What Are The Rules Around Minnesota Officials' Emails?

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Gov. Dayton addressed concerns Thursday that he uses his personal AOL email account for work, not state-issued government email.

"It's been simpler for 15 years to just be able to do it straightforward," Dayton said. "I pay the cost and there's no question about whether I'm using government property for personal or political purpose. And for 15 years no one has raised a question about it."

Dayton said he takes security measures to make sure his emails are safe, but some lawmakers say the governor should be required to use state government email.

"I've complied with state laws," Dayton said. "If people want my emails, they ask for it, and we go through that procedure."

Even though Dayton uses an AOL account that he set up a decade and a half ago, technically he's not breaking any rules.

"There is no law that I know that requires the government folks to use the usual tools that government folks are supposed to use," said Don Gemberling of the Minnesota Coalition for Government Information.

Gemberling said legally the governor doesn't have to use government email and can use whatever email he wants.

But Gemberling said the governor is required to make most of his emails public.

And he worries an AOL email account isn't public enough.

"I think it's bad practice to use a personal, private email because that raises all kinds of issues -- the biggest one being scrutiny," Gemberling said.

Gemberling said in the early '80s a lot of states, including Minnesota, passed data practices laws that required governors and the executive branch to make all government data, which now includes emails, available to the public.

But lawmakers did not include themselves in that law.

To this day, their emails are not public information in Minnesota.

"There have been a couple attempts in the last 40 years to make the legislature subject to the data practices act but not surprisingly, because they get to vote on whether or not that happens, it's never happened," Gemberling said.

At Thursday's press conference, Dayton urged lawmakers to make their emails public too.

There are exceptions to this: the governor doesn't have to share emails about an active criminal investigation or a constituent's personal information.

Gemberling said Florida is the only state that has required all branches of government to make their emails public.