Landrieu, like other public servants, uses private email account to conduct city business

26th May 2015   ·   0 Comments

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Lan­drieu runs Louisiana’s biggest city with virtually no use of his official City of New Orleans email account to communicate with staff, other officials or the public, WDSU News reported last week. The station said it learned of the mayor’s use of a private email account when seeking records from the mayor.

Questions arose recently when it was learned that former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton also opted to use a private email account rather than her government email while serving as Secretary of State.

News of the mayor’s use of a Gmail account becomes public just weeks after a public-records request by WWL-TV found that former NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas had been warning Landrieu administration officials since 2011 about the current NOPD manpower crisis.

While Landrieu told WDSU last week that he’s not hiding anything, some government watchdog groups have expressed concern.

In 2015, email is one of the main ways people communicate. The WDSU I-Team reported on May 20 that Mayor Landrieu rarely sends anything from his City of New Orleans account, using instead a private, nonpublicized email address.

WDSU News asked University of New Orleans political analyst Ed Chervenak if it was surprising that the mayor was using a Gmail account.

“It is surprising,” he told WDSU. “You would expect the chief executive, as a mayor of a major urban center, to be using the government server so that all his correspondence can be recorded and be accounted for future reference.”

“It’s kind of a cat and mouse game between the public and elected officials,” Chervenak said. “The public wants to look inside and see what’s going on while the elected officials want to keep a level of distance.”

Even though his gmail address is not listed on the city’s website, the mayor’s staff says it’s his primary account. WDSU reported that the city account assigned to the mayor does seem to be working just fine; it simply isn’t often used. In a three-month period the I-Team examined from late last year, the mayor sent one outgoing message from that address.

When asked why he would use a private email account and not a city-issued email, Landrieu told WDSU, “Well, I use them all. I use private and city email. And whether they’re on a city email account or not, they’re all subject to public records request when it deals with public information.”

While that is true, good government groups like the Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana have questioned the use of private email and the purpose.

Their biggest hang-up—unlike a government email account, a private email system can be managed solely by the user. Messages can be withheld or deleted entirely. No one else is managing the records.

“It’s probably going to raise some red flags for good government groups,” Chervenak said.

Landrieu defends his use of private email and said that he would comply with any requests for public correspondence he sends from that private account.

“It’s all accessible and you have it all,” Landrieu said.

In a story several weeks ago, Nola.com reported that a top Landrieu administration officials recommended the use of private emails when discussing strategies to convince the city’s Civil Service Commission to grant NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison’s request for the creation of a NOPD deputy superintendent position that comes with a six-figure salary. Nola.com shared emails from the Landrieu administration that showed that the administration had initially sought to give the job to an unspecified City of New Orleans employee and that several members of the Landrieu administration coached Harrison on what to tell the CSC and provided the superintendent with a list of answers to “tough questions.”

Despite criticizing Clinton for the email flap, Gov. Piyush Jindal has refused to release any work-related emails from his two terms in office, citing exemptions in Louisiana’s public-records law.

“It’s always interesting when public officials are less than transparent while criticizing others for using similar strategies,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “In this culture of corruption and back room deals, we should demand that elected officials avoid even the appearance of impropriety, especially those elected officials who are always questioning other elected officials’ ethos and performance. Secrecy and a reluctance to be as transparent as possible only fuel public distrust. If you have nothing to hide, don’t do anything that would give anyone the impression that you have something to hide.

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and anytime you see something like this you have to be concerned.”

Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.

This article originally published in the May 25, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.