Commissioner Adkisson Speaks Openly...About the Right to Privacy

by Laura Thompson

I had an opportunity to interview Commissioner Tommy Adkisson on Thursday of last week.  He spoke about his battle to maintain his privacy, as a public official.  His bravery and willingness to stand up will benefit all public officials.  The request made by the daily newspaper in San Antonio, Texas to turn over emails from his private AOL account has turned into a case that may very well end up in the Supreme Court.  Commissioner Adkisson spoke very candidly about his position in this case and TAAN is publishing this story totally in the words of the Commissioner.

APPEALING ATTORNEY GENERAL'S RULING
"Had a hearing in front of the Travis County District court appealing the Attorney General’s ruling that I had to turn over my private information from my AOL email account.  I resisted because I gave them everything I had on my public emails.  They can get anything the county owns.  It’s theirs.  I don’t have any problem with that, I’m happy to give it to them.

ADKISSON BELIEVES IN TRANSPARENCY

I sponsored legislation when I was a member of the house of representatives to strengthen the open meetings act, so I believe in transparency and openness, but I do not believe intrusiveness and violation of my 4^th amendment private property rights and privacy rights, especially where the medium seeking those emails, has been aligned on the side of my issues and has a running attack on both me and Terri Hall.  As a result, their credibility is rather limited and that colors, in my opinion, the whole process and so I think that when the day is done, we will find that private emails...ARE private emails.  In fact, they like to talk about a whole lot of lofty red herrings about this issue and people’s right to know, I believe in it…everything I have here is totally public, but not my AOL account.  The main criteria is about transacting public business, I did not transact business with a non-elected official, on my private AOL account.  I do not transact public business with another elected official on my AOL account, so this is just a big fishing expedition, by the Express News and the Attorney General endorsing it trying to extract retribution for not supporting them in imposing toll roads and being more complicit in a huge helping of the public treasury to a special interest, basically the highway.

FIGHTING FOR HIS PRIVACY IS COSTING HIM

Most elected officials never even touch this kind of thing.  First of all it has cost me $25,000 and counting of my own personal money.  Because I’m a county commissioner, not because I’m Tommy Adkisson.  When I signed up to do this job, I implicitly accepted the responsibility for doing whatever it takes to uphold the law, as well as protect certain rights that I think are inalienable and I think there is a right to privacy in your own personal email accounts. And maybe there ought to be a special provision where somebody swears under oath basically the fundamentals associated with a search warrant and after they meet a threshold level of significance where they think they have reason to believe that I am transacting business with Terri Hall or anybody else in the world, that they can look at my AOL account, but that provision is not there, so the law is really in a state of evolution.  

And that’s why there is so much consternation.  I think that the local monopoly news paper, not they are not a monopoly of media; there is a lot of electronic media.  Thank God there is a whole variety and diversity of media sources these days, but our own monopoly newspaper is used to getting their way the minute they snap their fingers.  And the way I look at it is, they really need to examine the law more closely and be little bit more gracious and a little less extracting of retribution against whose positions do not agree with their own.

RULING ON APPEAL COMING SOON

The court will rule in the next couple of weeks, whatever the judge needs.  I thought we had a good hearing, I thought we had a good judge, but I don’t think he was prepared and therefore he didn’t rule in the beginning.  This is not just a simple area.  It’s not a matter that the public is entitled to everything that I do in my life.  And as most people in this county know, because I‘ve lived here all my life and I’ve lived a pretty full life; 43 years in government projects and civic affairs; 17 years in public office of those 43 years.  Not quite half of those years were spent in public office. 

I thought enough of open records and open government to file a bill, one of my limited bills that I chose to file, as a legislator, was regarding the subject.  I am an advocate for it and will not be run over by people who are taking their precious privilege and any right that may accrue to their being a newspaper entity to run over me, when they themselves have, I think, questionable motives.  It’s not all just public.  First of all they laid off about 135 people a couple of years ago.  I don’t think their dying, but I think the print part is probably dying and as a result it causes them to be desperate, either for flashy newspaper stories that don’t have much substance, but that create a lot of consternation and secondly dependant on a few wealthy folks who will advertise with them and who they are going to have to protect in order to continue their relationship with each other and I’m just not going to put up with it.  I’m a fighter and I think they know that and they don’t like it, but that’s just tough.  I’m just not going to be bullied around by anybody.

You don’t represent Precinct 4 and not be a fighter; because they have not always been on the winning side of life and they have not always been given the comfort of sitting back and watching the things in their world happen to their advantage just naturally.  You have to fight for what you get, so my idea is for them to respect my right of privacy, respect my intelligence, and respect my interest in transparent government; but not intrusive, abusive, violative efforts to..Really extract retribution.  This could end up in the US Supreme Court.

They resort to such statements as "this will gut the open meetings act and the open records act"; you gotta be kidding me.  There are a jillion and one documents on my computer, completely public, completely available; I would completely avail it to them, but no they choose to try to go in and extract information from my personal AOL account.  And one of the reporters’s even said they wanted to know something about my “management style”.  Is that amazing that you would have some cockamamie excuse to extract information from me about my "management style".  I just thought that was outrageous.  Unchecked power always runs into these kinds of problems.  They’re just not used to anybody saying no and the establishment and them are all together and they’re not used to being told no.  And they are very insolent that I would do this."