Easley on e-mail

Gov. Mike Easley Tuesday ordered up a review of state policy on retaining e-mail messages as it relates to compliance with the state’s open records laws. The policy apparently allowed state employees to dispose of e-mail messages they thought had no administrative or reference value. News organizations and First Amendment lawyers have been raising hell with the governor’s policy ever since it came to light last week.
His senior aide Franklin Freeman will lead a review of the policy and make a report by May 20. "Use of e-mail and other electronic forms of communication have expanded in ways that were not contemplated in 1993 during a major update of our state's public records law in which I was involved when I was Attorney General," Easley said in a news release.
The announcement the administration would rethink the e-mail policy comes about 48 hours before a speech by a veteran public information officer the governor ordered fired several weeks ago. Debbie Crane, former chief information officer at the Department of Health and Human Services, was fired because Easley’s office thought she persuaded former Secretary of Health and Human Services Carmen Hooker Odom not to talk to a reporter about the state’s failed mental health reform.
After her firing, Crane told reporters that it was Easley administration press policy to advise information officers to kill e-mail messages after they’d sent them. The Easley administration denies that, but some readers may invest more credibility in her word than Easley’s on mental health reform.
Say, you don’t think the governor’s order to review the e-mail policy had anything to do with the fact that Crane is to address news organizations and other members of the Open Government Coalition Thursday at the annual Sunshine Day observance at Elon University, do you?
Naaaaahhhhhh.