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Elected Officials Elude Public With Private E-Mail

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By CHARLES DAVIS Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 26, 2008

We may never know whether Gov. Sarah Palin is conducting the public's business on one of the non-governmental accounts she uses.

News reports have demonstrated that Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor's office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too.

They are not alone: Use of private e-mail accounts has become quite the rage in governments grand and small. If this debate sounds familiar, it is. The Bush administration generated headlines last year after it was disclosed that more than 80 White House aides, including senior Bush adviser Karl Rove, used private GOP e-mail servers for government business. The controversy surfaced during congressional investigations into White House contacts with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and into the firings of U.S. attorneys.

Gov. Palin knows that, and so does every other public official across this great land of ours, from governors to city council members. They also know that it is awfully convenient to use private e-mail accounts for their personal correspondence. Increasingly wired with Blackberrys and iPhones and PDAs, these e-mail addicts have also come to realize that the Google or Yahoo e-mail can instantly create a tantalizingly private communications channel for official correspondence, too.

Don't take my word for it. As the Anchorage Daily News detailed, in response to one FOI request that pre-dates the Palin vice presidential nomination, a citizen requester received four huge boxes of e-mail and telephone records for two Palin aides, Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. Henning was operating on behalf of the Valley group Last Frontier Foundation, which lists property rights and public records as among its core issues on its Web site.

As far as the requesters could tell, all but one of the e-mails to the governor used her private e-mail address. The one time an aide e-mailed the governor's state account, he was reminded not to.

"Frank, This is not the Governor's personal e-mail account," an assistant to Palin wrote to Bailey in February.

"Whoops~!" Bailey responded in an e-mail.

Alaska state public records law, like every other state's public records law, says e-mails are public documents like any other official government business. When officials discuss something digitally, it is the same as if they had sent letters by snail mail. The public may review that correspondence.

The problem is, when official e-mail goes to and comes from Yahoo, Gmail or any other private account, there is no public archive. Instead, officials must preserve their correspondence themselves and turn it over when someone asks for it. It's the world's biggest honor system, and sadly, not everyone is so honorable.

Allowing government officials to effectively pick and choose between e-mail services is an invitation to abuse. The temptation for public officials to resist disclosure of incriminating or even just embarrassing e-mails is powerful enough when the e-mail is being housed within the halls of government. Give them a Yahoo account to hide it in and unless a judge orders an inspection of a private computer (which is precisely what happened recently in Florida), it's the public official's word versus that of the requester.

Another problem is that these dual e-mail systems can gain legal standing. Alaska's attorney general, appointed by Palin, determined in August that any personal communications on state-reimbursed cell phones and BlackBerrys can be kept secret under the Public Records Act. That could sweep information from public view if it were deemed personal, although the attorney general said state officials or courts still could review the records as needed. That's a tall order for a citizen requester to see through.

E-mail archives can prove critical for investigations of governmental officials. The Bush administration couldn't provide uncounted numbers of e-mails needed for evidence because they weren't on a government server, according to a 2007 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Worst of all, governors, mayors and city council members using private e-mail accounts to conduct the public's business rob us, the people, of our documented history.

The typewritten memos that constitute the histories of previous administrations have given way to electronic communication. Today, only the antiseptic finality of deliberation is recorded on paper. If we rely on paper to tell the tales of modern governments, we'll be missing most of what actually happened.

It's really quite simple. Government business must be done on governmental e-mail, and public records laws must be amended to require nothing less.

Charles Davis is the executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition in Columbia, Mo.

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