of the FOIA is one that favors the open conduct of government and free public access to government records. . . . The sponsors of the FOIA understood the legislation to express the people’s sovereignty over the agencies which serve them . . . and this court consistently has interpreted that expression to require diligent protection of the public’s right of access to agency proceedings. Our construction of the [FOIA] must be guided by the policy favoring disclosure and exceptions to disclosure must be narrowly construed. . . .” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Glastonbury Education Assn. v. Freedom of Information Commission, supra, 234 Conn. 711-12. Despite this open meeting policy, however, our Supreme Court recognizes that § 1-18a

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(b) provides an exceception for “‘strategy or negotiations’ sessions that relate to collective bargaining.” Id., 713.

In Glastonbury Education Assn., our Supreme Court determined that the compulsory arbitration provisions of the Teachers Negotiation Act, General Statutes § 10-153a et seq. (TNA), resembled negotiations and were therefore excluded from the meeting requirements of the FOIA. Id., 716-17. The TNA establishes a three step collective bargaining process to ensure the existence of a teacher contract by the beginning of the town’s fiscal year. Id., 714. The court determined that “[t]hroughout the process, the threat of the arbitration panel’s decision-making power provides a strong incentive for the parties to resolve outstanding issues.” Id., 716.

The defendants attempt to distinguish the present case on the ground that, unlike the situation in Glastonbury Education Assn., in which the disputes arose in entering into a collective bargaining agreement, the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the town was already in effect. Moreover, the defendants maintain that the grievance proceedings at issue in the present case constituted a quasi-judicial process, rather than the mediated arbitration process present i Glastonbury Education Assn. The defendants cite the portion of § 10-153a
(c) that distinguishes collective bargaining, contract administration and grievance adjustment, contending that it evidences the legislative recognition of a difference between pure collective bargaining, or contract negotiation, and the grievance process. This distinction is not supported by the judicial interpretations of collective bargaining agreements.

In Board of Education v. State Board of Labor Relations, 217 Conn. 110, 584 A.2d 1172 (1991), our Supreme Court concluded that the duty to negotiate in good faith under the TNA “is an ongoing duty that continues after

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initial contract negotiations are over . . . [including] the duty to negotiate any question arising under an existing contract.” (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 120-21. “If the contract requires arbitration of unresolved grievances, the duty to bargain in good faith includes the duty to participate in good faith in the grievance arbitration process, for dispute resolution under the grievance-arbitration process is as much a part of collective bargaining as the act of negotiating the contract.” (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 121.

“A grievance procedure involves the interpretation and enforcement of an existing group teacher contract. Insofar as the board has the power to make such a contract it follows that it has the power to agree on a method and forum for the purpose of settling disputes arising under the terms of the contract. It is an amicable and efficient means of resolving any differences within a contract previously acceptable to and executed by the parties.” West Hartford Education Assn., Inc. v. DeCourcy, 162 Conn. 566, 588, 295 A.2d 526 (1972).

In this case, the dispute resolution process mandated by the grievance procedure is as much a part of collective bargaining as the act of negotiating the agreement. It provides a forum where the agreement will be interpreted and enforced. To draw a distinction between entering into the agreement and interpreting its meaning would sever an ongoing, continuous process that our Supreme Court views as a cohesive whole, incapable of such strict division. See Board of Education v. State Board of Labor Relations, supra, 217 Conn. 120-21. We conclude, therefore, that the phrase “with respect to collective bargaining” in § 1-18a (b) applies not only to the discussions in entering into an agreement, but also to the discussions in resolving disputes that may arise under the agreement.

Page 709

Having concluded that the statutory exclusion to the open meeting policy of the FOIA can apply to discussions occurring after the parties have entered into a collective bargaining agreement, we must now determine whether the grievance hearings constituted negotiations. In resolving this issue, we look to the specific provisions of the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the board. A grievance is defined in the collective bargaining agreement as “[a] claim by either an employee or a group of employees, the [union], or the board that there has been an alleged violation, misinterpretation, or misapplication of a specific provision or group of provisions of this Agreement, or alleged discrimination or a condition affecting the employee’s health and safety.” The collective bargaining agreement provides a multistep grievance procedure, including both informal and formal sessions, through which to resolve disputes.[9] The grievance hearings at issue

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in this case were at stage 2, level 3, which consists of hearings before the board.

The defendants contend that the presentation of testimony and other evidence creates a quasi-judicial setting and cannot be construed as negotiations. They cite our Supreme Court in Glastonbury Education Assn.
v. Freedom of Information Commission, supra, 234 Conn. 718, which “postpone[d] to another day questions

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concerning the validity of a more narrowly tailored [commission] order that requires open hearings only with respect to evidentiary presentations and permits [closed] sessions for discussion and argument about the contents of the parties’ [settlement] offers.”

“[W]e construe a contract as a whole and all relevant provisions are considered when determining the intent of the parties.” White v. Kampner, 229 Conn. 465, 473-74, 641 A.2d 1381 (1994). In construing the collective bargaining agreement at issue in this case, we note that the plain language of the agreement establishes mandatory grievance procedures to resolve any disputes without judicial intervention. Although a grievance hearing may have a greater sense of formality than the informal discussions of earlier steps in the grievance procedure, it does not rise to the level of formality that is present in the later step of binding arbitration. On the basis of our Supreme Court’s determination that binding arbitration falls within the exclusionary provision of § 1-18a (b), it is difficult, if not impossible, to conclude that a grievance hearing does not also consist of negotiations and, thus, fit within the exclusion of § 1-18a (b).

The purpose of the grievance procedure, to resolve disputes arising out of the collective bargaining agreement, is further proof that the grievance hearings consist of negotiations and exist to promote settlement between the parties. The presentation of witness testimony and the introduction of evidence merely provides a procedure by which the factual background of the dispute between the union and the board may be introduced and cannot be said to constitute a quasi-judicial setting as the defendants contend. The goal throughout each level of the grievance procedure is to reach a settlement between the parties. See Hunt v. Prior, 236 Conn. 421, 431-32, 673 A.2d 514 (1996).

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The uncontradicted evidence before the commission demonstrates that the grievance proceedings present a forum in which to resolve disputes through settlement. The union president, Jack Cronan, testified before the commission that discussions would take place and evidence would be presented at these grievance hearings concerning which articles of the collective bargaining agreement allegedly had been violated. Cronan testified that a grievance hearing includes negotiation in an effort to find a remedy.

We conclude, therefore, that the trial court accorded proper deference to the commission’s interpretation of provisions of the FOIA and that it properly sustained the appeal on the ground that grievance hearings before the board involved “negotiations with respect to collective bargaining” pursuant to the statutory exception of § 1-18a (b).

The judgments are affirmed.

In this opinion the other judges concurred.