Thursday, March 2, 2017

Public officials can't use private e-mail to hide public business from public

Says the California Supreme Court:
Texts and emails sent by public employees on their personal devices or accounts are a matter of public record if they deal with official business, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a unanimous decision hailed by open-government advocates.
The City of Encinitas has a long history of hiding public documents from the public.

8 comments:

  1. A fish rots from the head first. The Encinitas city council is the head and they have and always will be rotten.

    No government is better than bad government.

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  2. Maybe these government employees will stay off Facebook while on our dime.

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    Replies
    1. They make Cal Trans look energetic!

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  3. Barth and Shaffer texts would be nice for the public at large to see.

    Get them out of Encinitas politics for real.

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  4. Somebody needs to inform Vice President Pence.

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  5. I'm grateful for this ruling; I already thought this to be true, but a great many public officials didn't agree, including the former elected City Attorney for San Diego.

    However, it's still a challenge to obtain these kinds of private communications. If someone puts in a public records act request, the request, here, goes to the City Clerk's office. The Clerk doesn't compile or keep track of private e-mails, so this would still basically be on the "honor system."

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    Replies
    1. Good luck with honor at City Hall.

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  6. It's excellent that the ruling from the California Supreme Court is unanimous.

    Public officials conducting public business on private accounts should also preserve those specific e-mails for a reasonable time period. It would seem too easy, and too tempting to some, to subvert the new Supreme Court Order, by simply deleting relevant e-mails.

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