The Daily Hustle: 3/30/11

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the inbox: Per ongoing Open Meetings drama, yesterday, Bill Spelman released three e-mails sent on his University of Texas account. Meanwhile, City Council discussed ways to archive business-related messages sent on personal accounts, with further action around the corner.

“Going forward, we all want to make city-related emails sent to our private accounts part of the public record. But I believe we should respond to previous requests for information with the same threshold of transparency,” said Spelman in a press release accompanying his disclosure. Not that there was much to mention in those messages: they comprised a forward of state info on Formula One racing; staff language related to social service contracts; and an e-mail to him and Laura Morrison from a constituent addressing AISD funding woes. This message came from AISD facility master plan task force member (and wife of Chronicle publisher) Susan Moffat, who tells the Hustle she e-mailed them on private accounts since “the items under discussion were not city business, but things Laura and Bill would be following up on in their personal hats as friends of public education, not as Council Members (for example, seeing if any Chamber connections would help find donated business space to allow AISD to terminate leases)."

Spelman’s actions were presaged by a City Council work session on communication policy earlier that day. Following an executive session discussion, attorney Jim Cousar presented “some prospective policy options the council might want to bring back in the form of a resolution” addressing e-mails, noting while “the whole state of the law is complicated, it doesn't mean its not in the best interest of the law” to act. The broadest guideline Cousar offered was instruction for “city officials and city employees not to use their personal devices for public business, unless its necessary,” and should they discuss city business on private accounts, those conversations should be forwarded to public servers. However, that did come with several question, which it’s up to council to answer, including which employees, staffers and volunteers should abide by those rules. Cousar noted such a system could quickly become “difficult, expensive and unworkable” if it covered board and commission members, for instance – ”a lot of them won’t have any place to forward it to and it just bogs down.”

Ultimately, Cousar suggested it apply to “who’s making decisions that really are policy level decisions. It’s in the public interest that those become subject to public scrutiny.” Calling the discussion and Cousar’s recommendations “the bare bones of an outline for … a voluntary prospective policy for how to handle personal device communications,” Lee Leffingwell made a motion to “direct staff to come up with a rough draft for a proposal” that the council could enjoy a “fulsome discussion” of at their April 7 meeting.

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