County attorney Rheubin Taylor asserted Tuesday that it was wrong to release as public records the e-mails on a county computer that nailed a county employee for routinely working on his lucrative private business on the taxpayers’ time. Taylor’s shallow opinion strikes us as a wrong-headed slap to taxpayers. The county attorney, and county government’s elected leaders, should be much more interested in seeing that county employees are doing their jobs properly than in protecting miscreant employees from public scrutiny for violating county work rules.
Under Taylor’s opinion, this newspaper’s reporter, Dan Whisenhunt, would not have been able to obtain the e-mails that confirmed Alan Knowles’ violation of county policies. Knowles, a county Public Works supervisor and son of County Clerk Bill Knowles, was busy earning $157,345 over the past three years by working on his private business, in part, on county time and county computers.
Knowles finally received a mere five-day suspension from embarrassed county officials after Whisenhunt’s stories revealed his work for his for-profit business – Dove Ministries, a concert-organizing service – while he was being paid by county taxpayers.
Taylor’s interpretation of the state Open Records Act would have prevented those stories. His view seems crimped in the extreme. His opinion, moreover, springs from a 2005 state appeals court ruling that is itself ambiguous. That opinion was cited by Elisha Hodge, the state’s Open Records Office counsel, as the basis for interpreting the law on public records to say that public employees’ purely personal e-mails (though not Knowles’ e-mails specifically) are generally exempt from disclosure under the state’s Open Records Act.
She and Taylor pointed out that a 2005 appeals court opinion (Ed Brennan v. Giles County Board of Education) found that personal e-mails did not meet the definition of public records if they were not “made or received pursuant to law or ordinance (emphasis ours) or in connection with the transaction of official business.”
That’s a slender reed on which to hang a broad policy of withholding e-mails that show public employees violating a government’s standards for wrongly using publicly owned computers on taxpayer time, or using them in pursuit of private profit on the taxpayer’s dime. The county’s policies, in our view, effectively stand as an “ordinance” under the court’s phrase with respect to e-mails that “may” be deemed public records under the county policy. We also differ with Taylor on what the use of the word “may” means in that context: If it’s optional, as Taylor contends, it should be optional in favor of the public interest – and not the offender’s interest – when wrong-doing is involved.
In any case, the county must venture beyond Taylor’s myopic view of what constitutes “personal” e-mail when such e-mails involve wrongful use of county equipment and employee time. The law is not black or white on this issue; it surely varies over broad shades of gray.
We would ask, in taxpayers’ behalf, whether a public employee who uses his or her official, taxpayer-funded time and publicly owned computers to view pornography would be punished, and whether that official punishment – and relevant records, including e-mail – would be public record? Or how about habitual playing of video games on county (taxpayer) time, while official work slides?
And what would be the legal view of a county employee who cheats significantly on county time to do work for an outside private business that enriches him? Would that not amount, essentially, to defrauding taxpayers of the value of that employees’ service and compensation? Isn’t that akin to stealing public money, or fraudulent use of public resources? Why wouldn’t official, incriminating records (i.e., e-mails that prove such fraud or wrongful use under county policy) be subject to official punishment and public records?
In short, we don’t believe that the law in this ever-expanding realm of the Internet age would protect public employees who effectively cheat taxpayers on the time or effort they owe to public duties. Nor would the law shelter and exclude from public record the e-mails and computer records that they wrongly use – records without which their violations of government policies may not be proved.
Personal e-mails pertaining to truly personal needs (“Yes, dear, I can pick up Johnny if your meeting runs late”) are a far different creature from the routine use of e-mails and computers to operate a private business on county time, or to cheat taxpayers of conscientious work for the public dollars they are being paid.
County officials – like those in any government body – need to scrutinize Taylor’s and Hodge’s initial surface view and do the right thing. Their rules, policies, public records and public transparency should be reflective of the service they owe the taxpayers who fund their jobs.