County vows to curb lewd e-mails

Kootenai County officials are trying to determine the scope of employee e-mail abuse in the wake of revelations that sexually explicit e-mails were exchanged by employees in the prosecutor’s office and the Sheriff’s Department.

A full-scale investigation of the county’s nearly 700 employees is impossible and would grind the county to halt, county officials said Thursday. But they vowed that further abuse of county e-mail would not be tolerated.

“We can’t go back realistically and pull every single employee’s e-mails and computer usage,” County Attorney Erika Grubbs said. “We certainly can try to get a handle on this and make sure it never happens again, and that’s our intent.”

A “distraction” is how Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas described the public release of about two dozen sexually explicit e-mails between his employees.

Douglas insisted that the “climate is fine” in his office, despite recent allegations of sexual harassment against his No. 2 prosecutor and the release of the e-mails that included attachments with nude pictures of women, sex videos and a picture of a toddler with his genitals exposed.

Douglas said he hadn’t raised the issue with his staff Thursday, following The Spokesman-Review’s report on the e-mails. But he said he may begin random checks to monitor employee e-mails.

In contrast, Sheriff Rocky Watson, whose employees also were involved in the lewd e-mail exchanges, said he immediately clamped down on computer use and ordered personal files to be removed, including pictures of employees’ children and pets. Watson said from now on only county business is allowed on county computers and that his nearly 200 employees must go through mandatory training on appropriate use of the computers.

He also said he is reviewing the explicit e-mails released this week with the intention of disciplining anyone who violated county policy.

“I don’t want to see anything in there that’s not county business,” Watson said. “We’re going to get a handle on it.”

The publicity surrounding the release of the e-mails was an eye-opener for other government entities that took it as an opportunity to reinforce their own computer-use policies.

In Post Falls, Police Chief Cliff Hayes said his department conducts random reviews weekly of its employees’ e-mail to make sure nothing inappropriate is sent or forwarded.

“All the employees know it,” Hayes said. “The e-mail system is not intended for anything except business use.” He added, “Every employee knows they have no expectation of privacy in an e-mail system,” unless the information being e-mailed falls under an existing exemption from the state’s public records law, like those for investigatory records in a pending case.

Coeur d’Alene Deputy City Administrator Jon Ingalls sent a citywide memo to employees Thursday morning reiterating that they all must attend training and that nothing created on city-owned electronic equipment is private.

“They need to pass The Spokesman-Review test,” Ingalls said in an interview. “Would you be comfortable with everything you write and say being on the cover of The Spokesman-Review, the Coeur d’Alene Press or KREM 2 News?”

Ingalls added that every business and government agency is likely using this as a lesson.

“I bet there isn’t hardly a senior manager today that didn’t at least dwell on it a little bit,” Ingalls said.

County commissioners met with Grubbs on Thursday morning to discuss options for ferreting out the extent of the e-mail and Internet abuse and to discuss measures to prevent future problems.

“The commissioners are incredibly dismayed and appalled by the fact there are employees using county computers to further this kind of material, and to do this on county time is extremely concerning,” Grubbs said.

The county will write a memo reminding employees of county policies, Grubbs said. The county’s legal staff has offered to conduct Internet use training in departments that are interested, she said.

The county plans to comb through explicit e-mails that are brought to its attention and notify elected officials who oversee those employees. It’s then up to those elected officials to mete out any punishment, which could range from letters in personnel files to termination.

Commissioner Katie Brodie said she couldn’t comprehend how anyone would consider sending such graphic e-mails in obvious violation of county policy, while at work.

“It’s not a novel concept,” she said. “It’s in our policy manual, it’s everywhere. What goes on in your computer is like a diary of a president. It’s public.”

Douglas said he thought it was evident to his employees that he had no tolerance for obscene e-mails and messages like the ones the county released late Tuesday.

“I think it’s clear,” Douglas said. “But I will make it clearer.”

Douglas said he would likely talk to his staff “with a memo or otherwise.”

“I plan to communicate to the staff to use good judgment when using e-mails and the county Internet and to follow the county policy which prohibits the type of transmissions that were reported yesterday,” he said.

Douglas declined to comment on the content of the e-mails or the sexually graphic attachments. He initially declined to comment on whether he would investigate employee use of e-mail, citing the ongoing independent investigation he recently ordered into allegations that Chief Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman sexually harassed female colleagues.

When pressed, Douglas said he would widen the scope of that independent investigation to examine possible violations of county policy by other employees in his office.

About 50 e-mails exchanged between Baughman and former Kootenai County victims advocate Laura Bonneville, who has alleged sexual harassment by Baughman, were released Tuesday in response to a public records request by The Spokesman-Review.

Bonneville was the recipient of several lewd e-mails, but she also sent similar e-mails to Baughman via county e-mail.

Some were forwarded from county employees in other departments, including the Sheriff’s Office. Some of the e-mails that Baughman sent to Bonneville he also copied to other employees of the prosecutor’s office.

One recipient was Kathy Adams, who recently resigned as a legal secretary in the prosecutor’s office, allegedly because of reported sexual harassment by Baughman.

Don Robinson, supervisor of Coeur d’Alene’s FBI office, first learned of the e-mail controversy through the newspaper. He said the U.S. attorney’s office may review the photo of the toddler, whose genitals are hanging over the edge of a cereal bowl, and determine whether it would meet the legal definition of child pornography.

“I will probably at least ask for an opinion on it,” Robinson said. “At this point we aren’t involved in an investigation at all. Frankly, I’ll probably speak with Mr. Douglas and see what they want to do with it.”

Several elected officials, including Clerk Dan English and Treasurer Tom Malzahn, said they thought that the county had filters to prevent employees from accessing sexual content and other prohibited material.

Yet that’s not the case. Kootenai County has Internet filters that are supposed to prevent employees from accessing adult-oriented Web sites, but Information Systems Director James Martin said the filter is on the fritz.

There is no filter or program in place that prevents county employees from exchanging explicit e-mails among themselves.

“You have to rely on the good taste, judgment and appropriate behavior of your adult employees in the county,” Grubbs said. “Most will exercise good judgment. Obviously we have a few people who didn’t, and that’s really regrettable.”