by Joe Wilhelm Jr.
Staff Writer
A City Ethics Commission subcommittee met Thursday to discuss the image of text messaging during City Council meetings by both elected officials and City employees.
“Developing a policy on texting is not accusatory. We are just trying to put a policy in place to keep up with technology,” said Carla Miller, City ethics officer, via telephone at the Transparency and Open Government subcommittee meeting.
“The press will be asking for this type of information, so it’s better for us to be prepared. It’s better to anticipate the request and train people to handle the request before there is a problem,” she said.
The image of Council members with heads down and thumbs flying over the keypads of their cellphones during meetings may not promote a picture of transparency, but observers consider the deeper issue to be the preservation of public records.
Public records are defined as “all documents … made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any agency.”
Those “documents” include emails. A recent legal opinion from former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum supported treating text messages the same as emails.
“The same rules that apply to email should be considered for electronic communication including Blackberry PINs, SMS communications (text messaging), MMS communications (multimedia content) and instant messaging conducted by government agencies,” stated McCollum’s March 17, 2010, opinion.
The commission has discussed that the problem with text messaging is that there are different private service providers for elected officials and City employees.
Each person must contact his or her provider to request the messages be stored longer than normal operating procedure.
Miller informed the Ethics Commission at a previous meeting that the normal storage time for messages is three to five days before they are erased.
The subcommittee of chair Rhonda Peoples-Waters and members Mary Swart and Helen Ludwig agreed that suggesting both elected and appointed City officials turn off their cellphones during a meeting wasn’t an unfair request because the Council members have access to computers during meetings.
The computers are available to research information during discussions of issues at regular meetings and Council members can also receive emails.
“When Council members are in chambers, they have a computer screen in front of them and they have access to emails on that computer. They can do instant research, which is very helpful,” said Miller.
“Anyone can contact their councilman while they are at a meeting in Council chambers. If they use emails that way to communicate, that is an instant way to record that information,” she said.
The City has the equipment to store the emails and can make the information available upon request.
If it must contact a private provider for text messages, it must rely on the policies of the provider and the user of the cellphone, who may or may not knowingly delete messages that are public records.
The subcommittee was joined by Council member Robin Lumb, his executive Council assistant Donna Barrow and Kevin Kuzel, executive assistant to Council member Jim Love.
Lumb sat in on the meeting and admitted he is trying to learn the policies and procedures that come with his elected office.
He agreed that texting during meetings doesn’t promote transparency, but the position is “part-time” and most Council members have businesses to answer to, as well as families.
Lumb didn’t support banning phones from City meetings, but was interested in improving the image of transparency in Council chambers.
“To ban equipment, I think that’s a step that goes a little too far. Only because most people use their phones for things outside of business,” said Peoples-Waters.
“I just hope that citizens will understand that (Council members) are the people we’ve elected, so we have to trust them to some extent,” she said.
The subcommittee requested that Senior Assistant General Counsel Debra Braga draft a resolution for Council that supports making City meetings text-free and urges Council members to request that their cellphone service providers hold their messages longer than the normal procedure.
The resolution will also be reviewed by the Ethics Commission’s Legislative Subcommittee before being voted on by the full Ethics Commission.
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