Never underestimate the danger of the “Reply All” button. Perhaps that’s the lesson to be learned from an odd email exchange between a Yolo County blogger and an Administrative Office of the Courts executive.
According to posts on the Woodland Journal, an online, self-described “alternative source of information” about the Yolo County capital, blogger Dino Gay requested some info about plans for a new courthouse in his city’s downtown.
After several email inquiries to Kelly Quinn, the AOC’s senior manager of planning for the Office of Court Construction, allegedly went unanswered, Gay e-wrote Quinn’ boss, Lee Willoughby, to ask what was up.
The internal response goes external, after the jump:
One day later, Quinn sent an email to Willoughby that cc’d Gay. According to a copy of the email that Gay posted, it said:
Lee - do not respond to him. The Yolo Court no longer responds to him, a local blogger who mucks things up locally. I have been purposefully ignoring him.
Well, at least she was honest.
Legal Pad often wonders what the real reasons are when officials don’t return our phone calls. Usually we prefer to think, perhaps naively, that it’s simply a problem with the silent recipient’s telephone.
In fairness, Kelly Quinn has been nothing but helpful in past dealings with Legal Pad, especially in explaining the complexities of the state’s $5 billion courthouse construction project. And Gay reported Tuesday that the AOC says it’s reviewing his request for information and will send him what it can … probably by snail mail.
— Cheryl Miller
We don't know if the blogger is wasting everyone's time or not, but I have to think there might be violations of the Public Records Act in failing to respond. It's really too bad Grey Davis would not sign the bill that called for a $100 per day fine for failure to obey the PRA.
Posted by: John Walters | April 12, 2009 at 08:15 AM