Michael Bloomberg said goodbye to City Hall in December of 2013, but more than two years after the former mayor left public life, his work-related emails remain private.
Not a single email sent by Bloomberg during his tenure has been made available for public inspection, the Daily News has learned. The only electronic correspondence that has been cleared and processed for review at the Municipal Archive in Lower Manhattan comes from a handful of Bloomy’s top staffers, and only over the first seven months of his 12 years in office.
“It would be a huge problem for historians trying to write a history of the Bloomberg era — and it is an era in which he as mayor did so much to shape the future city,” said author Robert Caro, who relied heavily on such correspondence in crafting his widely read bios of President Lyndon Johnson and New York City planner Robert Moses.
“It’s in the informal exchanges where so much is revealed.”
Before Bloomberg and his staff left office, all nyc.gov emails to and from the mayor and all senior administration members were preserved and provided to the Law Department to ensure access for litigation purposes, said Bloomberg spokesman Marc LaVorgna.
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The city’s Law Department is in the process of reviewing and cataloging the more than 10 million emails submitted via the public servers. But that virtual mountain of digital correspondence won’t include much, if anything, from the desk of Michael Bloomberg; that’s because the city’s former chief exec frequently used his personal Bloomberg.net account to discuss city-related issues.
Data from the Bloomberg L.P. server has not been handed over for archival purposes, according to a review of available documents.
“The city sought additional emails from the prior administration, including those of former Mayor Bloomberg,” said Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci. “We have been working, and will continue to work with the prior administration, to determine which emails may be subject to preservation requirements.”
There is no law banning elected city officials from using their private addresses for work matters.
Bloomberg has contended that he obtained permission to use his private account upon taking office in 2002, when the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board ruled the mayor could donate a number of his company’s proprietary computer terminals to City Hall.
Bloomberg and several of his top aides used the terminals to transmit their correspondence regarding official business, but his spokesman maintains that they fulfilled their lawful archival obligation.
“The City Charter makes explicitly clear that outgoing administrations are required to provide records of ‘historical, cultural or other important value’ to the archives,” LaVorgna said. “We fully complied with that program and had the most aggressive and expansive records retention program in the city’s history.”
Nonetheless, good-government groups and historians are concerned that a good deal of the record will be lost to future review.
“A lot of people try to make their own history,” said historian John Manbeck, who served as the chairman of the city Archives Advisory Board for the Giuliani administration. “It seems to be getting worse.”
“It’s inexplicable that there’s so little available on the mayor,” added Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Until the emails are processed and made available, access to them can be sought by filing a request under the state Freedom of Information Law.
That process typically takes months and, without any public record, it is difficult to know what to seek. Freedom of Information requests typically require a high degree of specificity.
As for security-sensitive emails, Bloomberg says he didn’t leave much of a digital footprint. Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly generally briefed him by telephone or in person, Bloomberg has said.
Bloomberg, who nixed a run for president, is not the first mayor with archival issues.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani took heat in 2002, after he moved his records to a private nonprofit organization established by his former aides and friends. He brought the records to the Municipal Archives only after historians and government watchdogs kicked up a fuss.
At the time, Bloomberg defended his predecessor, when asked about the controversy.
“I think that anything that makes it more difficult to get information is unfortunate,” Bloomberg responded, when asked if the denial of access to his predecessor’s records would make things harder for historians. “But some of these documents are documents that the mayor has a right to have, and I am sympathetic if he would prefer that you didn’t look at them.”
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has been dogged by questions since last March about her use of a private email server. After repeatedly trying to downplay the issue, the Democratic presidential hopeful apologized for using her private email to handle government matters.
Clinton created her own homebrew email server in the basement of her family’s New York home. By contrast, Bloomberg used a pre-existing email with his Bloomberg L.P. terminal.
In January, the State Department revealed that 22 of the emails have now been classified “top secret.” Officials have been working to release approximately all 33,000 emails from the private server to the public in a piecemeal fashion to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests.
