Personal Phones, Public Business

What a crazy week it has been and we still have the rest of today and tomorrow to go.

• Monday BOCC votes to not move the ordinance forward that would have potentially avoided a Pine Ridge golf course issue with Betz Farm.
• Tuesday we talked the data leak of personal information of county employees
• Wednesday we talked about Joanna Coutu's discipline and firing recommendation from her boss, Eric Landon.
• Today we will talk Steve Howard and phone calls to staff.

Let's jump in.

A few weeks ago, I did a records request for call logs of County Administrator Steve Howard. This included call logs for his county device and his personal device. These are required to be disclosed upon request.

The county device is easy. The county downloads the statements and attaches the call record. They have access to the documents. The problem comes with the personal cell phones because the county does not have access to those.

Individuals are responsible to fulfill these requests, NOT the county. The individual is the custodian of the record.

The county device looks something like this.

The person device records are up to the individual to provide. This is how I received the ones from Howard for his personal device.

Now, the county records are easy to navigate. They are listed by date. They are also in a document that can be copied and pasted.

The ones for his personal device are not. He downloaded a spreadsheet from his provider. He then sorted it by the time the call took place. He then took screenshots of it and sent it. No call logs on any device statement are natively sorted by time. They are sorted by date. This was intentional to try to make things more difficult.

I will say... Bravo. I am petty with the best of them, but this takes the cake. By doing it this way, #1) they are not in chronological order. I have to sort them to get them in order. #2) he did not send the spreadsheet. He sent screenshots. I cannot copy and paste lines from this because it is a picture and not a document.

A few years ago, this would have required someone to type it all out and then sort, taking hours most likely.

Well... we have AI now. 2 mins in the ai software and it created an excel spreadsheet. I combined it with the county device and made one spreadsheet.

Nice try... certainly an "A" for effort.

The result.

Yellow is the county device, white/blue is the personal device.

I took out the phone numbers from all these. Technically they are public record, but I did the work to get it and put it all together, someone else can do the work if they want to know who the calls are to 😄

One thing that kept coming up is that Howard uses his personal phone as much as his county phone. Nothing wrong with that per se, so long as it is disclosed when requested, but why? These are county related calls... which is what I asked for... why so much on the personal device talking about county issues?. Why are we paying for a county device if he is just going to use the personal one anyway? Further, calls are easier to "hide" on the personal device. They do not show up on county logs, so many people do not think to ask for personal logs.

Not suggesting this is the case, but if someone wanted to delete calls, they cant delete them from county device logs. They can from their personal ones.

But bigger issue... he is calling county staff on THEIR personal devices, often from his own.

He made 358 phone calls to senior staff on their personal phones in a two month period. And there is a number that comes up another 61 times that I have not found who it belongs to yet. I assume someone on staff as well.

Think about that for a minute. He called senior staff over 300 times to their personal devices... mostly from his personal device. Again, not illegal or anything, but reckless and puts staff in a bad spot.

Staff has always been subject to public records requests, but now they are using their personal devices for county related business. All those calls are subject to disclosure and they have to keep/maintain those call logs... and turn them over if they ever leave their jobs.

How many of them know that law? Willing to bet the number is zero or close to it.

Then they have to provide those calls upon request. What is worse... they are custodian of the records, NOT the county. So this does not have to go through the county and they are individually responsible for maintaining those logs. If they don't, they are in violation of public records laws and cant have legal issues.

All because their boss decided to call them on their personal devices.

Talk about the amount of stress that can put on them.

Case in point... I did a follow up request for one of the individuals on the logs. I asked them for their personal call logs. A couple days later, the request is fulfilled and this person stated they had not responsive records.

Wait... I know they had 30 phone calls with Howard on their personal phone, why did they not acknowledge those? I asked about it after a BOCC meeting and was given a response that clearly indicated this person had no idea what the public records laws required them to provide.

Now, personal calls are not required to be disclosed. If the person only had personal calls, then they did not need to provide anything. Fine... but 30 calls with Howard are personal? He disclosed them as county related.

Nah.. not buying it.

This person is technically in violation of public records laws by not providing the information, but my target here is not the staffers.

This is a Howard issue. He is calling them on their PERSONAL devices. They answer because it is their boss. That now creates a public record that is required to be maintained by the person for up to 10 or so years depending on the conversation topic. That person is subject to records retention laws personally because Howard called them... not only now, but years down the road, even if they no longer are employed.

Had Howard never made the calls, they would have nothing they have to maintain, assuming they did not use their devices for other county business.

Further, this creates a dilemma with Howard and the staffers. Do the staffers think these calls are not public record? Do they think they need to "hide" these calls to not make their boss mad? "Will I get in trouble by Steve if I release these calls".

Things that can be avoided if he does not use their personal devices.

Absolutely reckless. These employees all have county devices... he should be using those devices and not their personal devices. He should also be using his county device and not his personal one.

One set of calls was interesting... and given the timing of the Joanna Coutu firing, puts things in a new light.

Howard is very close withe Eric Landon. He brought Landon down with him from Camden.

Howard had 158 phone calls with Landon over the 2 month period. That is far more calls than he had any other staffer. No other employee comes close. 44% of Howard's calls to staff are to Landon? Really? He talks to one person almost more than he talks to his 5 bosses (165 times).

Think about that for a minute.

2.6 calls per day for an entire month... Howard absolutely had to know Joanna was getting fired. Aside from that, how about all the development projects... how much is Howard involved in those things?

Things that make you wonder.

But it is clear to me with the recent issues... plus all the past ones... it is time for Howard to go. Let's see if the commissioners are willing to do it.... but I doubt it. They love the access that he gives them to staff. A new administrator may not be that friendly (nor should they).