When Chuck Reed was elected Mayor of San Jose, California, three years ago, one of his promises was to work towards more government openness in the community by taking measures to ensure easy access to all kinds of public records, including those that would let the general public better understand the decision making motives of all elected or appointed government officials. It’s interesting to have a look at the situation with the disclosure of the public records held by the city government now, when the three year’s of Reed in the office have elapsed.

Bob Brownstein, a member of San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force, believes the mayor changed his position concerning openness of government as compared to what he would promise during his election campaign, even if the latter claims the authorities did much to expand the scope to which the public records might be inspected by individual citizens and public activist groups representatives.

But there seems to exist an evident gap between what’s said and what’s being done. Really, when reporters of San Jose Mercury News and some other local newspapers requested to inspect some recent messages received or sent through their personal phones or e-mail accounts of the city council members in course of them performing their duties during the city council hearings, the matter was directed first to the city attorneys who recommended then that the request should not be honored because, as they believe, there are reasons to fear that such disclosure could result in breaking privacy of city council members.

But is there still arguing that electronic records like e-mails and text messages created in the process of elected officials doing public business do not belong to the domain of public records only because they were created by them using personal communication devices? If we do a quick background check to see how this issue is being interpreted in other cities, say Mountain View or San Francisco, we’ll see that such messages are regarded as the records containing public information and normally they are available for public inspection in other cities with no questions asked. To be just, the mayor expressed willingness to disclose his own private messages, if requested.