I continue to be thankful for Sarah Palin's incredible ability to get
pedestrian government ethics issues into the public eye. This time it's
the use of private e-mails for public business, according to
an
article in yesterday's New York Times .
There are lots of new rules about using government computers for
personal purposes, a new spin on the common misuse of public
property provision (most often violated by the use of government vehicles
and equipment).
But the use of private e-mail accounts for public purposes is actually a more
serious problem, and there are far fewer rules about this. Private
e-mail accounts are often used to hide government business from the
public. For example, in
a
February 2009 blog post I wrote about a citizen suit against the
city and several council members
regarding their use of private e-mail to discuss a very controversial issue.
A local opponent of then-governor Palin made a records request for
private e-mails from her and her staff. The e-mails sent were heavily
redacted, and it would be highly invasive to determine if they were complete.
The attorney general's office argued that state officials should be
able to decide what is or is not subject to public disclosure. The
court determined that "private e-mail accounts may be used to conduct
state business, subject
to the same laws and regulations related to preservation as e-mails
originating from state servers."
That's the law in Alaska, but should private e-mail accounts be used
for public business at all? I can understand that sometimes it might be
difficult to access one's government e-mail account, or people might
send a government-related e-mail to an official's personal account. But
there is a simple solution to these problems: require that all
such e-mails be forwarded to the official's public account. Then all
the records are in one place, and they are public property, available onsite, and outside
the control of the official.
The bother involved with this solution is almost zero.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
203-230-2548
