Town of Stevensville officials met as a Committee of the Whole last week to discuss the town’s email and website administration policy. Consideration of the town’s policy arose after Mayor Brandon Dewey accessed and made public emails between Councilors Robin Holcomb and Bob Michalson and the town’s attorney, Brian West.
Dewey notified the council members that he was going to look into the email records to see if there was any evidence of efforts aimed at removing him from office. He made copies of some of the emails and made them public.
Michalson attempted to file a complaint with the town’s attorney but was told that the emails were accessible public records and there is no legal avenue for filing a complaint over the mayor’s actions. He suggested that they could respond in the media to the mayor’s actions. In a subsequent email to Holcomb, Michalson wrote that they could still make the mayor’s life “miserable.”
Subsequently, Mayor Dewey placed adoption of a policy governing email access on the Council’s agenda for the April 9 meeting with a proposed draft of a policy, but the Council refused to consider it and instead opted to discuss it at a Committee of the Whole meeting on April 16.
For the April 16 meeting, the council was provided with Missoula and Hamilton email communication policies as samples for discussing a Stevensville policy.
At the meeting, Michalson said that he and Councilor Raymond Smith were in agreement that they liked the Missoula policy better than the Hamilton policy for a number or reasons.
“First, it seems to have more security measures in place,” said Michalson. He said maybe the Hamilton one could be melded in.
Town Attorney Brian West said that it was not an either/or situation, but one more of using these policies to inform the council’s formation of a policy. He noted that Hamilton was more akin to Stevensville in size, “but Missoula has its own dedicated IT department and a much more fleshed out policy.”
Smith raised the issue of records retention and said that the town could have the best policy, “but if we don’t have the best server saving that data, it’s kind of a moot point.”
West noted that the policy must meet state requirements for retention and that Mayor Dewey was the best person to relate the status of the current system.
Dewey said that the Town was transitioning between systems. He said the current system was state of the art in 2011 but things have changed in the industry. He said the system had no automatic back-up, no automatic archive, and that web based info is stored off-site. He said there was no retention policy. Dewey said the town can send and store whatever amount it wants. “But we can’t track it.” He said the plan is to transfer onto a Google system, at a cost of $5 to $10 per month/per user.
“It will cost us more but is accounted for in the coming budget,” Dewey said. “It will automatically capture anything that crosses the server and allow a system of inquiry and retrieval.”
Dewey noted that the Missoula policy that they expressed a preference for was the same one he submitted at the previous council meeting with only a few changes to make it fit Stevensville a little better.
Former mayor Gene Mim Mack said that three years to five years was the normal time for retention of records. He said that the email policy for employees was “pretty well spelled out,” but noted that elected officials like the mayor are not employees and there is no policy dealing with elected officials’ access to emails. He said it could be done, but the council would be treading new ground.
Smith said, “The issue I see is that it was just done [email access by the mayor] not following procedure.” He said the mayor was an employee before transferring to mayor and so he should have known about that policy and been even more careful.
Dewey said, “To be clear, there was no policy or procedure in place for the mayor to access other elected officials’ emails. There was a policy for employees but not for the mayor, or any other elected official for that matter, so it isn’t fair to say that the policy and procedure wasn’t followed when it didn’t exist.”
Attorney West said, “I’m going to go one step further. When the issue first came up when this policy was first discussed it was never really adopted. The employee policy needs to be adopted. You have a hole in the policy.”
Victoria Howell, editor of the Bitterroot Star, said that for some reason Councilor Smith didn’t seem to understand that the mayor was not a member of the public.
“He was not the mayor when he did that,” said Smith. He said, “What I’m saying is that as elected officials we also have an obligation when we want information to follow proper protocol and procedure to make sure that nobody can come back and say we did something wrong. That’s why I’m here. The fact of the matter is the emails were accessed. It’s public information. We need to solve it so that next time it doesn’t happen. He didn’t go to the clerk.”
“He doesn’t have to,” said Howell.
“He should,” said Smith. “As the executive, you have to take that first step to ensure that you are on solid footing and not in the gray area to where you are in the situations that we are having. These conversations are kind of moot. It’s already out there.
“I received an email from the mayor saying that he’s going to seize these emails. I read my book and see that I should have a proper response time, correct. I receive this email and then look on the news and see him standing there with these emails. So, where is my response time?”
Town resident Loey Knapp said, “You need to distinguish between the public and the mayor. You don’t have a policy for elected officials, so the mayor was completely within his rights because you don’t have a policy. However, you are now trying to establish a policy. So there can’t be any retribution for what happened before.”
“I get a pay check and I serve as a public official, so I consider myself both, “said Smith, “and that’s why we have to walk that difficult line. We are scrutinized greater than the general public.”
Howell said, “Officials have no right of privacy, but employees do. Employees have more protection.”
Dewey noted that in the Missoula policy under consideration, it is explained that when it refers to employee, it means any person who is using that system so it could be a public official.
Councilor Holcomb agreed, reading from the document, “employees, elected officials and business associates who use the system must follow protocols of system for obtaining information.”
Michalson also expressed agreement.
Mim Mack noted that the Missoula policy is a communication policy and does not address any access issues. It doesn’t lay out how elected officials access public records. He said usually the administrator of a system is understood to be able to access it at any time for any reason.
He said the Council gave the mayor that power.
“Now you are talking about any public official access to email,” he said. He said creating a separate policy for public officials was doable.
West said it would be beneficial if the Mayor could summarize the current system in detail and how the new structure would look. He said they need to look at the amount of information they were considering for back-up, but he didn’t think it could be much. He suggested talking about “classes of parties using the system” in the draft. He said one thing attorneys agree on is that emails are a public record and accessible by the public.
“But sometimes content in those emails may not be disclosable,” said West. “So this policy should reflect when there may need to be legal review so you don’t have to call an attorney on every request.”
Mim Mack urged them not to “blur the lines.” He said they should let the executive produce the policy and put it forward for the council to review. He said the mayor can then run it by the legal counsel for review and the bring it to council. He cautioned them about entering anything about elected officials in their employee policy.
Dewey said that he would move forward with a review and try to put it on the calendar for May 21.
Smith said there was no conspiracy in the emails. “It’s all out there,” he said. “It’s been addressed and it’s time to move on and not come back here again.”
Town resident Michael Sharkey said from the audience that he was still troubled. He said that he requested emails from all the councilors but only got emails from three of four councilors.
“If Michalson hasn’t deleted his emails we should get copies of them,” said Sharkey. “That’s something that needs to be answered. Why weren’t they delivered?”
Michalson said, “Every email was there that day. I don’t know why the clerk didn’t release them.”
Holcomb pointed out that the only agenda item was discussion of an email and website administration policy, so they couldn’t discuss anything else. The meeting was then adjourned.
The next day, the Bitterroot Star filed a Freedom of Information request at the town hall for all email records of all council members from January 1 through April 17, 2018. A copy of the request was sent to attorney West. The records were received by the Star within a couple of days. In his reply to the Star, West noted that currently the only people authorized to access emails on the town server are the mayor and the police chief.