Mike “Big Mike” Palcic and a group calling itself the Hawaii Republican Assembly probably erred by including House Speaker Calvin Say among the recipients of a June 23 email blast with the subject, “Help Support Hawaii’s Republican Candidates for State House and Senate in 2010”. The email was addressed to Say at his state capitol office.
Say responded with an email notifying the group that House policy restricts use of its computer system to state business, and that both House policy, and state law, prohibit use of state computers for campaign communications.
I have instructed the House Clerk to block you as a sender of e-mails to our computer system if further electronic communications are received from you in violation of our House computer policy.
Palcic responded for the group by calling for “an immediate retraction”, and attacking Say’s email as “a threat to block electronic communications between the public and elected officials.”
Palcic wrote:
Any “House computer policy” your office may have adopted has no bearing, effect or jurisdiction over what the public may transmit to government officials. This should be obvious to any intelligent person or to anyone who values living in a free country.
Not so fast, Big Mike.
A State Ethic Commission memo regarding use of state email for campaign purposes generally agrees with Say’s characterization of the law.
At first glance the statute cited (Section 84-13 HRS) applies to legislators and employees, not to members of the general public. The specific case cited by the commission involved “a situation in which a state e-mail account was used to forward a message advocating the election of certain candidates for state office.” So there’s at least some basis for Palcic to feel that restricting access to the system isn’t required by statute.
However, the prohibition against using state resources for “private business purposes” would appear to give the House plenty of room to adopt policies that would prohibit businesses from sending promotional emails to state offices or bar political organizations from directly promoting election or defeat of candidates using the state email system to reach state offices and employees.
The prohibition is nonpartisan, meaning that it applies equally to all political parties.
So I think Palcic is plain wrong on this score.
By the way, Palcic’s wife, Julia Allen, has taken out nomination papers to run against Rep. Say, and both have tried unsuccessfully to unseat Say in the past.
Palcic is listed as treasurer of the Hawaii Republican Assembly. The group’s chairman is Paul E. Smith. The group registered with the Campaign Spending Commission in April 2009.
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While I think Palcic behaved badly here, I can’t agree with you that he’s “plain wrong” on the Speaker’s admonition that Palcic can be blocked from sending email with campaign content.
I think it’s fairly clear that the opinion and statute you cite are meant to prevent public officers and employees from using public resources for campaign or private business purposes. That implies affirmative actions, not passively receiving, e.g., communications for campaign and other private purposes.
Seriously, can you imagine telling someone that they may not send snail mail campaign material to a public official because it will be processed by government mail clerks and delivered by staff messengers? Isn’t there, like, a First Amendment problem with that?
Palcic could be wrong, I could be wrong, but “plain wrong”? MMMM, not so much.
You’re right that the statute won’t block Palcic from sending campaign email to state offices. It does seem to support blocking that email from entering the system. Same thing as if Long’s or Safeway or Macy’s decided to save costs by just sending blanket emails to state workers at their offices. That would be out of line, using state resources to save a bit on the promotional budget, and I think the state could legitimately block those emails.
I’m sure Big Mike wouldn’t want to see the Democratic legislature devoting its state resources to facilitating campaign communications. Hence the nonpartisan policy. Mike can always send to private email addresses. Not a problem.
And how do you distinguish similar snail mail communications? If they are substantively the same (business/campaign content) but one is delivered physically and the other electronically, what’s the difference?
If they’re the same, are you saying that someone should be able to sit in the mailroom and sort each/every/any piece of mail from Big Mike and toss it in the trash, a sort of human firewall that categorically blocks all US mail from Big Mike (or whoever), regardless of what may be inside? And who decides in each instance what is permitted and what is not?
If they’re different, how so?
Great point, Ohia. If Speaker Say gets a flyer in the mail from Abercrombie or Mufi, does he instruct the House Clerk to send a letter to those campaigns notifying them that they will be blocked from now on?
I’d love to see the list of “blocked” groups from the house clerk.
Let’s use common sense here and not parse the law. Any partisan political organization should refrain from sending blanket e-mails to government offices.
I realize “refrain” doesn’t mean “stop” but sending e-mails to legislators to support candidates or to a fundraiser is silly.
Agreed. But State action to categorically block all communication from a particular sender becauuse it might contain political content is not silly, it’s wrong.