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| Heath Haussamen |
NMPolitics - Whether personal e-mail accounts should be used for public business and whether such e-mails are public record are issues that beg for clarity. I’d accept a legislative solution or, if anyone wants to take this issue to court, a judicial solution.
Martin Esquivel is a N.M. Foundation for Open Government (FOG) Board member, a media law attorney, and a 2006 recipient of FOG’s Dixon Award for championing open government.
He’s also an elected member of the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education who uses his personal e-mail address as his APS contact.
That means Esquivel falls into the category of public officials who are using personal e-mail to conduct official business but, I asserted earlier this week, should instead use official e-mail accounts so there’s no question they’re creating records that are subject to the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act (IPRA). I talked with Esquivel about it, and he believes the situation is more complicated than that.
First off, Esquivel said he wanted to make clear that he’s not trying to hide anything by using his personal e-mail account. He said it’s “purely a matter of convenience” – he’s trying to avoid having to juggle too many accounts.
“There’s really nothing nefarious about it,” Esquivel told me. Read full column here: News New Mexico
