Dear Public Servants,
We hope you've heard all the recent reports about how long it's taking you to assemble former Gov. Sarah Palin's e-mails and satisfy the public records requests made by several news organizations and individuals. The requests were made more than two years ago now, and they still seem a long way from being fulfilled.
We knew tracking down all the e-mails Palin sent and received would be a chore because she seemed way fonder of technology than any other governor (nobody's requesting all of Gov. Knowles's telegrams, are they?), and she spent so much time away from Juneau. But we The Concerned figured that the entire process of gathering, reviewing, redacting and releasing the documents would take no more than six months, allowing for generous lunch and coffee breaks.
As some of you may know, Alaska law requires the state to fulfill such records requests within 10 days of their filing unless extraordinary circumstances prevent that kind of turnaround. So far, a few different attorneys general have seen fit to grant extensions, 15 of them at last count. But apparently you think you'll need even more time.
You've tried to explain the delays by saying the state lacked the software to process e-mails and conduct electronic redactions, and that it had been fooled into buying a terrible piece of archiving software to help manage documents. One staffer speaking to the press recently likened the workflow to a Rube Goldberg contraption. Given how complicated you've made the process sound, we're just glad we haven't see the word "mimeograph" anywhere in your explanations.
You've also said the staff and its office equipment weren't prepared to handle such a large request of public records, in this case amounting to more than 26,000 pages of printed e-mails. Upon first hearing that number, we felt sympathy for you. After all, that's a lot of inelegant, bureaucratic prose, not to mention a lot of text-message spelling and grammar shortcuts. One news report even noted that -- by page count anyway -- the document job you have there is like "reading 'War and Peace' 19 times."
But our sympathy has limits.
Likely 90 percent of those e-mails contain fewer than 100 words, so we The Concerned will be astounded if those 26,553 pages hold any more than 200,000 words. That's fewer than half of the 560,000-odd words in the English translation of Leo Tolstoy's weighty masterpiece. That's more like reading a Harry Potter novel -- once.
We The Concerned can sympathize with how boring sifting through the guts of government memoranda must be, but law offices large and small have to do document-herding jobs every day like the one in front of you right now. Every single day legal services firms like Crivella West (which offered to help in this case -- for free -- as it did for an earlier release of Todd Palin's public records e-mails), wrangle thousands of pages. Small private law firms even manage the job with minimal staff.
Here's how it works: One person prints all the pertinent e-mails. Another person sits down with a permanent marker and a cup of coffee and redacts sensitive or confidential material and selects e-mails that should be withheld. Then that person hands the stacks to interns or paralegals to photocopy and mail. What's more, some photocopiers even produce digital versions as they're reproducing hard copies -- so no extra step for scanning! Presto!
We know this whole thing has gotten politicized because Gov. Palin is the subject here -- and a connection to her can even politicize pond hockey -- but really, if (as some critics allege) you're engaging in delays for political purposes, you're not doing Palin any favors.
We understand some of you may not wish to give ammunition to critics of the governor you once worked for and may still be close to, but we never thought any of you -- or the administration she led -- would rather look incompetent than politically motivated.
And we're sorry to say this, but no matter how hard and sincerely you may be trying to do your jobs, you officially look incompetent now.
We're not all that worried about how competent you appear individually, but you constitute a large portion of Alaska's government. And if the governor's office and the Department of Law can't assemble and distribute a few thousand e-mails within a couple of months, they cannot hope to be taken seriously when trying to tackle much more difficult jobs, like reducing Alaska's ongoing plague of violence against women and children, ensuring the success of its higher education system, or negotiating tax rates with oil or pipeline companies.
Aside from how much all these delays may or may not be injuring Alaska's credibility or damaging the efforts of other departments, we're concerned that there won't ever be an end to the number of extensions this effort receives. And we're very concerned that someone will just get sick of waiting and decide to sue. As much as the state's already spending on resources to satisfy these requests, getting the job done in a timely fashion will be much cheaper than adding a class action lawsuit to the bill.
If you're short on staff, you could always ask for volunteers. In fact, former Republican Senate nominee Joe Miller may be willing to help out. He's a qualified attorney, isn't a political enemy of Sarah Palin that we know of, and doesn't seem to be gainfully employed right now.
But that might needlessly complicate everything. Alaska Dispatch could spare an intern if you need one; interns are great for knocking out paperwork. Plus, the project you're working on is so cool it would make someone's entire semester -- it'd sure beat rewriting all the filenames and tags in the server, pushing airplanes to the fuel pump, or giving Craig Medred his monthly Twitter seminars.
If your two new extension requests are approved, you'll have until the end of next May to hand over everything for a required 60-day final review -- and after that, then maybe the public's right to know will be satisfied. Or you could just use that extra time to prepare your 17th request for more time. Your call.
For your own sake if no one else's, just cross your fingers the new attorney general doesn't pull the plug on this cakewalk and order the job done over a rough week at the beginning of the new year.