Casino quango’s censorship ‘asserted unnecessary secrecy’
The Bermuda Gaming Commission has been censured by the Information Commissioner for asserting “unnecessary secrecy” and wasting public resources.
Gitanjali Gutierrez told the regulator in a strongly worded decision released last week that she required it to “adopt a more transparent approach to its work”, consistent with the Public Access to Information Act.
Her criticism came after the publicly funded commission redacted much of the information contained in minutes of its board meetings before the records were released to The Royal Gazette in response to a Pati request.
The newspaper appealed to the independent Information Commissioner to review the BGC’s redaction of the minutes.
Ms Gutierrez discovered during her review that almost all of the removed material was already in the public domain when Cheryl-Ann Mapp, the commission’s chairwoman, upheld a decision by the BGC’s Pati officer to make the redactions.
She concluded that the commission “asserted unnecessary secrecy, contrary to the purposes of the Pati Act …”.
The Information Commissioner wrote: “As a public authority funded by taxpayers and working on behalf of the Bermuda public, it is expected that routine business information would be made available to the public in response to a Pati request, without the need for an independent review by this office.
“It is even more disappointing that the records in this case have been subject to such a lengthy review in circumstances where nearly all of the information redacted by the commission was already in the public domain at the time of the [chairwoman’s] internal review decision.”
Ms Gutierrez wrote that her concern about unnecessary secrecy was further heightened by the commission’s failure to comply with statutory requirements to publish “timely” annual reports and financial statements and to make available its quarterly expenditures.
“Ultimately, the commission’s internal review decision was not a matter of determining whether information not yet known to the public should be considered exempt,” she added.
“Instead, the commission sought to refuse aspects of its work already known to the public and did so by asserting four to six exemptions [in the Pati Act] for each redaction.
“This resulted in an extraordinary and unnecessary use of resources of the commission, and this office, as well as a delay in public access to the commission’s meeting minutes.”
The Information Commissioner wrote that she did not “expect to see a future review involving redactions to meeting minutes that should be routinely available to the public, especially in circumstances where the redactions involve information already known to the public”.
The minutes that were disclosed were for ten meetings of the board of the BGC — a regulator for all forms for legal gambling on the island, including casino gaming and betting shops — held between March 31, 2022 and February 23, 2023.
Neither the initial response nor Ms Mapp’s later decision explained why the records were redacted, but during the ICO review, the commission cited various exemptions under the Pati Act.
Ms Gutierrez found most did not apply, though she did affirm the decision to withhold some information.
A press release from her office said: “The Information Commissioner found that some information related to law enforcement and its disclosure would have prejudiced the gaming commission’s investigation and enforcement of a breach of law.
“She also found that disclosure of another part of one record would have prejudiced the deliberations of the gaming commission, and therefore found that such information had been properly redacted.”
She ordered the BGC to disclose the parts of the minutes as set out by her, along with its quarterly spending for 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, by September 10.
The commission has cost taxpayers more than $16 million since its launch almost a decade ago, by way of interest-free loans, grants and a multimillion-dollar guarantee to Butterfield Bank, which had to be paid off in June last year.
Ms Gutierrez’s 56-page decision considered other aspects of the regulator’s response to the Pati request and she ordered it to search again for records of communications it had with the Minister of Finance or finance ministry about its annual reports, the increasing of the guarantee, and the repayment of its loans.
The commission has previously been told to release the minutes of its monthly meetings in response to a Pati request.
Ms Gutierrez said in an earlier decision there was an “evident and strong” public interest in disclosure.
The Gazette reached out to the BGC and David Burt, the Premier and finance minister, who is responsible for gaming, for comment but none was received by the time of publication.
• To view the Information Commissioner’s decision and the press release from her office, see Related Media
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