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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Ind. Law - More on bill resulting from dispute over Kokomo mayor's email list

Today the mayor of Kokomo has a letter to the editor in the Indianapolis Star, available here. Some quotes:

The Star missed a key point in describing the City of Kokomo's defense of a lawsuit asking us to provide a copy of the e-mail addresses of subscribers to the city e-newsletter. Missing from The Star's editorial was our argument that e-mail addresses should be afforded the same privacy protections as postal addresses under the Indiana Access to Public Records Act.

The city lost the case and elected not to appeal. But in ruling against us, the judge wrote that the city should seek legislation to bring e-mail addresses under the umbrella provided to physical addresses. The plaintiff, Ryan Nees, even said in the newspaper that he should not be able to obtain the private e-mail addresses, but the law allows for it and so he was testing the law. He also made his intent clear in an e-mail saying he wanted the list to send political messages (spam) to the city's subscribers.
Here is a quote from the Star editorial of Feb. 22nd:
The Kokomo teenager won his legal fight with Mayor Matt McKillip this week, securing the right to review the city's list of e-mail addresses used to distribute an electronic newsletter. Nees asked for a copy of the subscriber list in July after he became concerned that the city was using his e-mail address for political purposes. [emphasis added]
Here is Engrossed SB 205, awaiting final passage in the House. As the ILB noted in this entry from Feb. 26th, the bill is "eligible for final passage in the House this week. If it passes, it will go directly to the Governor, because the House has made no changes."

Re the proposed revisions to IC 5-14-3-3(f) in ESB 205:

The specific change relevant to the Kokomo incident would amend the existing law to read (language to be added is in bold):

However, if a public agency has created a list of names and addresses (excluding electronic mail account addresses) it must permit a person to inspect and make memoranda abstracts from the list unless access to the list is prohibited by law.
So e-mail lists are to be treated differently than other public records - the public may not even look at them.

The amendment also would require a person to disclose whether he was requesting certain information for "political purposes," defined as:

influencing the election of a candidate for federal, state, legislative, local, or school board office or the outcome of a public question or attempting to solicit a contribution to influence the election of a candidate for federal, state, legislative, local, or school board office or the outcome of a public question.
before he could, in the future, examine a number of public records. Access to these records would be prohibited to anyone with "a politcal purpose."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 28, 2006 08:39 AM
Posted to Indiana Government | Indiana Law