Wisconsin attorney general weighs in on e-mail decision

from wisconsinrapidstribune.com

A recent court decision shouldn't deter residents from requesting public documents -- or public officials from providing them -- the state attorney general said.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ruled 5-2 that the personal e-mail messages sent by five Wisconsin Rapids school teachers while they were at work did not need to be released to a resident who requested them.

In an open memorandum sent Wednesday, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said records custodians must err on the side of open government when it comes to determining whether e-mail messages are private or public record.

Read the rest here.

Media Organizations Lobby to Quash Certain E-mail Disclosures

John Cook, a senior national reporter and blogger for Yahoo! News, is miffed at The Associated Press for what he says appears to be collaboration with the government to deny a New York Freedom of Information Law request that seeks e-mails between New York Gov. David Paterson's former communications director, former press secretary, and various news organization representatives. Cook reports the Hearst Corporation objected to the release of the e-mails on grounds that confidential sources could have been revealed in the e-mails.

Cook claims David Schulz, a media attorney in private practice, had been making inquiries whether New York's journalist shield law could serve as a possible justification for denying the FOIL request. Cook quotes Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for a Free Press as describing the government's invocation of the shield law to protect a journalist's sources as "an almost comical inversion of the law's intended purpose -- to protect journalists from the government."

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And The Rosemary Goes to...

This year's Rosemary Award for worst open government performance goes to the Federal Chief Information Officers Council, the senior officials who have never addressed the failure of the federal government to save its e-mail electronically.

The Rosemary Award is named after President Nixon's secretary who erased 18 1/2 minutes of a crucial Watergate tape.

For more about this years "winners," click here.

Nevada Supreme Court to Decide if Governor's E-mails are Public

The Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments Monday whether to overturn a lower court's ruling that Governor Jim Gibbons does not have to produce e-mails kept on the state e-mail system that are personal in nature.

The Reno Newspapers argued that the e-mails on the governor's state-issued e-mail account is subject to Nevada's Open Records law. A reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal had requested e-mail communications between Gibbons and 10 persons for the period before January and June 2008.

Read more about the case here.

Effort to Revise West Virginia's Public Records Law Underway

West Virginia state lawmakers introduced legislation that would apply the Freedom of Information Act to any record prepared or received by a public office or official if its content or context relates to the public's business.

The effort to revise the state's public records law comes after the state Supreme Court blocked the release of a justice's e-mails with a coal company executive.

For more, click here.

South Carolina County Council May Have Violated Public Meetings Laws Conducting Business Via E-mail

In a three-part series, TheState.com reports that Horry County, South Carolina council members have repeatedly conducted business via e-mail, without a quorum, and out of the public's view. The Sun News obtained 1,348 pages of e-mails sent between January 2009 and January 2010, which reveal that the council may have violated the state's Freedom of Information Act by having conversations that should have taken place in a public meeting.

For more, click here.

E-mails Show Palin's Husband Involved in State Business

MSNBC.com and NBC News obtained nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin, former Alaska Governor and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin's husband, exchanged with state officials. The e-mails show the "First Dude" was involved with a judicial appointment, monitored contract negotiations with public employee unions, received a background check on a corporate CEO, and added his opinion to state board appointments. He also passed "confidential" financial information from his oil company employer to a state attorney.

The e-mails are available here on msnbc.com's online archive, and they are asking the public to help with the document review. "We're still going through the documents, and invite readers at msnbc.com to search for themselves, connect the dots with public issues, and send us an e-mail with your own analysis," writes investigative reporter Bill Dedman.

Former North Carolina Governor Had Secret E-mail Account for State Business

In depositions stemming from a public records lawsuit against former North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, an aide testified that Easley kept a secret e-mail account and used it for state business. Former communications director Sherri Johnson said the e-mail address was "Nick Danger" spelled backwards in a likely reference to a fictional, satirical private eye. Johnson testified the backwards part was because Easley's learning disability left him writing backwards.

Public information officers also testified that the Easley administration instructed workers to delete e-mails and to use the telephone for sensitive issues.

For more, click here.

Michigan Court of Appeals Asks Legislature to Update the State's FOIA

In a "friendly" lawsuit set up to determine whether emails from teacher union leaders are public records if they are contained in a school district's computer system, the Michigan Court of Appeals said no, they are not.

The Court also asked the Legislature to clarify and update the state's 33-year old Freedom of Information Act to address electronic records. Judges Mark J. Cavanagh, E. Thomas Fitzgerald and Douglas B. Shapiro wrote that the case presented a "difficult question requiring that we apply a statute, whose purpose is to render government transparent, to a technology that did not exist in reality (or even in many people's imaginations) at the time."

Read more about the decision here.

Alaska Judge Rules in Favor of Palin; State Business May Be Conducted through Private Email Accounts

An Alaska judge ruled in favor of former Gov. Sarah Palin in a lawsuit that urged that Palin and the governor's office had a responsibility to save email messages related to state business, even if they were sent through private email accounts.

In the ruling, Judge Patrick J. McKay of Anchorage Superior Court writes that, "The language in our case is clear — the Legislature simply chose to give state agencies some discretion in determining which e-mails are worthy of preservation and which are not." McKay noted that the statutes as currently written allow Alaska's state business to be conducted through private email accounts.

Read more here.

AP Asks West Virginia Supreme Court to Rehear Email Dispute

The Associated Press has filed a request for rehearing of a November ruling that decided a former justice's emails to a coal company executive were not subject to West Virginia's Freedom of Information Act.

The AP's petition asks the Court to reverse its opinion and rehear the case because the state's FOIA law should be liberally applied. "The dreadful message sent by this Court's opinion is that questions about a judge's impartiality are none of the public's business," the AP filing states. "To suggest that such records are non of the public's business is not just wrong factually and legally, it is bad public policy."

For more information, click here.

Redaction Run Amok!

The Puget Sound Business Journal has been seeking internal communications between Washington Mutual (WaMu) and federal regulators, including the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).

Of interest are internal emails, which the news organization hopes will help explain why regulators seized the bank in September 2008 even though WaMu appeared to meet regulatory standards for operating banks.

The results of the FOIA requests have been less than forthcoming. OTS denied the request in full, citing FOIA exemptions that protect records concerning the operations of financial institutions and to protect inter-agency communication. Meanwhile, the FDIC produced emails, but they were so heavily redacted as to be meaningless. In doing so, the FDIC relied on FOIA exemption 8, which allows the government to redact information related to the regulation or supervision of financial institutions.

To see the emails, click here.

Millions of Bush Administration E-mails Found

The AP reports that computer technicians found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the George W. Bush administration as part of litigation brought against the Executive Office of the President in 2007 by two private groups - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive. The two groups alleged the Bush White House failed to install an electronic record-keeping system.

Before the emails are released to the public, the National Archives will have to process the records for release. The records won't be available until 2014 at the earliest.

For more details regarding the e-mail discovery, click here.

West Virginia Lawmakers Suggest Revising State FOIA Statute

West Virginia state representative and House Judiciary Chairwoman Carrie Webster says the legislature should revisit the many exemptions and exceptions made to the state's Freedom of Information Act.

Webster's statement comes on the heels of a West Virgnia Supreme Court decision in which 13 emails between former Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard and Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship are not public records. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Margaret Workman wrote that the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act should be changed to allow consideration of the the context in which the records are produced when deciding if they qualify as public records.

As originally enacted in 1977, the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act contained eight reasons to withhold information from the public. Since then, more than 75 exemptions have been added to the FOIA statute, according to a 2007 review by The Associated Press.

Get more information here.

Alaska's "Going Rouge" in Responding to Palin Administration Records Requests

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell wants even more time to respond to records requests pertaining to Palin administration e-mails and other information, even though some requests have been pending for more than a year.

According to the Anchorage Daily News, the excuses range from too many requests, too complicated requests, and too voluminous requests to requests that require an attorney to review the documents individually for privacy and executive privilege issues.

For more on the delayed records response from the Alaska state government, click here.

A Terrible Setback in West Virginia

The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that public officials and employees can keep their person emails secret.

The Associated Press had sued to gain access to 13 emails between former Supreme Court Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard and Massey Energy chief Don Blankenship, but the court ruled 4-1 that none of the emails are public records.

Justice Robin Davis quoted an Arizona Supreme Court decision noting that the definition of a public record "does not encompass documents of a purely private or personal nature."

More here.

Follow-Up: Nearly 3,000 PIN Messages Released in Florida

Following the revelation that public service commission aides had given their PIN access codes to a Florida Power & Light attorney, the Herald/Times obtained email records and instant messages of staff and commissioners at Florida's utility regulator. PIN messages allow the senders to bypass state servers.  

 Of the nearly 3,000 messages obtained, more than 2,400 are from Public Service Commissioner Nancy Argenziano.  Argenziano's seemingly stream-of-consciousness messages reveal her distrust of fellow commissioners.  Because Argenziano has been an outspoken critic of the PSC, Associated Industries of Florida has questioned her impartiality in a rate case and have called for the agency's inspector general to investigate her.  

Get more details here. 

Florida Council Member Bullies City Clerk into Resignation over Email Release

From the St. Petersburg Times comes this report about Seminole City Councilmember Tom Barnhorn, who wanted City Clerk Ginger Stilton to keep his emails private unless there was a specific request for them.  Barnhorn had asked Stilton for information on costs and methods for moving Seminole elections from March to November. Stilton provided that information not only to Barnhorn, but to all the council members, on the grounds that it was a record pertaining to government business.  Although Barbara Petersen of the Florida First Amendment Foundation says Barnhorn's request wasn't a technical violation of Florida's public records law, she said Barnhorn doesn't understand the term "confidential records" or how his request may be violating city policy.  

Stilton resigned from office without issuing an apology demanded by Barnhorn after he sent an email to Seminole City Manager Frank Edmunds blasting Stilton for "not show[ing] me the respect due an Elected Official."  

One Year and Waiting... Palin's Emails Still Not Produced

Records requests for Sarah Palin's emails made by the Alaska Democratic Party remain unfilled, even though it's been more than a year since the request.  

Alaska officials say they are working on the large request, which requires lawyers to review each email to determine if it should be withheld for privacy concerns or to protect the "deliberative process," an executive privilege granted to the governor and close advisers.  

More here. 

In New Mexico, Emails About Public Business are Public Information Regardless of Account Used

Emails between the mayor and city councilors of Las Vegas have been released following a ruling by the New Mexico Attorney General. The attorney general 's office stated that emails regarding "public business" are "public information," even if the emails were sent by officials using a private computer, and thus, are subject to disclosure.

Click here for more information.