Gottfredson, email, public records, and legal advice

President Gottfredson must have had some bad experiences with leaked emails while he was at Irvine. I don't know anyone who has yet received a substantive email from him.

But he does read email - and apparently he's a bit sensitive even about that. When I first asked for Randy Geller's advice to Dave Hubin on public records policy, I got the email on the left. I petitioned the redactions to County DA Gardner, who ruled that while the text was exempt from disclosure under attorney-client privilege, Hubin's office had to de-redact the header info, and provide the version on the right.

Sure enough, Gottfredson is in the loop. And he will not allow the public to see the advice that UO's publicly paid General Counsel is giving UO's publicly paid administrators on how UO, a public institution, should comply with public records law.

To add a little more meta, he doesn't even want the public to know he knows what that advice is. And when he asked his assistant Dave Hubin to form a committee to look into public records policy, he even told Dave not to provide a written report. Not exactly transparent. 1/18/2013.