SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — Edward Adams was demoted from the top position at Vermont’s largest prison last year following an investigation into employee “allegations,” according to documents provided to VtDigger. The exact nature of the allegations have not been divulged.
The records — released after more than a year of legal wrangling between VtDigger and the Vermont Attorney General’s office and state officials — were only a fraction of what VtDigger requested. They were redacted to hide any details about the allegations that led to Adams’ dismissal as superintendent at Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield.
Of the 43 pages of records that were responsive to the request, 18 were missing. A document outlining employees’ concerns and investigation witness letters were blocked from the release.
Under state law, records requests are supposed to be fulfilled by public officials in up to 13 days and, once sued over, expedited by the courts. In the case of the Adams records, the state has engaged in delay and denial tactics that have blocked public access to records for 16 months.
Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan has vowed to continue fighting VtDigger for the records in court, which means the public could be left in the dark about the allegations concerning Adams for months to come.
Meanwhile, Adams remains in the corrections system as a probation officer, making at least $45 an hour. In January, he was the subject of another complaint while working in Rutland, according to the DOC, and in March was moved to White River Junction. The DOC again said that any information about the Rutland complaint is confidential.
Messages seeking comment from Adams last week were not returned. He was the superintendent of Chittenden Regional Corrections Facility for 18 months before moving to Southern State in January 2016. During his time at CRCF, a female corrections officer filed a complaint accusing Adams of creating a hostile work environment through sexually inappropriate comments and sexual harassment, the Burlington Free Press first reported.
She further alleged that “DOC has a pattern and practice of promoting known harassers and otherwise engaging in conduct that promotes harassment, and discourages harassment victims from coming forward.” In 2016, Adams was named the DOC’s manager of the year.
A recent Seven Days investigation highlighted drug use and sexual misconduct by corrections officers at CRCF, the state’s only women’s prison. The time period covered included Adams’ tenure there as superintendent.
Mike Smith, the newly appointed secretary of the Agency of Human Services, has pledged an independent investigation into the entire prison system.
Speaking about Adams earlier this month, Smith said he could not understand why some of the records — such as emails and the stipulation agreement outlining Adams’ demotion — were being withheld, and said he was trying to convince others in state government to release them.
The Attorney General’s Office released the documents less than a week later, on Tuesday.
The documents included an agreement signed by Adams and the corrections department in December 2018. It mostly describes the legal protections of both sides following the superintendent’s demotion, but also states “employees who worked for Adams at SSCF made allegations against Adams.”
It continues, “this agreement is entered into for the mutual convenience of the Parties in recognition of the costs and risks associated with litigation.” Adams does not admit to any wrongdoing in the agreement, and his demotion is referred to as “voluntary.”
His pay, at $45 per hour, is above the maximum rate set for the position, totaling some $94,000 a year.
The agreement was signed by Adams; Lisa Menard, then the state Department of Corrections commissioner; and John Berard, director of labor relations for the state Department of Human Resources. The Attorney General’s Office, which has come under fire for quietly settling a separate case of misconduct by prison supervisors, was not involved in Adams’ case.
Stephen Coteus, a lawyer representing the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VtDigger, said the limited batch of documents released last week did not satisfy the state’s legal obligations to disclose public records.
“The redactions suggest that there’s more information out there,” said Coteus, an attorney at the Montpelier law firm Tarrant, Gillies & Richardson. “The Department of Corrections is still withholding information that we still think is not exempt and needs to be disclosed.”
VtDigger requested all records pertaining to the demotion of Adams in September 2018 after receiving tips from readers about alleged misconduct. For five months, the Department of Corrections refused to provide a denial of the records until VtDigger submitted a demand letter from an attorney in February.
The news organization then filed a lawsuit in March seeking to compel the Department of Corrections to disclose the records. The AG’s office refused to provide a Vaughn index, a complete list of the documents that were responsive to the request with reasons for denying the records, even though that information is required under the Vermont Public Records Act. As a result, the records case languished in Washington County Superior Court until last week when Smith put pressure on the attorney general to provide a full Vaughn index and partial release of the records.
Coteus said that he is still reviewing the documents, but that the case is far from finished.
“The legal fight over the documents is not over and it’s because the documents were not disclosed in total,” Coteus said. “We would like the unredacted documents.”
Also, Coteus said, the documents that were produced suggest that interviews were conducted as part of an investigation.
“We haven’t seen any records of those interviews,” he said. “We certainly want to see those.”
Smith, the human services secretary, did not respond to requests for an interview on Wednesday and Thursday.
Donovan, the attorney general, said Thursday that his office often found itself weighing the interest of public disclosure with the legal rights of state officials.
“People have a right to know,” he said of cases like Adams’ dismissal, “but people are also entitled to due process of the law and are entitled to those protections articulated in our law.”
Donovan noted that the Public Records Act includes a specific exemption for a state employee’s personnel file. “That’s the law,” he said. “So, again, it’s that inherent tension.”
The attorney general said the current state of affairs around the Department of Corrections should not cause a lapse in legal protections for those who might be involved.
“We may be in a crisis. But the way to get out of a crisis is to be thoughtful, to be deliberate, to be reflective, to listen to the criticism, to learn from the criticism and do a better job,” he said. “So in the end, Vermont Digger may win. And the public may get that information. But my duty right now is to represent the Department of Corrections because they have been sued.”
In 2006, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in a similar case that records pertaining to the job performance of a prison superintendent in Newport were in the public interest. The court held that personnel records could be released as long as personal information was redacted.