Governor Linda Lingle office has disclosed copies of thousands of email messages sent or received by her staff over a four day period in February, ranking her among the most open and transparent of the governors surveyed by The Sunshine Blogger Project, an effort to test the effectiveness of state open records laws.
Lingle joins Charlie Crist of Florida (a Republican) and Phil Bredesen of Tennessee (a Democrat) as the only governors to agree to make office emails public without charge. In Kansas and South Carolina, requesters were asked to pay more than $1,100 before the email would be provided. And in a number of other states, including Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Michigan, the email is exempt from public disclosure.
While generally responsive, Gov. Lingle’s office refused to disclose hundreds of additional emails, instead providing a “privilege log” detailing the date, time, subject, source, and recipient of each message that was withheld.
The vast majority of cases cite “executive privilege” as the reason for non-disclosure, although the term does not appear anywhere among the exemptions allowed by law (Chapter 92F HRS). The administration has cited the same “executive privilege” in refusing to disclose certain records to the state auditor relating to the decision to exempt the Superferry from environmental review.
The email records were provided by Chief of Staff Barry Fukunaga on a compact disk with electronic files corresponding to 72 mailboxes, most representing individual members of the governor’s staff. It took one month from the initial request to receipt of the records, a very reasonable time given the complexity of the process of identifying and screening the large number of emails.
Whether intended or not, the files containing email of Lenny Klompus, Lingle’s senior communications advisor, and a couple of other key staff members could not be opened.
Most of the emails convey the complexity and tedious administrative work involved in steering state government. Most common messages involved requesting, making, confirming, and when necessary changing appointments and meetings; drafting, revising, and coordinating legislative testimony across different state departments; and fielding comments from the public, assigning responsibility for drafting replies, and then circulating the results. There are emails from people for and against the state’s purchase of Turtle Bay, passionately for and against drug testing of teachers, and similar comments on both sides of other issues.
The files also show that the governor’s office gets its share of those so-called Nigerian scam letters, purporting to have large sums of money waiting to be transferred into your waiting bank account. There are also the ubiquitous pitches regarding fixing inadequate anatomy, a few off-color jokes circulated by staff, and requests from elementary school students on the mainland for the governor’s autograph or other Hawaii mementos.
There are no “smoking guns” to be found among the thousands of office emails, although there are many interesting nuggets.
Early Monday afternoon, February 4, communications managing editor Travis Loop emailed his counterpart in Lt. Gov. Aiona’s office regarding an interview for a documentary on the North Shore Land Trust by the Anneberg Foundation.
“We thought it might be good for LG,” Loop wrote.
Just an hour later, a frustrated Loop followed up after Aiona’s office apparently turned down the interview.
Loop wrote: “I was just writing an INTERNAL email to explain why LG would pass on interview on North Shore documentary and it was tough writing that LG isn't/can't be briefed up enough to do an interview on why protecting North Shore is important and that the administration proposed purchasing Turtle Bay is one way to accomplish that goal.”
“You know that if LG ever wants to talk to Gov about a topic, they have direct lines of communication available anytime,” Loop added.
There’s a tense exchange buried in the mailbox of Andy Smith, the governor’s West Hawaii liaison, after Glenn Shiroma, writing on behalf of the Friends of Wailoa Small Boat Harbor, complained up the chain of command within the Department of Land and Natural Resources about problems trying to work with boating staff to resolve issues of repair and maintenance priorities.
Nancy Murphy, Hawaii District Manager for the Division on Boating and Ocean Recreation, fired off an angry reply.
“Please do not try to go behind my back, it does not work,” Murphy snapped at Shiroma, who was already calling the matter to the attention of the division administrator in Honolulu, accusing Big Island staff “of not responding to emails, not returning phone calls, simply acting unprofessional and childish.”
There’s an email from a Big Island attorney complaining about being treated “rather rudely and impatiently” by staff of the Tax Department.
Department officials responded almost immediately to the governor’s office.
“We now record all calls coming into our call center. If we have a date and approx. time of the phone call, we can try to find the recorded call and listen to it,” wrote deputy tax director Sandra Yahiro.
If the caller was treated rudely, Yahiro wrote, “we will immediately discuss it
with the call center employee. We do NOT tolerate rudeness to callers!”
Despite the volumes of email, there’s almost nothing from the governor herself, with perhaps one exception.
When workers removing unsafe trees and branches behind Washington Place and the governor’s mansion discovered an endangered Fairy Tern nesting in one of the trees slated for removal, they stopped and sought advice.
Washington Place director Glenn Shigeta quickly notified the governor that there were two ways to proceed. The job could be halted for the estimated three months it would take for the egg to hatch and the young bird to reach the age where it could fly, or the egg could be removed and incubated by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Shigeta recommended leaving the nest in its natural environment.
Governor Lingle took only a few hours to respond. “I agree with you, Glenn. Let the little birdie be hatched by its mother.”
[The emails disclosed by the governor’s office can be found at www.iLind.net/govmail2008]
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