Here is my e-mail policy: Don’t send anything that you would not want your mom, the president of your company, and all of your customers to read.  The potential for broader dissemination than desired is too great.  Just ask the leaders of Morgan County.

Some people are calling it a courthouse gone wild in North Alabama. The scandal: eye-popping emails of half-naked women sent through Morgan County’s computer system.

…

What’s even more disturbing is who’s sending them. The sender information clearly shows the name “Jack Underwood.” He’s the county’s human resources director, the guy in charge of making sure county employees follow the rules.

With our proof in hand, we went to Underwood’s office to get answers. We took our own laptop computer to show him the evidence. While we were turning it on, the H.R. director decided he wanted us to turn off our news camera. We tried to persuade Underwood to give us his side of the story.

“Out of fairness to you, we need to get it on camera - your reaction,” we said.

“Then there is no reaction,” Underwood fired back. “I’ve got no comment.”

When our camera stopped rolling, Underwood blamed the sexually-charged e-mails on spam filter failure. So, why did he forward it? He clearly knows better. In April he told us ”Those things that are not related to our conduct of county business are just inappropriate. Period.”

Underwood’s latest punctuation, though, came Thursday afternoon when he told us “No comment.”

Underwood may have clammed up, but, the e-mail trail leads even higher. Where? Try the fifth floor of the courthouse to the highest elected official in Morgan County — John Glasscock, the commission chairman.

The e-mail chain is clear and convincing: “from” H.R. director Underwood and “to” Chairman Glasscock.

…

Glasscock forwarded the e-mail to Decatur Mayor Don Kyle.

The mayor fully cooperated with our investigation. We showed Kyle the e-mail and the accompanying photographs. Kyle said he’d seen it all before.

“It was sent to my computer,” he said. The sender: “the commission chairman”. Mayor Kyle says when he received the email and looked at it, he immediately picked up the phone and called Chairman Glasscock and told him never to send him anything like that again.

Good move Mayor Kyle.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Alabama, Ethics Scandals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.