Sunday's editorial suggests that Gov. Mark Sanford is evading (ignoring? breaking?) state open-records laws in the questionable way he's responded to the public's requests to review his official email accounts.
After Gov. Mark Sanford's embarrassing revelations last month, his office released thousands of pages of e-mails to the public, even as critics bemoaned his seeming inability to stop talking about his Argentine love.
As much as it pains us to say, there is more yet to tell. Nearly the only thing established with certainty by the governor's admissions is that he is still keeping secrets.
First, the e-mails from his state-issued accounts, released in response to requests under state public-records laws, represent those "that relate to the performance of his official duties as the Governor of South Carolina and are not personal in nature," his lawyer writes.
The S.C. Freedom of Information Act, by contrast, defines public records as any "prepared, owned, used, in the possession of, or retained by a public body." There is no exemption for documents that are "personal in nature."
Second, records released indicate Sanford was using his personal e-mail account to hide correspondence with his staff. In March 2009, for example, the governor's spokesman e-mails a request to Sanford's mobile address to "please check your Comcast account."
"Cant right now," the governor replies two minutes later. "Send here?"
Instead of sending it to a state-issued account, the spokesman replies after another eight minutes that the matter, whatever it was, "can wait." Clearly, the governor had nearly instantaneous access to the state-issued mobile account. So why send e-mail to his Comcast account at all - or why not forward it to the public account - unless the intent was to keep its contents off of state servers and out of public view?
This behavior tests the limits of state's public-records law, and his office appears to acknowledge as much. It also released a selection of e-mails from his private account, again, that "are not personal in nature." His team sent assurances that those were the only e-mails germane to legitimate public interest, but those assurances ring hollow coming from an administration mired in scandal that has already changed elements of its story. Even Sanford's former spokesman notes on his personal blog that the governor may have opened his private account to public scrutiny.
Why is this important? Why would anyone possibly want to know more? Because the fundamental question remains unanswered, whether he abused taxpayer money in 2008 by meeting his mistress in a side trip to Argentina during an otherwise legit visit to Brazil.
It's a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: Which came first, the mistress or the mission? Did Sanford concoct a plan to meet his mistress, then request the Argentinian side trip? Or was the trip to Argentina scheduled first, and the affair an unexpected side consequence? To decide whether the governor wasted taxpayers' money on a cross-continental extramarital affair, motive matters.
Sanford has insisted the trip to Argentina was legitimate.
Other e-mails released after the revelation of the affair, however, suggest that Sanford sought a light itinerary from the outset, and that his only official colleague had difficulty contacting him once in Buenos Aires.
Polls have shown most South Carolinians believe Sanford should resign, though fewer believe he should be forcibly removed from office. If he created a South American adventure for himself and sought to cover it with a convenient "trade mission," however, Sanford has no justification for remaining governor.
Taxpayers deserve a conclusive answer. Their only hope of getting one is through the public records laws Sanford seems determined to ignore.
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