“Ex-Parnell official says governor’s office uses text messages to avoid disclosure” read a headline in the Anchorage Daily News last week. It had the makings of a scandal. However, the governor’s office denied the accusation. And almost every other news source in the state ignored the story. It may be that they trusted our governor’s response. Or perhaps they’ve been sensitized by the great transparency chase into former Governor Sarah Palin’s private email account.
The source for the Daily News article was Russ Kelly, a former associate director of Parnell’s office in Washington, D.C. Last year he sent an email to Cindy Sims, Governor Parnell’s deputy chief of staff, criticizing Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan. Kelly claims that Sims told him he should have sent text messages instead of an email so it wouldn’t fall under the Freedom of Information Act.
According to Daily News reporter Sean Cockerham, Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow admitted that Kelly was told his email was inappropriate. But she said it was for reasons other than sidestepping creating a written record that’s open to public disclosure. “The governor’s office does not have a practice of putting sensitive information in text messages to avoid public records requests” she told him. Leighow added that “text messages are transitory and are not public records.”
Should they be? That question could be the main objective of Cockerham’s story. Apparently the state denied a Daily News’ public records request for text messages sent from the governor’s office during the debate over Parnell’s oil tax proposal. And Cockerham further emphasized the Daily News’ position by stating that Alaska law defines public records as “books, papers, files, accounts, writings, including drafts and memorializations of conversations, and other items, regardless of format or physical characteristics.” So his reason for reporting on Kelly’s claim may be to resurrect the issue.
The State of Utah would agree with the Parnell administration. Last year their governor signed a bill that excludes text messages from the statutory definition of a public record. From the Daily News’ perspective though this is about the news media’s responsibility to help the public intelligently participate in oversight of our government. That ideal is behind the decisions by the states of Florida and Oregon that made text messages subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
To be sure, FIOA requests have a vital purpose in a government of and by the people. Ultimately though, it boils down to a matter of trust. There would be no need for disclosures of any kind if we trusted our elected officials and every public employee working on their behalf.
But shouldn’t trust be viewed as a two way street? In other words, do politicians have a realistic reason to believe that among their constituency there isn’t anyone out to grind a personal or partisan ax? The answer, of course, is no. Additionally, there’s always the temptation for a reporter to go on a fishing expedition in order to land a career enhancing scoop about political corruption. While neither of these is as bad as a law- breaking government, they are nonetheless a form of corruption that impedes the flow of a people’s democracy.
It’s not just physics where every action has a reaction. The need for transparency for its own sake may seem legitimate, but for politicians its counteraction can be finding different places to keep secrets from their political opposition. The result is a trove of hidden but otherwise worthless documents that might embarrass government officials but contain nothing that closely resembles wrongdoing. That’s exactly what was found in the personal email account that Palin used while she was governor. And the same was true for the vast majority of the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks. Imagine if text messages were added to these mountains that should have been molehills.
Text messages may be written words but they’re really more like short bursts of spontaneous conversation than a well thought out document or even an email. And if they’re to be subjected to FOIA requests then we may just wind up driving political actors into a deeper realm of paranoia where they’ll look for new ways to keep their thoughts from public scrutiny.
• Moniak is a Juneau resident.
Comments (13)
Add commentNo FOIA necessary...
...for Sean Parnell. His actions speak loudly and clearly. He's in office to serve the bidding of the corporations at the expense of Alaskans.
No need for texts, tweets, emails, or bar napkins to confirm what's already blindingly obvious.
A text...
...is the same as a phone conversation. Pry into one and you can pry into the other. FOIA is a slippery slope to start with. If you want to require disclosure of a text, you may as well mandate the bugging of telephones. What next? Restaurants? Bars? Park benches?
Lattie
You are a sourpuss in every sense of the word!!
Missed A few
Boy thwere are some real independat scholars from the right posting here. With some hugely ORIGINAL comments.
They forgot to mention a few additional real original righty postulates: Kenyan Socialism, Rev Wright, Chicago Politics, death panels...?
Huggy
Say what?
surveillance state
We live in a society where our movements, our buying patterns, our internet choices, our opinions, our politics, and our detailed history, not to mention our telephone conversations and probably our texts and tweets, are being routinely tracked---Much of it we embrace under the guise of "security", much we are oblivious to, and quite of bit we tolerate as part of a ceaseless marketing effort to get the kind of content we want in our entertainment and information feeds.
We repeatedly elect these people who repeatedly lie to us, from Barack on down to Parnell; and far from actually representing us when given the chance, they continue to sell us out, and to sign on to increasing levels of a tightening security state, where we are all treated as potential criminals who must prove our innocence again and again, in various ways, to travel, to vote, to be heard, and to petition our government.
Politicians of any stripe should be monitored closely---I think they should be strapped to lie detectors every time they give a speech, and perhaps be made to wear ankle-bracelets to track their movements: Let them be subjected to the scrutiny of the surveillance state they helped create.
Absolutely, Jamison.
Use Tor for anonymity when using the Web, in addition to some of the tools included in completely free web browsers like Ice Weasel - this will go a long way towards removing digital footprints. Duck Duck Go for non-tracked and encrypted search patterns. If you must use a cellphone, buy something like a Go Phone, with cash, and do not let the salesperson enter your name in the registration field.
And yes - with the exception of some aspects of national defense - make all White House networks completely transparent and open. If corporations are people, then we should be able to snoop their networks and computers in the same way they lobby to snoop those of private individuals.
it's the law...
The governors office really doesn't have a choice. We the people provide the phones and the service, we the people have passed a law requiring openness in communication. It's not up to the governor or some staffer to decide what should/should not be made available to the public.
And as far as 'trust' goes...does anyone trust this governor?
@newLife
I think you made a mistake. You meant Republipukes
Leighow said “text messages... are not public records".
Well, that's not what an AG Opinion from 2008 said.
@jamison
Well said...thumbs up. How far should we go?
We've barely begun
to insist on true transparency in our government: We tolerate closed-door meetings, "secret" evidence, extra-judicial killings, and Patriot Act provisions applied to peace activists, among many other outrages; and all the while the cameras are pointed...at us.
When the professional liars that front for this theft of our democracy begin to feel the weight of accountability for their actions, perhaps through the auspices of a broad-based anti-incumbency movement, a real beginning can be said to be made.
Until then, the thefts will continue, and the "top secret" government measures, until we realize that the "terrorists" they're aimed at are us, the polity.