Um, yeah, we don’t run like a business, there are open meetings and records laws that are important. So, committee members, committee staff, elected officials, and mostly, YOU, as a citizen should be aware . . .
From: May, Michael
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 10:24 AM
To: Dept Division Heads; ALL ALDERS
Cc: AT ATTY; MY GROUP
Subject: Email, Public Records and Open MeetingsThis email is a reminder of a few items upon which we have advised in the past. It is sent primarily for the benefit of new Alders and new Department/Division heads. However, its contents may serve as a healthy reminder that we need to carefully consider our actions before hitting that “send” button and firing off an email.
1. Emails and Personal Computers or Personal Email Accounts.
In determining whether an email (or any other item upon which information is recorded) constitutes a public record it is the CONTENT of the record, NOT THE LOCATION NOR THE FORMAT, that determines whether that item is a public record. Therefore, an email sent in your official capacity as an Alder or Department/Division head, whether sent from your personally owned home computer or your City of Madison issued work computer, constitutes a public record. As such, the email must be preserved and, potentially, disclosed to the public upon request. To facilitate these requirements, the City’s official email system maintains a copy of every email transaction conducted with and within the system. Please log onto and use this system for all of your official communications. If you receive an email related to public business on your personal account, you should forward it to your City account and respond from there.
There is a trend developing wherein the courts are recognizing the metadata associated with official emails as a separate and unique public record apart from the text of the email itself. Again, use of the City’s official email system will facilitate the preservation and retrieval of not only the email text, but its associated metadata as well.
Use of personally owned computers and personal email addresses/systems is discouraged. Such practices may subject those devices, addresses and systems to public inspection should a dispute arise concerning the City’s compliance with Open Meetings and Public Records Laws. Use of such devices also complicates the preservation and the retrieval of such records.
2. Email and the Open Meetings Law.
Email also presents the potential for violations of the Open Meetings Laws. For example, if enough people are involved in a discussion via email such that a quorum or negative quorum decides upon a course of action in those exchanges, those exchanges may constitute a meeting that violates the Open Meetings laws. The attached Attorney General opinion explains these dangers. This was also discussed in an opinion from our office in 2004, which may be found here:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/attorney/documents/2004opinions/2004-001.pdf
3. Custodian Notice Under Public Records Law.
Department/Division Heads are reminded of the need to complete and post the following Public Records Notice at all public offices under their control:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/attorney/documents/openrec.pdfAdditionally, Department/Division Heads should appoint as many trained and qualified persons as Records Custodians as are necessary to assure timely and complete response to public records requests.
The Office of the City Attorney regularly conducts training on these matters. Training materials are also available for review online by going to the City Attorney’s webpage and clicking on the “Open Government” tab. See:
http://www.cityofmadison.com/attorney/meetings/index.cfmPlease feel free to contact either Assistant City Attorney Roger Allen or me if you have any questions, comments or concerns regarding either public records or open meetings matters.
Sadly, this is really important, but there is much more that needs to be addressed. Facebook and text messages for one. But also, I’ve always wondered why they insist that alders and others use city accounts. What they should be emphasizing instead is that its all records, they all need to be kept and its the elected officials responsibility to release them. Plus, the city system sucks. I once had over 8 hours of emails to review in order to comply with an open records request, and I had to do it at the city computer in their office. I hope they’ve fixed that by now. My simple gmail search would be much more simple to find what someone wanted. In the case above, after two hours, I just released all the emails . . . probably absolutely frustrating the person who asked for the information, but I simply didn’t have the time to spend wading through the crap they gave me.
And finally, I’m soooooooooooooooooooooo tired of the Economic Development Committee trying to find everything they can to get around these laws. Trying to set up workgroups to work on things so they don’t have to notice the meetings. (Ahem, if a government created the body, then they have to notice the meetings.) Or trying to figure out ways to keep documents confidential so no one unduly influences a decision. Well that’s all crap. What they are doing is making it so only some people can influence a decision and its wrong. Making sure DMI or the business community have a seat at the table for the decisions and blocking everyone else is not the way they should be conducting business. And you can’t get around it by saying the alders are representing the public but then swearing them to secrecy.
Grrrr . . . my rant for the day.
