Coun. Brian Swanson believes he should be allowed to use his own email address and phone number when conducting municipal business, even though a report from the provincial privacy commissioner says otherwise.
“For contacting me as an individual councillor I believe I have the right to be contacted on my personal email by any citizen who wishes to do so. I feel citizens would feel better about that,” Swanson said during the July 8 regular council meeting.
Swanson pointed out a citizen had concerns about the shape of Moose Jaw’s roads and contacted him using his personal email. He thought citizens should be able to reach him without the digital conversation being recorded on the City of Moose Jaw’s computer servers.
“I don’t think there are any grey lines. If somebody contacts us for city business, it’s city business,” said Coun. Dawn Luhning in disagreement.
Luhning explained that she has been the subject of freedom of information (FOI) requests during the last three years. She acknowledged she has also been guilty of not performing city business through city servers but has developed habits to change that.
“I’m of the belief we should all be under the same scrutiny … ,” she added. “It’s a fine line and I know that some of the other industries are doing the exact same thing.”
Background
The issue of using personal or municipal email addresses arose after city council received a response from the Office of the Saskatchewan Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC), which had reviewed an FOI request made to the city clerk’s office on Aug. 29, 2018.
According to city clerk Myron Gulka-Tiechko, his office searched for records about an in-camera briefing about the Moose Jaw Cultural Centre that two councillors discussed in emails. However, his office had to work with the applicant to narrow down the request since more than 25,000 emails met the initial search criteria. The request also included information about a city councillor’s email communications.
However, the applicant was dissatisfied with the records provided and took exception to the number of redactions, believing a full disclosure of records had not occurred. The applicant then asked the OIPC to review the request.
The OIPC determined the city clerk’s office had made a reasonable search for the records, although some redactions were unjustified, according to its review. The privacy commissioner recommended that city hall release all withheld records to the applicant, including financial statements of the third party.
Two other major recommendations were that the municipality set up email accounts for its councillors to use when conducting city business to ensure the security and retention of these records, and that a policy be developed and implemented to discourage the use of personal email accounts for official business to ensure information is appropriately safeguarded and records retained.
“City administration is committed to continuous improvement and promoting the implementation of best practices," Gulka-Tiechko said.
“Administration accepts the criticism that we were overly cautious on exempting from release certain third-party financial information,” he added, “as well as names of participants in a meeting and at least one email address that was publicly available.”
Council later voted unanimously to respond to the OIPC report saying it agreed with the three recommendations in the review report.
Council also voted 6-1 to rescind a resolution that allowed the contact email for each councillor on the city website to be at the discretion of that councillor. Swanson was opposed.
The next regular meeting is July 22.
