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Lawyer's Romantic E-Mails Will Stay Private
Here is a befuddling court decision about public access to a city attorney's e-mails. First, some background.
Joe McNeil was city attorney for Burlington, Vt. Owiso Makuku was a Burlington city planner who resigned to become a consultant to McNeil at substantially higher pay. Karen Wingate was Burlington's acting chief administrative officer and worked with the city finance committee that oversaw McNeil's contract. McNeil became involved with both women in close relationships, although the exact nature of those relationships was unclear to the citizens of Burlington.
Investigating the potential conflicts of interest inherent in these relationships, a reporter for the Burlington Free Press made a public records request for the e-mails of all three. Even though the e-mails were all sent and received on city computers, the city refused to provide them, claiming that they were personal and therefore not subject to the public records law.
The newspaper went to court, where this week Superior Court Judge Brian J. Grearson issued the befuddling ruling. I learned about it by way of a post today by Tom Kearney at the blog of the New England First Amendment Center. As he writes, the decision starts out sounding like a win for the Free Press:
The decision says all the things journalists want to hear about the people's right to know. The judge rejects the city's argument that purely personal e-mails are not public records; he acknowledges there is high public interest in conflicts of interest that would affect the functioning of government; he says the people have a right to know.
Not only that, but the judge said that after his in camera review of the sealed e-mails, he concluded that their content "would lead a reasonable person to believe" that McNeil's relationships with both Makuku and Wingate were "of a romantic nature for an extended period of time." Further, he writes, "Nothing in the record suggests that any of the three of them took any significant steps to mitigate any conflicts of interest related to these relationships."
OK. So we have overlapping romantic relationships among public employees creating apparent conflicts of interest. We have the judge saying that these e-mails are clearly public records and that the public clearly has a right to know their contents. Outcome is obvious, right? Not for Judge Grearson. He decides that the balance of interests weighs against release of the e-mails.
While some e-mails include the ordinary and benign exchanges that one would expect between people involved in a romantic relationship, others include intimate details of a highly sensitive nature. The privacy interest in those intimate details is great. By contrast, now that the existence and general nature of the relationships, and the conflicts of interests that they presented, are publicly known, the legitimate interest in disclosure of the details of those relationships is limited to whether the e-mails provide any meaningful evidence that those conflicts may have contributed to any inappropriate actions affecting City business.
Concluding that the e-mails contain no such direct evidence, the judge finds that the individuals' privacy interests outweigh the public's right to know. So, as blogger Kearney sums it up, "the newspaper wins on principle, but loses on the details."
The Free Press provides the full text of the ruling as well as this news report.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on October 10, 2008 at 10:43 AM | Permalink
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