By Gene Policinski, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center, via Pocono Record:
The First Amendment protects our free speech from government control, punishment or interference — but when public officials speak freely through private e-mail accounts or mobile phones, are they free to ignore freedom of information laws?
On one hand, they are paying from their own funds for those means of communication — and even public officials have private lives, though less so than before their win at the ballot box or appointment to public office.
But it would seem that there’s nothing really “private” about a conversation about public policies, or about spending public funds, or making hiring decisions for public employment.
States are about evenly divided on whether the latter kind of conversations is covered by FOI or public records laws. A recent Associated Press story, citing data from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, noted that 26 states see private emails or other kinds of electronic communications about government business as public records. Those records generally are to be held open for review by citizens, and subject to laws and regulations on how long they must be stored and retained.
The most recent battleground over the issue is in California, which had not defined access to such information. A state court judge ruled recently that private text messages, emails and other electronic communications sent and received by San Jose officials about city affairs are public records.
But that ruling won’t address the question for 23 other states where public officials may well be able to discuss sensitive decisions — major spending proposals or the hiring of top officials like school superintendents — out of the view of taxpayers and fellow citizens.