At the Cicero Town Board’s July 8 meeting, resident Deborah Gardner questioned why the town was not able to provide her with town board members’ email correspondence when she made various FOIL requests for those emails.
“I think we might have a transparency problem in the town,” Gardner said.
Gardner said she had made a FOIL request in September 2014 for emails sent to Councilor Mike Becallo regarding former assessor Brad Brennan, but she only received one email. Gardner also FOILed for emails regarding a chamber of commerce meeting with the town board and said Councilor Mark Venesky told her, “I have nothing,” but she received a series of email forwards on the subject in error.
Last month, Gardner submitted a FOIL request for town board members’ emails concerning Becallo from April 1 to June, but Town Clerk Tracy Cosilmon relayed Venesky’s response that “I [Venesky] don’t have anything.”
“Any time in the past I have asked for emails through FOIL, I don’t get them,” Gardner said. “I think that I’m not being told the truth, and I fear this problem may only get worse with the next administration.”
“I get so many emails — I don’t save them all,” Venesky said. “There’s no intent to hide anything.”
Gardner pointed out that town officials use personal email accounts to conduct town business and called it a “lack of transparency.”
“I think that perhaps you should start not deleting your emails, because I think you probably keep more than you do [say],” she said.
After the meeting, Supervisor Jessica Zambrano said she erases emails on a weekly basis. Cosilmon said the town’s servers don’t have room to save all of the emails town officials send and receive.
Zambrano said councilors Vern Conway and Dick Cushman use their personal email accounts, but she and Venesky both use their town email addresses to conduct town business. Becallo has corresponded with the Star-Review using his personal email address.
Zambrano said she plans to copy Cosilmon on emails to the town board in case of future FOIL requests.
