A San Jose environmental activist Ted Smith filed a lawsuit against the city government and its mayor from behalf of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the environment protection organization that he found himself. Mr. Smith claims the city government, and also the San Jose Redevelopment agency have violated the provisions of the California Public Records Act by refusing to disclose city business related e-mail and text messages from cell phones and computers of the city’s officials he requested earlier in June.

Commenting upon the lawsuit, the activist’s attorney noted that at this time when much of business communication is performed through computers and cell phones, the public has the right to know how the business is conducted and decisions made, if it is a public business funded by taxpayers’ dollars. The fact such communication is being done through privately owned means of electronic communications doesn’t mean it is exempt from disclosure. It doesn’t matter whether the public records are created through private or business channels, i.e.

where they reside. It is the nature of a record that matters and not the place it is stored at. What’s interesting about this lawsuit is that it has been filed almost immediately after the approval by the San Jose city council of the city mayor’s initiative proposing to write sort of a policy to provide that the information contained in business text messages and e-mails should become a matter of public records and therefore be available for free inspection by public activists. Earlier this year the San Jose City Attorney told the opinion of his office was that if records are stored exclusively on someone’s privately owned electronic communication device like mobile phone then the city cannot produce them. Even if it’s clear the city government doesn’t control access and storage of such records, the city mayor still supports the idea of developing provisions ordering that private e-mails and text messages going though mobile devices of city officials must be entitled for disclosure, if they have to do with city business, which must automatically make them public records. Meanwhile, the mayor announced in public his personal willingness to disclose contents of his own electronic communications, if asked for.