With the Right To Know Tax, aka HB 1002, awaiting its big day in the House, many readers have already seen my first piece on private email addresses being used by members of the legislature for public business and my follow-up piece. As a result, there has been some discussion, which I’m pleased to say has been thoughtful and civil so far.
Many thanks to those who have weighed in, both private citizens and the elected. One rep, whose name I’ll withhold due to not having sought permission to quote, said the following:
“For what it is worth, I forward 100% of my Legislative email to my Gmail account. I do this because I’d much rather use Gmail to manage email, then the house email server program/app.”
Many use private emails. In some cases like mine, it is just not as obvious. I do not think it is malicious in nature to not want to use the state house email servers/app. The other valuable thing is that you get to keep the email if you don’t run or lose an election.”
So, I can’t blame decent people in the legislature for feeling that way, and those are excellent points. It inspired me to clarify my own position because I happen to very much like many members of the legislature who prefer Gmail or other private email accounts, so let it be known that I am NOT attacking any member for that reason alone. It is important to make that clear, but with that said, I want to share some data that any reader is certainly welcome to do the grunt work of verifying if desired.
While I’m not a professional statistician by any stretch of the imagination, consider my findings raw observations in which you can put your critical thinking cap on and do with what you will.
Out of the 63 rogue Rs that voted for HB1002 2/1/24, 19 of them display on their House home pages a private email address RATHER THAN a “leg.state.nh.us” address—more on the “rather than” in a moment.
The House has 24 standing committees, and the chairs of 14 of them use their own email. The vice chairs of 10 committees also do. Of the 24 aforementioned leadership people, six chairs and six vice chairs voted for HB 1002 on 2/1/24.
I have not counted the number of non-leadership Rs who voted correctly in that roll call and use private email, nor have I looked up non-leadership Democrats to count the number of private email users. Someone else certainly can, if desired, but it would be time-consuming. Again, this is not a professional report but rather an observation, so about that “rather than.”
When a rep displays a personal email RATHER THAN and instead of ‘in addition to’ a “leg.state.nh.us” address, the member of the public or the ill-intentioned agent alike do not have the opportunity to get their initial attempt at communication on record in the government server. That’s a problem when you’re “building a case,” which Judge Lynn, Attorneys Cianci, and Lehmann, and the fine gentlemen of Senate Judiciary ought to appreciate. Hence my desire to have my most recent email to the latter answered soon.
I could get long-winded here by pointing out a variety of situations as to who emailed whom and who replied to whom, using public or private emails, like the way a geneticist does a Punnett square, but I won’t. For now, I won’t. What I’d like to do next is find out if a government email account does exist for every rep, whether or not it’s preferred or even displayed somewhere in NH dot gov.
I can’t picture a law forcing reps to check their emails often or even at all. However, I would like a bill that requires each rep to display a “leg.state.nh.us” email address on their home page.
What are your thoughts? Please post them in the comments.
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Author: Julie Smith
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