From the Wilmington Star-News (7/22/09): Top New Hanover County officials appear to be following their policy on confidential e-mail, according to a StarNews analysis of subject lines from 138,000 private county e-mails written in the last six months.
Then again, it’s impossible to tell from the data whether public information is being discussed in the privacy of an official’s e-mail box because nearly 40 percent of the e-mails – about 53,000 – have only a vague subject line of “confidential” or “private,” making it impossible to determine whether the messages discussed issues that should have remained public.
But county officials say they have spent time properly educating employees on what information should – and shouldn’t – be marked private and shielded from the eyes of taxpayers.
“We do have a policy and we’ve gone beyond that to communicate it with the employees,” County Manager Bruce Shell said Wednesday.
The e-mail of local government employees – and whether they are hiding public information by inappropriately marking e-mail as private – came to local attention earlier this month when the StarNews reported that Wilmington officials had sent and received thousands of private e-mails, many of them with subject lines clearly referring to public business.
County employees are directed to write “confidential” in an e-mail subject line – which automatically filters it away from an e-mail box that’s open to the public – only if it includes specific types of information, said IT Director Leslie Stanfield.
State law assumes government information, including e-mail, is open to the public. Most e-mails from the county managers, commissioners and department heads – about 350,000 a month, said Stanfield – are filed in a “public mailbox” that can be accessed by anyone. Computers are set up at the county government center for residents and media to use to examine the messages.
There are exceptions. Most personnel records, business trade secrets, economic development negotiations, pending legal matters and some law enforcement investigation records can be legally marked confidential.
According to a StarNews survey of e-mail subject lines, New Hanover’s leaders sent fewer confidential e-mails than their Wilmington counterparts.
About three dozen top county officials – including administrators, department heads and commissioners – sent and received about 8,000 e-mails hidden from public scrutiny from January through June. That’s compared to 36,000 e-mails designated as private that were written by the top 18 city employees in the last year.
Only a comparatively small number of subject lines discuss seemingly public information – draft memos and documents, local swine flu cases, budget cuts and layoffs and water sampling results.
Shell said he understands some public information likely gets wrongly tagged as private. On the flip side, officials also find e-mails that should have been marked confidential that slipped into the public mailbox.
“I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it’s been our goal to adhere to that policy,” Shell said.
But Ashley Perkinson, a First Amendment Attorney representing the N.C. Press Association, said individual employees should not be allowed to determine whether an e-mail is private or not.
“We do not believe that complies with the public records laws,” she said.
For his part, Shell sent and received about 460 private e-mails in the six months, mostly regarding personnel issues, he said. The employee with the most confidential e-mails is now-retired Human Resources Director Cathy Morgan, who sent and received more than 1,000 e-mails. That’s mostly because she dealt with large amounts of privileged employee information.
Given the recent attention on government e-mails, Shell said he likely will meet with department heads on the e-mail policy in the coming weeks.
“I plan to re-emphasize the issue,” he said.
by Chris Mazzolini, Star-News Staff Writer