Governmental e-mail? What?

That leads into today’s status report on the Sunshine Blogger Project.

To re-cap reports from earlier this week, blogger Tim Kelly in South Carolina learned that GOP gov. Mark Sanford’s office would need $1169.88 to produce 4 days of e-mail–an annual rate of slightly over $101,000. Based on that, another South Carolina blog, The Palmetto Scoop wondered if the governor’s office is broke.

In the state of New York, a Suitably Flip blogger has asked for four days of records from Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Not long after the governor’s office received it on February 11, they reported back to Flip that they were working on it. Then, yesterday, confusion struck:

We are in the process of searching for records that may be responsive to your request. However, in order to conduct an appropriate search, we need additional information from you. See Public Officers Law § 89(3)(a) (a FOIL request must “reasonably describe[]” the record requested). Specifically, we need you to clarify what is meant by “governmental e-mail.”

This makes Gov. Spitzer’s office the first of roughly twenty gubernatorial offices that has required clarification on this part of the request.