Now keep in mind, this story was broken by Mark Belling, and I have yet to see the emails Belling references (despite him breaking the story yesterday), but I am hoping they’ll be put on the intertubes soon. According to Mark Belling, an open records request he initiated regarding Jeffrey Dickert’s use of his state-provided email account to engage in campaign-related activities on the behalf of DPI Superintendent candidate Tony Evers revealed emails to Jeff Dickert’s state email account from Tony Evers, although it’s unclear from listening to Belling’s podcast on the story if Tony Evers actually used his state email account to send emails to Jeff Dickert, or if Evers sent emails from his personal email account to Dickert’s state email account.
While it remains to be seen whether Evers used his personal or state email to send the emails in question, in the emails Tony Evers allegedly asked Jeff Dickert to hold a fundraiser for him. Dickert replied via his state email account that he would hold the fundraiser for Evers, and then asked Evers about his impending endorsements. Evers also allegedly sent an email to Dickert at his state email address asking Dickert to publicize the March 4th fundraiser that was the subject of the February 27th email that originally got Dickert in trouble.
If it’s found out that Evers did in fact use his state email account to send out campaign-related emails, then I’ll just say I’m shocked these folks (Dickert and Evers) weren’t a little smarter about this. After all, it’s not as if it isn’t common knowledge that state employees – no matter whether they’re upper management or not – can’t send anything even remotely related to politics or political campaigns using state-provided email accounts. The use of any state resources, is very clearly against the rules – and possibly against the law in this case.
EDIT: Here’s a link to the emails Belling received from his open records request.
H/T to James Wigderson.
I’m interested to see Tony Evers’ response to the charge.
Is this some kind of joke? There is a network guru at the helm of the email system that already knows the answer to that question. Does the name Chuck Chvala ring a bell to anyone here??