Text messages to gal pal, yes; e-mail, no

By Cy Ryan

Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Gov. Jim Gibbons never used the state e-mail system to communicate with two female friends or with a Reno defense contractor, according to his staff’s response to a lawsuit seeking to examine the governor’s electronic correspondence.

The Reno Gazette-Journal has filed suit to gain access to all Gibbons’ e-mail from the first five months of the year.

The state attorney general’s office, representing Gibbons, filed its response to the newspaper’s suit Friday. It claims certain e-mail is confidential and should remain private and that there is too much e-mail to turn over to the newspaper.

District Judge Bill Maddox has set a hearing for Dec. 4 on the request.

In a response filed to the lawsuit, Gibbons’ chief of staff, Josh Hicks, said there was no record of e-mail communication between the governor and:

• Kathy Karrasch, who exchanged more than 800 text messages with the governor in March and April 2007. Gibbons said the texts were not love notes and repaid the state about $30 for texting her on his state phone.

• Leslie Durant, another woman who had been seen with the governor before he filed for divorce from his wife;

• Warren Trepp, majority owner of software firm eTreppid Technologies LLC. Federal investigators looked at the relationship between Trepp and Gibbons, who was a congressman when the software firm received a secret defense contact. Federal investigators didn’t bring any charges against either man.

During those five months, Hicks said, the governor did have e-mail contact with:

• His wife, Dawn, from whom he filed for divorce in May;

• Mike Dayton, who was the governor’s chief of staff at the time;

• Dianne Cornwall, then his deputy chief of staff, and Mendy Elliott, then director of the Business and Industry Department. The two have since switched jobs.

• Perry DiLoreto, a Reno developer. DiLoreto contributed $5,000 in August 2007 to the governor’s legal defense fund. And Gibbons reported that DiLoreto purchased two round-trip tickets for the governor to fly to South Dakota.

On Friday, the state attorney general’s office claimed some of the e-mail is not subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act.

Some e-mail between government agencies should be protected because it “permits agency decision-makers to engage in that frank exchange of opinions and recommendations necessary to the formulation of policy without being inhibited by fear of later public disclosure,” the AG argued.

State attorney Jim Spencer said e-mail between the governor, Dayton, Cornwall and Elliott “would predictably involve predecisional advice or recommendations on a host of agency policy issues, which would be protected.”

Spencer also argued that the blanket request for all the governor’s e-mail was so burdensome that gathering all the material would interfere with the function of the agency.

Spencer suggested that the judge could inspect the disputed records to determine whether they should made public. If the judge decides to do that, the state will “promptly” submit the disputed e-mail under seal to the court, he said.

Cy Ryan can be reached at (775) 687-5032 or at [email protected].