When you Sunshine emails from or to the St. Louis City Board of Alders President or Alders, make sure to request emails from the personal accounts that they use for public business.
Board President Megan Green uses megan.ellyia@gmail.com, which she’s been using for campaign purposes since she was 15th Ward Alder, as well as greenm@stlouis-mo.gov and boa-president@stlouis-mo.gov.
2nd Ward Alder Tom Oldenburg uses thomas.oldenburg676@gmail.com as well as oldenburgt@stlouis-mo.gov. I suppose we’re supposed to be grateful that he doesn’t officially use his US Bank workplace email account for Board business.
6th Ward Alder Daniela Velazquez uses dv@danielavelazquez.com, connected to her campaign website, as well as velazquezd@stlouis-mo.gov
13th Ward Alder Pam Boyd uses boydstuff@aol.com, connected to her campaign website, as well as boydp@stlouis-mo.gov
We know this because of the Calendar Letters sent out by Tina Johnson, Executive Secretary to the Board. The Calendar Letter is an email sent out when there are changes to the BOA’s schedule- added or canceled meeting, added or deleted bill or resolution on a meeting agenda, etc. These notices go to Alders, Alder staff, reporters, lobbyists, etc. Some weeks there’s just one Calendar Letter. Some days there are more than one.
These emails include email addresses and, usually, names attached to owners, for everyone batched into a mailing. The list is long and gets split into batches.
Green, Oldenburg, Velazquez, Boyd have multiple email addresses based on review of four weeks’ worth of Calendar Letters. There could be more.
There used to be more. This is a follow up to my October 2, 2024, blog post on the same subject.
Use of personal email accounts should be banned at the Board. It’s a Transparency Fail. Those emails are public records that require preservation and public access. Who is preserving and providing public access to their personal email accounts?
The Great State of St. Louis 