Top officials in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration used personal email accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts—a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws. Emails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts. The Jindal administration’s emails fold into a national debate over the use of personal email accounts by government officials to discuss official business. The emails in question were provided to the AP by an administration official who participated in the discussions and who asked not to be identified because he wasn’t authorized to release them. However, they weren’t among more than 3,800 documents and emails provided to the AP by the Department of Health and Hospitals in response to a request for information on discussions surrounding the health care cuts. Louisiana’s public records law states that all documents used in “the conduct, transaction or performance” of public business are considered public except in cases where there is a specific exemption. Administration officials didn’t respond directly to questions about whether they were using private email accounts to shield conversations about public business from disclosure. Read the full story here.
Today’s poll question: Do you think that government employees should ever be allowed to use personal email accounts to conduct official business?
