Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller has illegally been using private email to conduct public business, says her colleague and frequent foe Ray Carroll, who plans on submitting documents to prosecutors he says confirm his allegation.
Copies of emails from former employees of Miller show she not only conducted county business through a personal email account but also instructed her staff to do the same since 2013, Carroll said.
While using a private email address is not illegal, any document discussing government business is a public record. That means it must be made available for public review under state law.
Miller has refused to release any emails from her Yahoo account despite public records requests, stating she does not use her email for county business. The requests are mostly related to a recent complaint made by Miller to the FBI, claiming a fake news site was interfering with the operation of her office.
The Board of Supervisors recently released a finding by the Pima County Attorney’s Office stating the county would likely lose a legal challenge for Miller’s private emails and could be required to pay attorneys’ fees.
Refusing to hand over private emails with her staff in which public business is discussed would be a Class 4 felony, resulting in a fine of up to $5,000.
Miller did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Carroll’s claim.
Both Miller and Carroll are Republican members of the board.
She regularly communicated via her personal email and her personal Facebook messenger regarding county business, said Jeanne Davis, who had served as Miller’s chief of staff.
“I am not sure if she stopped this practice of using her personal email address or not following my departure from her office,” wrote Davis, who was fired by Miller in 2015.
“Often, Supervisor Miller didn’t want the County to know what her plans were so she used personal email and her personal devices to keep hidden.”
In an email to another former staffer in July 2013, Miller wrote: “I realized we communicated via the pima county email. And i am positive they are reading our emails,” documents obtained by the Star show.
She told staff members they were “going to have to change our approach,” warning the county’s information technology department “could very easily (and legally) use a keystroke recorder to get [their] password.”
Miller continued to worry about county employees spying on her in November 2014, the documents indicate.
“We also can’t save things on cmputer (sic) at work or they will be ahead of us. So we will go with this at this time ... but we have to be more secretive,” the documents show Miller wrote. “End of the day we have to be one step ahead. Max is going to be working out of office with me ... He can’t be in there ... we need the element of surprise.”
Miller has done a poor job to hide her alleged activities, says Phoenix attorney Dan Barr, a media law expert and counsel to the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona.
“There is no doubt on what is going on,” Barr said. “She clearly is conducting public business on her Yahoo account.”
