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Friday, May 29, 2009

Ind. Gov't. - Kokomo Perspective having trouble accessing Howard County emails

Tim Turner reported in the Kokomo Perspective on May 28th under the headline "County refuses newspaper's request for public records: City says it’s complying; county calls request ‘pathetic’":

Faced with the possibly of having to provide copies of county employees' e-mails to the public, the county commissioners recently changed its ordinance regarding public access to those e-mails, and now taxpayers will be paying for someone to sort work-related e-mails from personal e-mails.

The ordinance change was made in response to a request made by this newspaper in regards to accessing e-mails sent and received by county elected officials and department heads. The county denied the Perspective's request. County attorney Larry Murrell called part of the newspaper's request "a pathetic and misguided attempt on your part to cast aspersions on the county for the time and effort it may spend to honor your request. As such, it is an abuse of the Access to Public Records Act." The newspaper has filed a formal complaint against the county and requested the Public Access Counselor to determine if the county's refusal adheres to state law. The counselor will make a decision on June 9.

The rest of the very long story is worth reading, but too long for the ILB - let's hope the Perspective keeps it online.

The story is accompanied by this editorial dated May 28th:

Government e-mails are public record. That's what the law says, but it's never as simple as that. In the information age, more and more of the business of operating government is done via e-mail and the Internet. As such, the taxpayers have a right to know how this is taking place.

That is the central issue in the Perspective's requests to Howard County and the city of Kokomo for the e-mails generated by elected officials and department heads. The county has denied that information to us, and so we are challenging its decision through the state's public access counselor. You have a right to the information we requested. We are attempting to obtain it. * * *

We agree with the county that some e-mails are not public, such as those containing confidential information like personnel records or discussions of pending litigations. We would argue that communicating these issues via e-mail is irresponsible, but the e-mails would be protected in those cases.

We understand that the state's public access counselor has ruled that personal communication on the public's e-mail system is exempt from disclosure. We may not agree with the ruling. In fact, we believe this is a misuse of public resources that is specifically limited, if not forbidden, by the county's electronic use policy. We may believe that such a ruling should be challenged. But we don't fault the county for denying those records.

On the issue of providing an accounting of Web site visits by particular individuals, if the county does not maintain such a record, we agree that it has no responsibility to create a new record upon our request. Perhaps the county should review how it archives electronic information to protect the system from misuse and to better enable it to fulfill a public records request in the future.

However, on the most important point - reasonable particularity - the Perspective must challenge the denial. We believe we have been specific enough in our request for the county to be able to reasonably reply. We are not under any requirement to identify what information we are seeking within the record, and the county is not required to ferret out such information.

We have asked for a particular range of information from a specific and limited set of records. Whether that range is one day or 100 days shouldn't have an impact of the reasonableness of the request. Whether the set of records is e-mail from one public officials or 20 public officials also has no impact on reasonableness. If the record exists, and it can be accessed without undue hardship, then the request is reasonably particular.

If the record does not exist, then we are willing to revise our request to a smaller or more specific set of records. Only that would be reasonable grounds for denial, in our opinion.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because our government is established for the benefit of the people. It is funded by the people, and it serves to represent all of our interests - not its own interests. You have a right to know how government operates, how it utilizes the resources you provide to it, and how it spends the money you give to it in the form of taxes.

To accept the county's records denial is to accept that the public has no right to see how one aspect of government operates. It allows a shroud of darkness to exist. We aren't saying that government is abusing the public trust in this area. We just want to make sure that the potential for abuse doesn't exist.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 29, 2009 01:52 PM
Posted to Indiana Government