Steamboat Today (Steamboat Springs): A records request filed by Steamboat Today seeking all emails Steamboat City Council members sent to one another about city business over the past eight months revealed a lot about the way our elected officials now communicate with one another.

The sheer volume of emails generated by the request — about 2,000 — shows council members are most definitely using their personal email accounts for city business, and while there’s nothing unlawful about that, it does create a problem when the public, or the press, seeks information.

City Attorney Dan Foote estimated it would take city staff 20 to 30 hours to sift through the council member-to-council member emails to screen out privileged information, and that process would cost the newspaper — or a member of the public, who might request the same information — $900. This is a hefty price to pay for email records, which under Colorado’s Open Records Act, are to be accessible to the public.

We don’t suspect council members are using their personal emails to conduct city business illegally. We realize email has become the preferred and most expedient method of communication, but for the sake of openness and transparency, we also believe the city should change its policies to require council members to use their city emails to communicate with one another when discussing city business.

City emails are archived on the city’s server, and under current city policy, preserved for up to three years as potential records. These emails are easier to search, and the public can be assured all emails are preserved and none are deleted.

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