Rocky may have broken e-mail laws

Mayoral e-mails that surfaced in a public meeting last week have some Salt Lake City Council members wondering if Mayor Rocky Anderson broke city laws — dealing with using city e-mail for personal use and campaigning during hours of employment — amid his 2003 re-election campaign.

In e-mails distributed to the City Council last week, Anderson used his mayoral e-mail to receive and pass campaign information with his campaign coordinator, Lindsey Shorthouse.

In one e-mail the mayor used his city e-mail to discuss the style of political advertisements with a private contractor paid by the mayor's campaign. In other correspondence between Shorthouse and Anderson, the pair discussed the price of such advertising. They also discussed how to coordinate a commercial spot with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and additional campaign issues.

"What do you want to do with Mitt about where they want to shoot the commercial?" one e-mail from Shorthouse asks.

Rod Burkholz, of Bailey-Montague Graphic Design, and Anderson discuss the look of campaign advertising designed to be placed on the back of Yellow Cab taxis.

"Aura looks better, at least on the computer," Anderson wrote. "Can we see how this will actually look? We ought to get going on this, particularly with the taxi meeting this Saturday."

City Council Chairwoman Jill Remington Love — who supported Anderson's challenger Frank Pignanelli during the campaign — said the e-mails raised her eyebrows. Love instructed her staffers to see if the correspondence broke any city laws and they came back with a few sections of code that the e-mails apparently violate.

"Except for de mimimus personal use of city technology and equipment, the software and the data are to be used for bona fide purposes only," the city's information technology code reads. "It is inappropriate, under any circumstances, to use city technology and equipment for personal business."

Also city code states: "A municipal officer or employee may not engage in political campaigning . . . during hours of employment."

Love said she hopes e-mails were limited and didn't take away from the mayor's attention to city business.

"I certainly hope it wasn't excessive," she said.

Councilman Dave Buhler — who also supported Pignanelli — was also concerned about the communications and, like Love, hopes they weren't excessive.

"If he was consistently using city e-mail for campaign purposes it's a problem," Buhler said.

Anderson's spokeswoman Deeda Seed said there weren't many e-mails between Anderson's city address and the campaign.