Can Asheville City Councilman Kelly Miller legally use his campaign e-mail as his contact for official city business? If you go to www.ashevillenc.gov and check out the contact information for individual City Council members, you’ll see their short bios, photos and a contact e-mail.
Miller lists his e-mail as kellyforcouncil@gmail.com. His fellow council members also list personal email addresses: Carl Mumpower lists drmumpower@aol.com, for example, and Robin Cape uses robincape@gmail.com. Some also list personal Web sites.
I’m fairly certain that election allow doesn’t allow a candidate to use government funds or facilities for electioneering purposes. Is Miller’s use of kellyforcouncil@gmail.com as his official contact email address on the city government’s Web site a clear-cut case of electioneering and thus, improper? I’m not attorney, so I can’t answer. What do you think?
5 Comments
also, anyone who works for the Asheville Chamber of Commercial Development should NOT be able to serve on City Council. Can you say WHORE?
That doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s just an e-mail address. It’s like a phone number.
Why doesn’t the city automatically give council members official e-mail addresses and put them on the city’s Web site?
Absolutely inappropriate. However, the issue is more than that it references a campaign website. It would mean that official biz would end up being conducted from a private email.
Shades of Sarah Palin using her yahoo account for state biz here.
Yes. This is clearly a case of electioneering on the part of Miller.
By publishing this email on the city’s website, he is campaigning with taxpayer funds.
His email should read: Imapaidpublicofficial@gmail.com