Why all the secrecy?
People are scared. For the past several years, many ICCSD administrators have fallen into the habit of using scarcity as a weapon. Experienced people are being let go all of the time because of “budget cuts”. It is very easy to use that excuse to get rid of someone you view as a troublemaker. Few people want to be the next one to go no matter how egregious the issue is that they know about. In addition, many employees in the ICCSD have spouses who also work in the district. They might be willing to take a risk themselves but can’t bring themselves to endanger their spouse’s job, too. Until the culture of punishing district critics is done away with by an enlightened district leadership, ICCSD employees will need a confidential way to pass important information on to people in the community who are in a position to act on it.
Why do you anonymize the public portion of the email exchanges that you publish?
In almost all cases, the public value of an email exchange that we publish on the website is the opinion (or lack of opinion) expressed by the public official or media representative involved in the exchange. The identity of the taxpayer who initiated the exchange is almost always irrelevant. It is the question they are asking or the point that they are making that is important. Many district officials have adopted the behavior of just ignoring emails that are troubling or embarrassing for them. This usually works and the taxpayer just gives up. However, in the few cases when a taxpayer does persist in asking a district official a question over weeks or months, the repetitiveness of the question makes the questioner seem more unreasonable than the unresponsive public official. By anonymizing the public half of the exchange, it allows the reader to focus more clearly on the response (or lack of response) of the district official. Finally, it should be pointed out that the public official or media representative knows full well the identity of the taxpayer involved in any email exchange that we publish because they received the non-anonymized version of the exchange originally. The taxpayer knows this, too, and accepts it, when they submit an email exchange to us.
