stay-alert

House Bill 1074 was scheduled for a hearing in the House and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday morning.  This bill provides an exception to the Public Records Law for emails we send to our leges and others.

One can only assume that your efforts to communicate with the members of the committee have created considerable heat for Rep. Steve Pugh, R-Ponchatoula who is pushing this legislation. As such, the bill was not heard.

Under current law, public records must be kept for at least 3 years.  This legislation would allow each lege and other persons who work for state and local government to declare our emails “junk” and IMMEDIATELY DESTROY IT.

Passage of this legislation will undermine our representative form of democracy by limiting our ability to communicate with our representatives.

What’s next?

Apparently, Pugh plans to wait until the heat dies down before bringing the bill up for passage.   Politicians believe that we citizens have very short memories.

Let’s disabuse them of this notion.

If you value your right to communicate via email with your elected representatives, please remind the members of the committee to defeat HB 1074 whenever it comes up.

Here’s the link to the committee: http://house.louisiana.gov/H_Cmtes/H_CMTE_HG.asp By clicking on the member’s name you will find a link to email them.

Thank you for your help.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  Wendell Phillips.

C.B.