A newly elected Sumner County Commissioner says he’s shocked by the response he received from the county’s law director after requesting that the county issue him an email account on which to conduct county business.
Jeremy Mansfield was elected to the commission on Aug. 2 to represent District 11. On Aug. 7, Mansfield asked Law Director Leah Dennen via email if he could receive a county email account.
“Shouldn’t this be a requirement from an open records perspective?” Mansfield asked. “So far, I’ve only seen the commissioners not have government email accounts.”
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,” 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.”
Dennen then suggested that Mansfield create a separate email account on which to conduct county business, such as a g-mail account like other commissioners have done. She then referred him to the county’s IT director to set up a government account if he still wanted one.
“I was shocked when the law director said that,” said Mansfield. “My first thought was what are you hiding?”
Mansfield says he never understood why local county commissioners have conducted county business through private email addresses.
“I don’t want to use my personal email address for county business because I don’t want my personal address subject to an open records request,” he said. “It’s a transparency issue – obviously.”
Mansfield does want his constituents, however, to have access to his emails regarding county business. “I think it’s important for citizens if they want to see the process. If they want to see how are your leaders reaching out to other county or city leaders,” he said.
“One of the problems in Sumner County seems to be that there’s not enough communication between local entities, the cities, school system and county. I want people to be able to see that dialogue if they want.”
In a phone conversation last week, Dennen said that she advises against the county issuing an email address to county commissioners for two main reasons.
“I think everything that comes [to a county email address] can potentially be turned over,” said Dennen. “What I meant was that your constituents, your friends, family, etc., are going to email you and do they know that it’s subject to that being there for all the world to see? I don’t know that the general public knows that it’s open.”
Since being a county commissioner is a part-time position, Dennen says it makes more sense to give commissioners the right to decide what emails are subject to open records laws.
“They have to make that determination to turn over or not,” she said.
Dennen also said she’s concerned that if county commissioners are given county email addresses, they will think that that gives them the right to communicate more freely with each other – and potentially violate the state’s Open Meetings Act, or Sunshine Law.
“In an email forum they shouldn’t be discussing [county] business,” said Dennen. “Hopefully they remember that in personal email. If they are on a county email I think that’s harder to remember.”
Dennen says she thinks officials think more about what they can and can’t discuss using a personal email account versus if they were on a county-issued account.
When asked if officials can be trusted to turn over emails from their personal accounts, when requested, Dennen said that hasn’t been a problem in the past.
“I can’t think of a circumstance where we’ve asked for emails from a private email account, and they haven’t turned that over,” she said.
“The risk of the emails being used for deliberation purposes is I think much greater than the risk that somebody [withholds emails],” Dennen added.
TCOG: Explanation ‘absurd’
Tennessee Coalition for Open Government Executive Director Deborah Fisher says she’s never heard that reasoning before.
“The solution to that would be for the county law director to inform them that they can’t deliberate,” said Fisher. “I find that to be an absurd, almost painful explanation.”
Fisher said that there are many reasons why an entity should want to issue a government email account, including that those accounts are subject to state records retention laws versus a private account.
“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.
“It would be a lot easier for a county commissioner to violate the Sunshine Law with a private email account than a government account because they could hide it,” she said. “Her reasoning seems backward on that.”
Mansfield, along with District 1 County Commissioner Moe Taylor, say they were eventually given a county email address, but it’s not user-friendly or easily accessible.
After Dennen’s response, Mansfield says he contacted the county’s IT director who also advised against setting up a government email account. However, he eventually set one up for him using the sumnertn.org domain.
Mansfield says that account was shut down, however, after Taylor asked for a county email address.
Instead, Mansfield was given the email address, jmansfield11@countycommission.sumnercountytn.gov.
The address can only be accessed through webmail on a desk top computer, he said.
“There’s no logic to this,” said Mansfield. “I want to be able to respond to citizens as fast as possible and this new webmail account prohibits me from doing that.”
As a solution Mansfield bought the domain sumnercountytn.org for $9.99 a year. He says he would gladly donate that domain to the county in exchange for an email address that he can easily access.
Taylor, a District 1 commissioner currently serving his third term, said he thought having a county email address sounded like a good idea when Mansfield mentioned it to him.
“All the other county employees and elected officials have email addresses – even the school board,” he said. “So why would the county commission be any different?”
Taylor said when he requested one, he was given an address that was unusable.
Like Mansfield, Taylor has offered to pay himself for an email address that is more accessible and user-friendly.
“People expect more openness and transparency,” said Taylor. “Numerous other county commissioners have said on the county floor that they are open and transparent, but when we actually try to implement something that shows that we are, it doesn’t happen. It seems like there’s always a road block.”
