Vilsack - no friend to open records - DM Register

[Debi]

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060115/OPINION01/601150320&SearchID=73232747839131


In 1999, Gov. Tom Vilsack's office sent out a memorandum to staff members mislabeled "public information."

I say mislabeled because most of the memo was dedicated to showing state employees how they could keep information secret from the public. Erase hard-drives monthly, it warned. Don't send sensitive e-mails. Don't send documents out of the office with information that you don't intend to be made public.

"Everything that we generate from this office could ultimately be 'public information' in a given situation unless we put up a fight," the memo stated.

You're not supposed to know about that memo, obtained last year in state archives with other documents from Vilsack's first term.

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[IA_Seth]

1. Surely doesn't sound good!

This sounds pretty unethical, if not illegal. I am not familiar with political law (or whatever it would be called), but I thought that corporate law required documents to be saved, etc.

Erasing of hard drives hardly sounds like something that should be done.

[Debi]

2. I thought Howard Dean got sued during the primary regarding

his sealing six banker's boxes worth of official documents under Executive Privilege.

What bugs me most is that Vilsack ran as the 'little guy' the 'working man' in fact, when Vilsack was declared the winner in 1998 one of his son's had just gotten to the victory party from football (or some other sport) practice and was in shorts and a t-shirt. When Vilsack apologized for his son's attire someone in the crowd yelled out "He's dressed like a working man"!

Yet, Vilsack has been more of a Corporate Governor than a Working Man Governor and to see that he is active in hiding information from average citizens makes me wonder what else he's hiding.

He'll have to answer these questions come 2008, if not before.