Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Ruth Grant, a resident of Waltham.
My fellow Vermonters: Did you know that any private mailing you send to a commissioner, government officials, and your legislators likely becomes a public document?
If not, you may want to read about my lesson learned the hard way a couple weeks ago.
As a mother advocating for proposed legislation that could result in my son receiving timely health care, I sent an email to a commissioner explaining why I support this legislation and also provided her with relevant medical information and a fair amount of private information about my son’s illness and experiences, which I thought would help her to understand the issue. When I was at the State House to listen to testimony provided by opponents to the bill, one of them told me how she had obtained all the contents of what I thought was my private mailing to the commissioner. Apparently shortly after I clicked on send, the email was converted into a public document! (I don’t know how this is done.)
Since then I have done some private investigating of my own and decided it should be shared with other Vermont citizens. (I don’t know how to access emails sent by citizens; not interested in engaging in such espionage myself.) Secretary of State Condos replied to my email of inquiry promptly. In response to my general question about what goes public, he replied:
“Any documented communication to a governmental agency (state and local) is by definition a “public record” – And is disclosable to any person on request.”
“There are a number of exemptions to this blanket access, but without further information I don’t know if the contents of your letter to …fits within a personal privacy exemption or not. Most likely the contents of your communication are not exempt. The backdrop for all this is our right as citizens to have access to all the information our government collects in its business of governing.”
“For the record, all information gathered by government should be considered public except for that which an exemption exists to protect privacy – this would include emails and letters, etc. And it most cases, emails would not become public unless someone requests emails for a specific topic. Here is the State Statute definitions…
1 V.S.A. § 317. Definitions; public agency; public records and documents
§ 317. Definitions; public agency; public records and documents
(a) As used in this subchapter, “public agency” or “agency” means any agency, board, department, commission, committee, branch, instrumentality, or authority of the state or any agency, board, committee, department, branch, instrumentality, commission, or authority of any political subdivision of the state.
(b) As used in this subchapter, “public record” or “public document” means any written or recorded information, regardless of physical form or characteristics, which is produced or acquired in the course of public agency business. …”
I asked for clarification about communications with legislators and here’s the scoop: “With regard to legislators emails – they are most definitely public, however, in the interest of efficiency and capacity, the legislature has authorized all legislative emails older than 90 days to be deleted.”
After that, I asked one of my legislators if this applies to emails sent to their private non-state e-addresses. Answer: “We’ve always been told that our email (private or statehouse) is subject to public access.”
Tonight after work I sat down to read a week’s accumulation of The Burlington Free Press and saw an article in Monday’s (3/28) about VT access laws. It states that some say Vermont’s open government laws are some of “the weakest in the nation.”
If it’s any consolation, though Vermonters may not always be able to find out what police officers have been looking at porno, at least everything I’ve written to commissioners and legislators over the years has been or still is available for their scrutiny and entertainment.
I have proposed that with regard to emails, state IT experts create a very apparent pop-up or warning message that will alert e- mailers that their mailing will become a public document if they send it. I have been told the state department with the capacity to make this happen is the Department of Information and Innovation (DII), in case you would also like to encourage implementation such a warning system.
