Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz says that she is working with the office of state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to make changes in response to his criticism two weeks ago of her office's controversial "constituent database" -- but she has not given specifics, such as whether she'll remove references to many citizens' race, ethnicity and religion.
On Aug. 5, Blumenthal issued an investigative report saying that the Democratic secretary of the state's 36,000-name, taxpayer-funded database contained "inappropriate" personal and political information. The report said, among other things, that it is "not proper or appropriate" to list citizens in categories "based on religion, race and ethnicity."
Since then, The Courant has been asking Bysiewicz and other officials in her office what changes or deletions they have made, or plan to make, in the database. The most recent answer came Thursday, when Bysiewicz issued a non-specific, written response: "We are working with the Attorney General's office to implement the recommendations contained in the report."
The Courant on Aug. 12 requested a copy of the database on a disc as it existed that day, in order to see what changes had been made in the six months since the newspaper obtained an earlier disc of the database. "As of yet the disc you requested is not yet ready, but we will notify you when it is ready," Bysiewicz said Thursday.