Coming Up: A Glimpse Of Perry’s Emails
January 8th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Thanks to that wonderful quality of the Internet that facilitates charitable donations and political contributions, Milwaukee Software Tester John Washburn raised the funds to pay most of the bill for a week’s worth of office emails from Governor Rick Perry’s staff (which he had been destroying every seven days up until they were requested).
Washburn says he raised $530 of the $611 price tag for the first batch of emails (the payment was for two of nine requests — for email sent and received from Nov. 2-5 and for headers and subject lines from emails sent and received from Nov. 20-22). Perry insists on charging $568 for staff time and overhead needed to comply with each request (a stance affirmed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott) — but because a response regarding the Nov. 20-22 request was sent late, the charge was less by law (or at least by Perry’s interpretation the law, according to Washburn):
Washburn writes: The reason for the difference in costs is that the Governor’s office failed to respond to the November 23, 2007 within ten business days as required by law. Under the Governor’s own interpretation of the Texas Public Information Act, this failure to respond means the Governor’s office has forfeited the option of presenting a itemization of charges which exceeds $40. I believe this is a misreading of the Texas PIA, but for this request I will stipulate the Governor’s construction of the statute is correct. It saves me $528 after all.
I spoke again with Washburn after he reported having sent the first payment. His attorney in Texas, Houston’s Joe Larsen, has also sent a tenth open records request after learning that Perry has a written policy for dealing with email requests. Washburn notes in his blog that Perry’s office has not responded to this last request:
The Office of the Governor claims it has a written policy which is used to review emails prior to their destruction by the electronic shredders. This tenth PIA request asked for a copy of this written policy. To date there has been no response at all to this tenth PIA request; not even a late one response [sic] as was the case for the November 23, 2007 requests.
The upshot of all this is that — unless Perry goes back to the attorney general or decides to take Washburn to court — we all may be reading Perry’s emails on Washburn’s site as of Jan. 13 (or thereabouts). The correspondence will have been composed before Washburn ever asked for it, so the emails may be worthwhile, though they will certainly be redacted.
As you may have read on Elise Hu’s excellent politics blog, Political Junkie, or in the hard-nosed reporting by Jay Root in the Fort Worth Star Telegram (or here for that matter), Washburn is a software testing engineer that once ran for Congress from Milwaukee as a Libertarian who has a healthy interest in ‘Liberty’ and an avid interest in open records. Washburn came up with the idea after reading Hu’s series, the Purge (which started out as a Texas email records retention scavenger hunt of sorts but has morphed into a Perry vs. Washburn soap opera).
The fact is, Perry’s policy of email deletion had to stop after somebody asked for the records. Washburn’s requests may have stopped many other offices from regular email deletion as officeholders and interested activists watch the Washburn/Perry fight unfold.
Washburn is encountering the abrasive attacks of Perry fans and sometimes-anonymous readers from Texas who slam him for “wasting taxpayers’ money” and being an ego-driven “loser.” He deserves a lot of credit for sticking to his principles on this, I think. Here are a couple of examples of what he has to put up with:
Good citizen activists are hard to come by, misguided losers are a dime a dozen and it is up to us to call them on it. Keep up the vigil against stupidity…
Please send me a copy of “How to be an Obnoxious Citizen.” I’m sure you have a copy or two along with “How to Waste the Countries Time and Taxes” with a forward on “How to Raise taxes”…
Who is donating toward Washburn’s efforts? After a look around the Internet, I found at least one blogger who is proud that he donated $100. You know, there are worse ways to spend your money. If you want to help get more of these emails into the sunshine, Washburn has a link for donations here.
In any case, stay tuned. We may yet get a glimpse of these ‘public’ records.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:11 am
Bravo Washburn. I’ve submitted many FOIA requests to Mr. 39% over the past 4 years, and they always had NOTHING to offer me.
Perry is a shameful elected representative, hiding every scrap of public information possible is not what any Governor should be about.
Sal “The Muckraker” Costello
http://salcostello.blogspot.com/
January 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Now that the soon to be former Harris County D A has been outed, as an undercover jerk,sending e-mails to his fund raisers and harboring racist paraphernalia,I’m sure Perry is shaking in his boots.