Mayor Mike Duggan
Hillary Clinton got plenty grief -- and will probably continue to during her presidential campaign -- for using personal email instead of her official one while she was secretary of state.
Now, Joe Guillen of the Detroit Free Press writes that Detroit officials, including Mayor Mike Duggan, sometimes use private e-mail for public business — a practice that concerns open records experts.
Duggan explained his tolerance for city employees using private e-mail accounts for official business after the Free Press obtained records through the Freedom of Information Act showing Melvin Butch Hollowell, the city’s top lawyer, using both his Gmail account and city-issued e-mail account to communicate with a Detroit International Bridge Co. executive during negotiations for the pending Riverside Park land swap.
The city’s e-mail policy prohibits workers from sending, receiving or forwarding “confidential or sensitive City of Detroit data and information through non-city of Detroit e-mail accounts.” The policy, dated March 2013, specifically lists Gmail as an example of a non-city account.
But Hollowell said the Gmail messages, including one that contained a draft of a contract with the bridge company, did not violate the city’s policy because they were not sensitive or confidential.
Duggan agreed that Hollowell’s Gmail messages were acceptable. (The Free Press requested interviews with Duggan, Hollowell and Chief Information Officer Beth Niblock to discuss the city’s e-mail policy. The mayor’s office asked for all questions in writing and provided written answers from the three officials.)
“If a city employee is authorized to communicate on a subject, and that communication does not involve sensitive or confidential data or information, that employee is encouraged to use all of his/her social media apps, lists and contacts, both personal and city, to engage the public,” Duggan wrote, adding that he, too, uses personal e-mail when it is convenient and appropriate.
“I use the city e-mail system any time I transmit sensitive or confidential city data or information,” Duggan wrote. “When I am not transmitting such data, I use whichever form of electronic communication is most convenient or effective in that instance, including personal e-mail. I comply at all times with state law and city policy.”
