Steamboat Today (Steamboat Springs):  As more cities across Colorado and the nation put the email communications of their elected officials online for the public to review for free, city council members in Steamboat Springs are still communicating online with each other in a manner that concerns government transparency advocates.

And getting a hold of this council’s city-related email communications, many of which are sent and received on their personal, non-city email accounts, is difficult, and costly.

An open records request from Steamboat Today for all of the emails council members have sent one another about council business on those personal accounts was met earlier this month with a mix of anger, surprise and claims of technical ignorance from some of the city’s elected officials.

One councilman who uses a personal email account to communicate with other council members scolded Steamboat Today for the Aug. 13 request and said it had ruined his weekend.

Another said she regularly deletes any council-related emails on her personal account.

City Attorney Dan Foote said Monday he was expecting to receive about 2,000 emails from council members from their personal accounts by the end of the week.

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