It’s been over a year since three Somerville Public Library West branch employees resigned after learning that a staffer who had allegedly harassed them would be returning to work. It’s unclear how the decision to have the employee resume his position was made, given an eight-month human resources investigation that found “sufficient evidence of violation/s of the City of Somerville’s Equal Opportunity Policy.” The employee was placed on paid leave during the investigation and then received a 20-day unpaid suspension.
The city has denied Cambridge Day’s requests for more information multiple times since the publication first contacted it Oct. 3, 2025, to request a copy of the 2024 investigation as well as copies of all complaints made against the staffer since 2020. When the city refused — twice — we appealed to the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s Office both times. On Dec. 23, after two months of back-and-forth and an order from the secretary’s office, the city sent over 18 PDF documents with more than five years’ worth of complaints against the staffer.
Unfortunately, the PDFs, which are mostly emails, are heavily redacted. None of the documents show the body of any emails. The city claims they fall under what’s called the privacy exemption of the state’s public records law, which is meant to prevent the sharing of records the law says might create “an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” for public employees. Only the alleged harasser’s name and work email are visible in several documents, as are the names and contact information of several other staffers.
According to records law, municipal records custodians are supposed to apply a “balancing test” to assess whether the records’ value to the public outweighs the risk of privacy violation. Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC), says it’s unclear who’s being protected, given that the case is already public. “If the employee’s name is already public knowledge and many of the facts of the particular case are already public knowledge, then there isn’t as much privacy to protect,” he said, adding, “The city should be giving far more information than it is.”
But Somerville argued that the balancing test does not apply. In a Jan. 16 email to Cambridge Day and to the secretary’s office, Assistant City Counselor and Labor Counsel Matt Sirigu wrote that “only if the Supervisor determines the records are not ‘Personnel Documents’ would a balancing of the public and private interests be warranted.”
“To allow a speculative, one-sided article to become the official factual record of information concerning the City and its affairs,” Sirigu said, referring to earlier Cambridge Day coverage, “and to alone justify the release of records containing private personnel information would eliminate the purpose of the Exemption (c) balancing test.”
According to Jeffrey J. Pyle, a partner at Prince Lobel and First Amendment expert, “The personnel exemption is very broad in Mass.” Courts have construed it to apply “to anything that would be useful in making employment-related decisions,” he said.
“That has meant that a lot of information about malfeasance within government employment positions” goes unreported,” he said, even though the purpose of the law is for constituents to monitor their government’s efficiency.
Public records law in Mass.
This exchange with the city underscores its own history with fights over public records, which is complicated by Massachusetts’ notoriously opaque public records access laws.
In September last year, for instance, Somerville lost a public records dispute over parking permit records being sought by The Boston Globe since 2014. An appellate court ruled that cities can’t withhold the identities of people who receive public parking permits, especially since residents’ names are already public in voter records and other government documents.
While “no state has the perfect law,” according to Silverman, Massachusetts is “pretty far down on the list” in terms of public records access. “You have this huge body of records that the public isn’t entitled to,” he said.
Massachusetts is the only state in which the executive, legislative and judicial branches are all exempt from public records disclosures. (For decades, governors have claimed exemption, including Gov. Maura Healey in 2023, despite saying a year earlier when she was attorney general that the governor’s office should not be exempt.)
Enforcement is also an issue. Silverman explained that in Massachusetts, the supervisor of records (currently Manza Arthur) issues rulings or determinations about records requests, but those decisions aren’t binding. “The supervisor doesn’t have any power to take these cases to court,” he said, “so those rulings are only as good as the paper that they’re written on.”
Silverman cited Connecticut as a New England state with stronger enforcement mechanisms for public records requests. There, an independent commission hears public records disputes, and any member of a public agency who fails to comply with the law is considered guilty of a misdemeanor.
For the Somerville library records, even if the supervisor ordered the city to release them, Somerville could still refuse, and the supervisor would not be obligated to pursue further legal action.
On Jan. 8, the Massachusetts secretary of state’s office issued a determination for Cambridge Day’s third appeal for the library records. Ashley Wong, a clerk at the secretary of state’s office, said Somerville’s designation of the complaints as private personnel files was inconclusive and ordered the city to send unredacted copies of the documents to their office for “in camera” or private inspection. As of publication, Somerville has yet to share the results of the inspection with Cambridge Day.
Next steps
In December 2024, representatives of the Somerville Municipal Employees Union wrote to the city council that they had authorized one of their attorneys, Summar Sparks, to conduct their own investigation by interviewing union members to determine “whether there is, or is not, a basis for processing a grievance” on the accused employee’s behalf over punishments imposed on them by the city. Neither the union nor its legal counsel, Alan McDonald, could be reached for comment about the union investigation.
Grace Munns, Somerville’s deputy director of communications, confirmed via email that “consistent with standard and historic practice,” the City Council did not receive a copy of the Equal Opportunity report conducted by the City’s human resources department. But as the employee’s representative in personnel matters, the union did receive a copy “as part of that process and upon request,” she said.
Mayor Jake Wilson, who was inaugurated this month, made a blog post during his campaign about personnel issues at the library. Asked for a follow-up statement from his office, Munns declined, saying the administration “cannot comment on individual personnel matters,” but that “we are focused on the continuous improvement of City policies, training, and oversight practices, while respecting employee privacy protections, collective bargaining requirements, and due process.”
Potential updates to the state’s public records law are in progress. A bill introduced in the state legislature in January 2025, called “An Act further regulating access to public records,” was referred to the House Ways and Means committee on Oct. 6. That legislation would create a five-member commission of public records, as well as allow the supervisor of records to appoint a “chief administrative magistrate” to speed up the appeals process and encourage public records compliance. The bill would also increase the maximum fines charged to public officers who do not comply with public records requests. The current maximum is $20. Under the new bill, noncompliant officers could be fined as much as $500 for each month of neglect or refusal to perform relevant public records duties.
A stronger
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