For months, Hillary Clinton has been under fire for her exclusive use of a private email account to conduct government business while she was U.S. secretary of state.

Earlier this month, Gov. Sam Brownback acknowledged that he uses a private email account to communicate with staff and has done so since he was a U.S. senator.

In a survey of Lawrence-area elected officials, the Journal-World found that many use government accounts and some use personal accounts.

Lawrence Mayor Jeremy Farmer said he uses a Gmail account and was not aware that it could be a problem until recently.

“It is the same account that I had when I ran for City Commission,” Farmer said. “City staff told me, ‘We could create you an account, or you could just use the one that you have.’ That’s really what everybody else does.

“Being a new person in politics, I had no reason to think that a lawrenceks.org email address was better than a Gmail one,” Farmer said.

The concern over the use of private emails is twofold:

One, government officials who use private emails may be conducting the public’s business out of public view. Last month, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt issued an opinion that state employees’ private emails are not subject to public open records laws.

Schmidt’s opinion only addressed state employees and not local elected officials. Schmidt has recommended that the Legislature change the open records act to include the emails, and two bills have been filed.

Secondly, the private email issue has caused concern for records preservation. State Archivist Matt Veatch said he and archivists around the country are having many discussions about it. That’s because most government records must be preserved and retained for a scheduled period of time, some into perpetuity. The records include letters, correspondence and emails on government servers, Veatch said.

Counties and cities have separate records retention schedules, Veatch said. State archivists have been collecting government emails, but the private email issue just surfaced in recent months, he said. After Schmidt’s announcement that private emails are not public, there has been some confusion, Veatch said.

“At this point I don’t think we have a good answer for the use of private email and how it impacts the archives,” Veatch said. “I don’t feel like we know what is going to happen.”

Veatch said the national archivists group believes government officials should use government email accounts.

Legislators

Some Lawrence-area elected officials are working to keep their government emails separate from their personal and business email. For example, state Rep. Tom Sloan, a Lawrence Republican, said when he is doing government work or dealing with constituents, he uses his state email account. He has a separate account for fundraising.

“It is the right way to do it,” Sloan said. “It’s like I don’t commingle campaign funds and personal funds. That to me is the way government officials are supposed to act.”

Sloan said he did not believe that the Legislature would be able to address the email issue this session with the financial problems it is facing, but expected it would be on the front burner during the 2016 session.

Rep. Boog Highberger, a Lawrence Democrat, said he supported legislation to extend the open records act to cover private email. He said when he was a member of the Lawrence City Commission there was lawsuit and a request for commissioners’ email. Because he was using a private email account, he had to go through and turn over email from it.

“This stuff is already discoverable, so why not make it public?” Highberger said.

State Sen. Marci Francisco, a Lawrence Democrat, said she had a supervisor at Kansas University several years ago who advised her to get a personal email account “and that we separate our work and personal email.”

She still does that today.

“I believe that part of our responsibility is to do things transparently, and we should be using for government business the public account,” Francisco said. “It is important to keep a record of what you are doing. Let me know if you want to see my email account.”

Rep. John Wilson, a Lawrence Democrat, said he keeps multiple email accounts for his work as a legislator, his work with a nonprofit agency, his political business and his personal life. The decision to do so was not difficult, he said.

“It’s a cut-and-dried thing,” Wilson said. “If you are conducting the official state business, I don’t care what email address you are sending from. It all needs to be a matter of public record. Abundant transparency for the most part in government is a good thing for people of Kansas.”

He said he believed the email issue was a developing pattern and is disturbing because it is another way to disengage the public from the government’s business.

“This is yet another way to … make it harder for the average person to engage in lawmaking, and even if they don’t engage, at least for them to understand why decisions were made or how they were made or who is influencing them,” Wilson said.

Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, could not be reached.

County, city officials

Douglas County Commissioners Jim Flory, Mike Gaughan and Nancy Thellman said they use their county email as much as possible for county work and that transparency is an important part of government.

“I think we all are now communicating by email, and it is the normal everyday event,” Thellman said. “We all have private lives, and it’s nice to know there is an avenue for private conversations. But I do think we need to be held to a standard that there isn’t any doubt about transparency when it comes to government work.”

Farmer said public and private emails are part of an evolving conversation on technology and that it is something the City Commission needs to discuss.

“I would absolutely be open if we want to set a policy for city commissioners that we want to be above-board and have all accounts that we use be public record …” he said. “Put me down in the willing to get a city email account category.”

Commissioner Mike Amyx said he agreed with Farmer.

Commissioners Leslie Soden and Stuart Boley both use a lawrenceks.org account.

Soden said she has been a part of a couple of public records requests and thinks that using a government email account is just a better way to keep track of the public emails.

“I’m more in favor of public officials using them,” she said. “But I think it’s definitely something we should look at.”

Commissioner Matthew Herbert said he spoke to the city attorney and communications spokeswoman after he was elected about what email account to use.

Herbert said city attorney Toni Wheeler told him the city did not have a policy on private versus public email accounts and didn’t care what account the commissioner used.

But Herbert said Wheeler warned him that if he used a private account he needed to be prepared to release the email to the public upon request.

Herbert uses a Gmail account for government business but said he is careful what he writes.

“I don’t write anything that my Mom wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the newspaper,” he said.

Federal officials

U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins uses both private and public email accounts, said spokesman Tom Brandt.

That’s because “there are various rules for elected officials,” he said. “For example, she’s not allowed to use government accounts for campaign email.”

Some elected officials, often in higher positions and who may deal with national security, have clear needs for secure government accounts, Brandt said.

“It is simply a matter of national security, and private accounts or email addresses in those situations should not be used to conduct government business regarding sensitive or classified information,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts’ spokeswoman, Sarah Little, said the senator does not use email. U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran could not be reached for this story.