Emails, Phone Calls and Sunshine

Last Monday, Mayor Ashton Hayward announced through a press release that his Chief Operations Officer had resigned. He said Eric Olson, his City Administrator, would assume her duties, which included supervision of the Pensacola Energy Services, Port of Pensacola and Pensacola International Airport.

Sitting on the mayor’s desk was letter from attorney Alistair McKenzie claiming that the Olson had threatened his client Melanie Nichols, a NAS Pensacola employee that also is president of the North Hill Preservation Association. In the letter dated July 20, the attorney said Olson had called her boss’s boss to complain that Nichols was using her federal email account and causing a problem for the city.

Mayor Hayward did not let the letter deter him from giving Olson complete control of all city operations.

Two days later, the News Journal reported that the city administrator had targeted Nichols, seeking to get her fired.

Olson refused to talk to the daily newspaper. However, he admitted on WEAR TV that he had made the call. The city administrator said he was his duty as a public servant to call NAS Pensacola.

He said on camera, “She is not permitted by federal regulations to send e-mails from her government account about unofficial business.”

Olson also said he had mandated that all city employees were not to open any emails from government accounts and were to request the person resend the request using a private email account.

Through a public record request, Inweekly obtained a copy of the city administrator’s order. The policy wasn’t established until five days after Olson called Nichols’ superiors.

From: “Eric Olson”
Subject: Email Protocol
Date: July 7, 2015 at 10:46:04 AM CDT

To: “Amy Miller”, “Brian Cooper”, “Dan Flynn” , “David Alexander III” , “Derrik Owens”, “Dick Barker Jr” , “Don Suarez” , “Edward Sisson” , “Ericka Burnett” , “Jerry Moore” < , “Latasha Buchanan” , “Lysia Bowling” , “Marcie Whitaker”, “Matt Schmitt”, “Sherry Morris”, “Steve Smith” , “Steve Wineki” , “William Weeks”
Cc: “Tamara Fountain” , “Zach Michael” , “Judith Colburn”

As a reminder – it is a violation of federal agency policies if an employee of one of those agencies uses his or her email account to conduct personal business. The clearest example in our area is when employees at area military installations use their .mil (navy.mil, dod.mil, etc.) email accounts to correspond with City employees about matters that are not for official Government business. If you receive inquiries from someone using a .mil or other federal email domain that is not related to official Government business please politely remind the sender to communicate from his or her personal account.

If you have any questions about this please get with me to discuss. Be sure to forward this reminder to your staffs as well.

Nichols told Inweekly that her bosses considered her efforts on the behalf of the North Hill Preservation Association community service. She said she had clearance from both her supervisor and the legal department.

Why does she think Olson called her bosses, instead of contacting her?

The homeowners’ association president believed she was targeted after submitting a public records request (from her home computer/e-mail) regarding a new 400-foot radio tower to be placed in the Long Hollow Storm Water Basin.

“This storm water basin has many acres of area where it could and should be expanded in accordance with the Long Hollow Storm Water Basin Analysis Report, paid for by the taxpayers, in order to meet the State’s minimum containment requirements for our pond and to hopefully prevent future flooding from destroying my neighbors’ homes and businesses,” said Nichols. “The replacement and expansion of the tower is not allowed by our City Council adopted Comprehensive Plan on file with the State of Florida.”

She said, “For daring to speak out on this, I have been viciously targeted.”

Inweekly contacted Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, about the incident. She said that Olson crossed the line when he called the boss of Melanie Nichols.

Petersen is considered an expert in Florida Sunshine laws. She was the person that Mayor Ashton Hayward and Tamara Fountain brought to Pensacola in August 2013 to train city employees on Sunshine and public record laws. The training was in response to a scathing report by the State Attorney’s Office regarding how the city was handling public record requests.

State Sen. Don Gaetz has called her “Florida’s respected guardian of open records, open meetings and open government.”

“Calling the requester’s employer is outrageous and chilling and interferes with her constitutional right of access,” said Peterson.

Did she think Olson’s order to city employee to reply to requests from government email account warranted an investigation by the State Attorney’s Office?

“Instructing employees to ignore requests coming from a federal email address is certainly worthy of a complaint, yes,” she said. “Are requests only allowed from personal email addresses? What about a state email address or a city or county?”

Peterson added, “It’s none of the city manager’s business, frankly.”

As he did with the controversy surrounding the qualifications of his COO, Mayor Hayward has been silent about Olson’s actions. However, Councilman Charles Bare isn’t happy. He wanted the city council to pass a “no confidence” vote regarding the city administrator.

Bare told the media, “We don’t have say in the administrator’s hiring or firing, but I think we definitely need to take stand on how he’s behaving.”

To add the item to the agenda for the council’s Aug. 20 meeting, Bare needs five more votes at the Agenda Review on Monday.

Getting the  five votes will be difficult:

Sherry Myers, Gerald Wingate and possibly P.C. Wu will support adding it to the agenda for discussion.

Larry Johnson, Andy Terhaar, Jewel Cannada-Wynn and Brian Spencer  support the mayor on most items.

You can contact the council members and let them know how you feel. Please don’t use government accounts or they may not ever read them:

Andy Terhaar
City Council President
District 3
(850) 393-6014
Email

Larry B. Johnson
City Council Vice President
District 4
(850) 435-1609
Email

Dr. P.C. Wu
City Council
District 1
(850) 477-5279
Email

Sherri F. Myers
City Council
District 2
(850) 484-0902
Email

Gerald Wingate
City Council
District 5
(850) 607-0185
Email

Brian Spencer
City Council
District 6
(850) 426-8314
Email

Jewel Cannada-Wynn
City Council
District 7
(850) 346-7264
Email

Charles Bare
City Council
At-Large
(850) 426-7935
Email