Wait, What?

The response one Sumner County Commissioner received when he inquired about receiving a county email address to conduct government business is truly baffling.

The Hendersonville Standard reports:

Elected officials for the city of Hendersonville, Sumner County Board of Education and City of Gallatin all have government sponsored email accounts. Members of the Sumner County Commission conduct their correspondence through individual, private email accounts.
“Open records are the exact reason we advise against having a county email address,” (Sumner County Law Director) Dennen responded. “If you have a county email, anything and everything would have to be turned over in a records request. By using your own, you have better control over what can be turned over if a request is made.”

Umm? That's not how this works. At all. First, a transparent government should be encouraging the creation of records, not attempting to find ways to "protect" elected officials from open records requests.

Second, if an elected official uses a personal email address for conducting public business, that email address can be subpoenaed in order to determine the government-related emails.

The Tennessee Coalition on Open Government found Dennen's explanation "absurd:"

 “You’re not asking [them] to give up a private email, but you are asking [them] to conduct government business on a government email account,” she said. “That is not unreasonable. In fact, it’s standard.”Sumner County Commissioners’ use of private email to conduct public business creates a system that makes it easier to avoid complying with the public records law, Fisher noted.

One solution would be for County Commission leadership to initiate the creation of Sumner County email addresses available to County Commissioners and other related officials.

The solution is easy. The advice given by the law director is most certainly absurd.

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