E-mail subcommittee Minutes

Right to Know Law Oversight Commission
E-mail subcommittee Minutes
10 June 2009
at Legislative Office Building Room 304, Concord, NH
Draft minutes to be considered for approval at next meeting.

Present: Sen. John H. Barnes, Jr.; Rep. James Garrity; John Lassey, Esq., NHMA

Also Present: Jeffrey Meyers, Esq., Senate Legal Counsel; David Frydman, Esq., House Legal Counsel; Cordell Johnson, NHLGC

The meeting was called to order at 8:00am.

Sub-committee mission: Rep. Garrity pointed the members to the primary mission of the sub-committee, by quoting from RSA 91-A:13 Duties of the Right to Know Commission. Namely, “The commission shall study:
I. The need for disclosure requirements or guidelines for email and other electronic communication occurring between and among state, county, and local government appointed and elected officials and employees of governmental entities.
II. The need for disclosure requirements or guidelines for electronic communications with constituents of state, county, and local government appointed and elected officials and employees of governmental entities.”

Discussion was held on the topic of “When is an email a public record? When does it become a public record? Does it matter if emails are on a public official’s private email account or public account?” The subcommittee and public exchanged ideas, floated concepts and made reference to some recent cases of RTK requests for emails from individual public officials.

After thorough discussion and debate, the subcommittee agreed that it should develop some preliminary general “factors to consider” in order to assist in determining when a communication should be treated as a public record. Mr. Lassey will work on that task and will report back when he feel ready to present his initial draft to the sub-committee. At that time, another sub-committee meeting will be scheduled.

The next meeting will be held at the call of the Chair (Rep. Garrity)

The meeting was adjourned at 9:03 am.

Rep. Garrity has set up a blog for the Commission at http://nhsunshine.blogspot.com/ . The subcommittee minutes will be posted there.

Respectfully submitted,
Rep. James Garrity