BGA Forces Release Of Mayor Rahm Emanuel Private Emails, Garners Landmark Policy Shift
As a result of a BGA investigation and legal action, The City of Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have agreed to release all of Emanuel’s private emails related to city business—subject to any applicable legal exemptions—and institute a new policy that will ban city employees and officials from using their private email accounts to conduct city business.
The city’s change in practices comes in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits filed by the BGA, and separately by the Chicago Tribune, and follows more than a year of hard-fought litigation and rulings by two Cook County judges that public officials’ emails are not outside the scope of FOIA simply because they are on a private account.
Continue Reading: www.bettergov.org/bga forces release of mayor rahm emanuel private emails garners landmark policy shift
This is GREAT news and should be the policy of every government body!
Actually, there’s no problem using your private e-mail because the court has already ruled that a private e-mail account is not exempt from FOIA. People already seem to know that. I have never had a complaint about city employees or services sent to me. They use the phone. In fact, an Edgar County Watchdog FOIA requested communications by Marshall city officials to members of the Illinois State legislature during a specific time period wound up involving my e-mails (among others) to members of the state legislature. The most important one (to me) was directions to the location of a handy parking lot. If you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s no biggie.
Private email addresses delay FOIA requests because the government body has to ask for them. Also, there is no permanent record of all emails, so how can we be sure we get all of them?