This story by Tommy Gardner was first published in the Stowe Reporter on Nov. 22.
The town of Stowe paid $20,000 to cover legal fees the town’s newspaper of record incurred while seeking public records related to the discipline and dismissal of a former Stowe police officer.
The town on Sept. 29 agreed to the settlement with Matthew Byrne, the lawyer representing the Vermont Community Newspaper Group, the company that owns the Stowe Reporter and four other northern Vermont weekly newspapers, including The Other Paper, The Citizen, the Shelburne News and the News & Citizen.
The settlement follows a late-July ruling by a judge in Vermont Superior Court that Stowe could not withhold information about the terminated officer, Ben Cavarretta, just because it sent that information to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council, which has different in-house rules regarding documents it uses to track complaints, adjudicate charges of misconduct, and impose sanctions on police officers.
The settlement marked the end of a legal dispute between the newspaper and town over public record access, and the case in Lamoille County Superior Court was closed Nov. 6.
In addition to agreeing to pay Byrne $20,000 for his legal fees, the town paid its own lawyers roughly $27,000 in fees and expenses, according to attorney John Klesch.
Klesch said most of that, $24,000, was to defend against the newspaper’s public records enforcement lawsuit, handled by Byrne.
Vermont state law allows parties who prevail in public records lawsuits to recoup their legal fees.
Reporter Aaron Calvin in April filed a public records request with the town seeking documents related to Cavarretta’s dismissal, which the town either denied, or produced with such heavy redactions that it was impossible to determine what was in them. Calvin, with Byrne as representation, appealed the decision and the town of Stowe filed a countersuit against Calvin and the newspaper seeking declaratory judgement.
Judge Daniel Richardson sided with the newspaper in telling the town that those records could not be shielded.
“It is openness, public awareness, and access to information for the benefit of the general public that does this work by dispelling rumor, myth, conjecture, and conspiracy with the cold hard facts of objective reporting and good government process,” Richardson wrote in his July 26 entry order.
After that, the town’s lawyers spent several weeks negotiating with Byrne over whether to pay for his legal fees. Byrne this week said the agreement by the town to pay $20,000 is a crucial footnote to the case.
“I think the most important thing to preserve is the judge’s opinion, which preserves the right to know,” Byrne said.
Stowe town manager Charles Safford said in an email Tuesday that the town “had already received the answer it was seeking” from the judge and said it was “a business decision to settle” with Byrne for his legal fees.
“The town did not want to risk incurring additional fees,” Safford wrote.
He added that the town “never sought to ‘win’” the public records case, but only aimed to ensure it was complying with the law if it turned over to the paper the information about the internal investigation Cavarretta that it had previously turned over to the Vermont Criminal Justice Council.
The information detailed how Cavarretta had been all but forced out in February after he allegedly lied about a traffic stop that he conducted last December.
Lamoille County State’s Attorney Todd Shove issued a Giglio letter, also known as a Brady letter, regarding Cavarretta, marking the officer as an unreliable witness in a court of law.
Disclosure: Matthew Byrne has represented VTDigger.
