Palin routinely does government business from a Yahoo address to skirt public records law

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Governor Is Asked To Release E-Mails
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer

WASILLA, Alaska, Sept. 9 -- Gov. Sarah Palin is being asked by a local Republican activist to release more than 1,100 e-mails she withheld from a public records request, including 40 that were copied to her husband, Todd. Palin had claimed executive privilege for documents copied to her husband, who is not a state employee, in responding to an open records request in June made by Andrée McLeod, an activist in Anchorage. The administrative appeal filed yesterday by McLeod's attorney, Donald C. Mitchell, argued that by copying Todd Palin on sensitive state correspondence, the governor and her aides shattered the privilege rightly afforded elected officials...

Palin also routinely does government business from a Yahoo address, [e-mail], rather than her secure official state e-mail address, according to documents already made public.

"Whoops!" Palin aide Frank Bailey wrote, after addressing an e-mail to the governor's official state address. "Frank, This is not the Governor's personal account," a secretary reminded him...

Mitchell's appeal, addressed to Palin in her capacity as the decision-maker on the earlier records request, questions the wisdom of the governor and her aides shipping messages about state business between their public and private e-mail accounts "with complete and total abandon," he said.

"There's a reason the governor should be using her own official e-mail channels, because of security and encryption," the lawyer said. "She's running state business out of Yahoo?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903044.html