Sunday, October 18, 2015

Baylor for Mayor platform plank: City e-mail and greater transparency.


There are unmistakable echoes of Hillary in the current occupant's attitude toward his e-mail. Following is a platform plank I commissioned from my campaign team.

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As you will know, any and all correspondence (or documents or recordings) sent to or received by the mayor regarding city business would be subject to the open records act and could be requested by any person.

Yet, the mayor has no cityofnewalbany.com email. Does anyone believe the mayor doesn't use email? So why would/does the mayor decline to use one from the city to conduct city business? Is he conducting city business through a personal email account? Of course he is. Can his personal email account be examined by the public? Of course not.

When David Duggins or Mickey Thompson want to communicate with the mayor, do they ALWAYS use the phone or wait to see him in person? No, they don't. When a citizen wants to communicate with the mayor to report a problem or suggest a solution, do they only use the phone or in-person conversation? No, they don't.

So in the interest of transparency, why doesn't the mayor restrict his email communication to an examinable city account? Why, indeed.

Proposed: All email communications to and from the mayor must be through a city account. Any email received via another account, personal or otherwise, must be forwarded to the city account by the mayor and all must be responded to by means of the city account. The mayor should have up to 20 days from receipt to forward the same.

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