Saturday, December 31, 2011

Charlotte City Council Accountability Gap Personal Email Accounts

There is something inherently wrong with allowing Charlotte and Mecklenburg County elected officials to conduct "City Business" from personal email accounts.

Charlotte City Council Members Cannon, Howard, James, Barnes and Cooksey all have "Private" email accounts. Mayor Foxx, and Council Members Fallon, Pickering, Kinsey, Mayfield, Autry, and Dulin have opted for the "new" Charlottenc.gov email address.

But still Dulin and Kinsey have private email addresses that they routinely use to communicate with each other and with citizens.

Recently South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has been under fire for the deletion of email records and the use of "personal email" accounts. Additionally, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's staff deleted thousands of emails during the final days of his administration.

Many suspect that Mayor Foxx' assistant Tracy Montross deleted emails from her private Yahoo.com email account, but who really knows? More so who within Charlotte and Mecklenburg County government is responsible for making sure public records are not deleted?

The more pressing question is, why does a full time City of Charlotte employee like Montross conduct city business, via a private email account in the first place?

Clearly the deletion of emails is a violation of public records law. For all the promises of transparency in government made by elected officials, something is just not right if the only person controlling the email account is able to delete records on a daily basis.

Cedar's Take: It is time North Carolina's elected officials take action and forbid any City, State or County employee or elected official from conducting business via a personal email account. It is time that Charlotte City Council members stop using private email accounts.

I am personally calling on Charlotte's City Council to put this concern on the agenda as soon as possible. To ignore this concern will only add to the belief that Charlotte's elected officials have something to hide.

Cedar Posts has emailed Mayor Foxx and Members of Charlotte City Council. We'll let you know should they respond.

Update: January 5, 2012 Nearly a week later only newly elected Council Member Claire Fallon responded and stated she intended to use only the City of Charlotte email address.

If you would like to contact Mayor Foxx and City Council about this matter you may do so at the following email addresses:



mayor@charlottenc.gov, councilmancannon@gmail.com, cfallon@charlottenc.gov,
info@davidhowardclt.com, bpickering@charlottenc.gov, pkinsey@charlottenc.gov,
JamesDistrict2@aol.com, lmayfield@charlottenc.gov, barnesdistrict4@aol.com,
jautry@charlottenc.gov, adulin@charlottenc.gov, warren@warrencooksey.com

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course they use those email accounts. An email sent from the city account is public record . I would bet that Napoleon and his selected few also pull this crap at CMPD.

Anonymous said...

To ANON 12:42pm...no they don't "all" use their official email addresses. I know for a fact Cannon uses his personal email account as does two others.

IF you are a country or city official ALL biz SHOULD be conducted USING your official email and IF you use your personal for city/county biz it TOO should be public as well! PERIOD!

Anonymous said...

Actually, the story is about the officials using PERSONAL email accounts and that is what I was talking about. You thought I was talking about their city emails from reading that?

Anonymous said...

If you go to § 132‑1. "Public records" defined. It defines public records as anything connected to the transaction of public business.

So if anyone is using their personal email to conduct business, that is also public record and is open to the public. If they are not, then they are in violation of the article.

They think that because they use a personal email address that it isn't "public" but they are wrong.

Anonymous said...

That's right

Anonymous said...

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law.

Particularly when the attorneys are the ones doing it, they have no excuse whatsoever.

Don't forget that Mayor Foxx is an attorney.

I don't want to let anyone off the hook by saying "they think that because they use a personal email address that it isn't "public" but they are wrong." I would suggest that many of them probably believe they may get away with conducting business in their personal emails and think that it won't be subject to being turned over --and are doing that intentionally, even though they know that your interpretation of the law is correct: those emails in personal accounts for public business are subject to the same public record law.

Anonymous said...

Either way.... They just hit "delete" ..... Or shred.
I have heard that's how it is done at Cmpd, and have to believe it is the same for all of Charlotte's " civil servants".
Directives, laws....that makes me laugh....they are clearly above all of that.
And they are shielded by manipulations of police attorneys that they in effect "own". The P.A's do not have civil service protection and can be fired on Rodney's whim.

Anonymous said...

If a Police Attorney is fired for refusing to do something illegal or unethical for Rodney Monroe, then they should have the intelligence and legal training to report it and take legal action.

If they are too stupid or unethical to do that, they shouldn't be attorneys and sure shouldn't be attorneys we are paying theoretically to be sure the department is being run within the bounds of ethics and the law.

You are correct about what it has become. That's just not what it's supposed to be. They are supposed to be there as consultants to make sure everyone is following the law. They are not supposed to be figuring out how to cover up every illegal or questionable thing that goes on in the department.

And we are paying for them.

Fortunately, they're not so good, so they have not covered up EVERY thing.

Anonymous said...

Cedar,
You should really ask questions about the "natural causes" death last night.....And if there had been another visit by cmpd to that very same location earlier in the day.
What, exactly, were the "natural causes"?
What Rodney's cmpd gets away with is amazing.....simply amazing.

What makes this so bad is that all the rookies that have come on under Rodney have learned that corruption is "okay".

Anonymous said...

And the Positive Spin Media blitz by CMPD begins with the Observer.

And they have their ringers posting in comments with their bullshit rationalizations.

You don't think you can " hide bodies"? Please, there are MANY ways to effectively "hide" bodies.

Curt Walton, Rodney Monroe, Harold Medlock , Paul Zinkann, Katrina Graue, and others......

Cmpd at the top is dirty, and getting dirtier.

And it seems they will try, by whatever means necessary, to discredit ANYONE that tries to tell the truth, or tries to stand up to them and to stand up for truth.

Anonymous said...

Based upon some of my e-mail correspondence with department level city employees such as the engineering and planning departments, I believe that this is a purposeful systematic practice throughout many levels of our City Government. Thank you for taking the time to write about this problem.

Anonymous said...

Cedar, when you reply to a council member's e-mail, be sure to "click" on "reply to all". You may find some rather anonymous looking e-mail addresses that give no indication of the recipient's identity. If one did not know of these addresses that were "blind coded" as part of the council and government communications, they cannot be requested as part of any discovery or transparency requests.

Anonymous said...

Cedar,
Check out Citynewswatch today.....some great stuff!!!

And he gives you credit for uncovering many things!

My obvious question would be:
IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, WHY DON'T YOU ANSWER EACH AND EVERY PUBLIC INFO REQUEST AS YOU RECEIVE IT.....IF CMPD OR ANY BRANCH OF CITY GOVERNMENT GETS A PUBLIC INFO REQUEST THERE SHOULD BE NO STALLING, NO DELAY TACTICS, NO DEFLECTING, NO IGNORING....EACH AND EVERY REQUEST SHOULD BE TAKEN SERIOSLY AND ANSWERED....BY LAW.

IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE, IF YOU HAVE BEEN ETHICAL AND HONEST, IF YOU HAVE OPEN AND CORRECT RECORDS, IF YOU ARE AN OPEN AND TRANSARENT ORGANIZATION WITH NOTHING TO HIDE....WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH TIMELY AND HONEST ANSWERS TO PUBLIC INFO REQUESTS?

Someone said cmpd is "dirty"......I don't think that even begins to describe what they have become under Rodney.

Within the law enforcement community the reputation of cmpd is that Rodney has destroyed a once ethical, honest police department, a department known for it's forward, innovative policing with emphasis on training, education, integrity, honesty...and has made it a bad joke and taken it back into a secretive, corrupt Department of decades ago.

Anonymous said...

I doubt you'll get much support from City Council on this one. They consider their email accounts private.

Anonymous said...

They are not private.

Business conducted by them is on our behalf. They work for us. It belongs to us. All of it.

Elected officials and other City employees are not immune from following laws (regardless of current activity).