A clever political activist found a way to prevent Texas Governor Rick Perry from having his staff delete email after seven days. John Washburn, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based software consultant, programmed his computer to automatically send out two requests a week for all government email generated by Perry staffers, according to the Associated Press. Under Texas state law, records aren't supposed to be destroyed once somebody has asked for them.
In other words, Washburn has singlehandedly brought the electronic shredders in the Texas governor's office to a grinding halt.
As state and local governments try to find ways to circumvent the intent of open government legislation (see Pennsylvania and District of Columbia), activists are crying out and are trying to make sure that government records are not destroyed.
"The whole point of public records is to make those ongoing transactions and government policy decisions more transparent to the public. If they're gone, by definition, that's about as opaque as it gets," Washburn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
In an emailed response to the records request, one of Perry's lawyers, assistant general counsel Chelsea Thornton, urged Washburn to ask for fewer records and warned that he might get a large bill for copying and personnel time from the governor's office. Thornton misstated Texas law when she told Washburn that the state "must recoup" some of the costs associated with a records request, said Joel White, immediate past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas in the Star-Telegram.
The Texas Public Information Act, which was passed in 1973, clearly states in its preamble: "The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created. The provisions of this chapter shall be liberally construed to implement this policy."
Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody told The Associated Press on Saturday that Perry didn't initiate the e-mail policy, which was also in place under former Gov. George W. Bush.
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