A little tip to anybody who ever communicates with government officials via email… all your private communications are available via a public information request, so you better be on your best behavior. Take for example initiative profiteer Tim Eyman’s embarrassingly snotty tone in an email to Lori Anderson of the Public Disclosure Commission:
Subject: You were specifically instructed
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 16:39:57 -0800
From: “Tim Eyman”
To: “Lori Anderson”
CC: “Susan Harris”Ms. Anderson, as you can see from the email below, you were specifically instructed to communicate with Mike Fagan and we would handle the situation with Karla Grogan. You specifically violated this specific instruction by calling Karla Grogan today. They charge us for your conversations with them. If you weren’t told to talk with them, that’d be one thing, but you were specifically instructed to not communicate directly with her.
You just cost us a lot of money because you decided to ignore specific instructions from me.
What do you have to say about it?
Regards, Tim Eyman, ph: 425-493-9127, email: insignia@greekwatch.com
I’ll tell you what I have to say about it, Tim: eat me.
The PDC charges us taxpayers for their time, so if the quickest and best way for Lori to do her job is to speak directly to your accountant, then I say too damn bad for you. That’s just a cost of doing business.
I’ve been known to criticize the PDC for their lax enforcement attitude towards Timmy’s many transgressions. But as somebody who has actually filed PDC reports myself, I have to say that their customer service to filers is outstanding. They bend over backwards to help people like me and Tim file our reports accurately and on time, and have always been polite, courteous and prompt.
Tim needs to check his attitude at the door.
(Oh… and why do I have a copy of this email? I’ll get to that later.)