Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump visited the Carrier plant in Indianapolis in November 2016 to announce their deal to prevent some jobs from outsourcing. (WFIU/WTIU News)
More than a 1,000 pages of emails and documents from the office of then-Gov. Mike Pence have been published online for public viewing, followinga series of public records requestsby the Citizens Action Coalition
Last month a Marion County Superior Court Judge ruled the Office of the Governor had violated the state’s Access to Public Records Act andhad to turn over emails concerning a dealmade between state officials, then President-elect Donald Trump and manufacturing company Carrier.
Citizens Action Coalition executive director Kerwin Olson says he and his team are still reading through the emails.
“There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot related to the actual Carrier deal and any of those negotiations or terms offered by the state,” says Olson. “But we’re still reviewing the email to see exactly what’s in there.”
So far he’s been interested about the portions of some of the documents that have been removed.
“We’re also puzzled by some redactions that we found that we’re not really clear on what those redactions are and why that information was redacted, but we do intend to follow up with the governor’s office,” says Olson.
The CAC initially made a total of four records requests, but those were condensed down to two.
“Well the first request would have been related to specifically communications from then-governor and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, then President-elect Donald Trump, and also the CEO of United Technology who own Carrier,” says Olson. “So those were specific to those senders and recipients. This one [the second request] was more generic basically asking for any member of the governor’s staff or somebody working on behalf of then-Governor Pence.”
He says the first batch of messages fulfills the second request, but he’s unsure about the first request.
“This record request was labeled response to record request two,” says Olson. “So it’s not clear to us either if we’re still going to be receiving more emails.”
While he is still reading through the pages released, Olson says he thought it important to go ahead and publically publish everything so far.
“These are documents conducted by employees or agents of the State of Indiana that are public records that clearly the media and the public have a significant interest in seeing what we received,” he says. “So this is in the public interest to provide this information for the public, they can view the information themselves and decide what is and what isn’t important.”
The loss of hundreds of Carrier jobs to Mexico was a key discussion point as the 2016 presidential campaign wound to a close, and thestate eventually offered tax incentivesto save some – but not nearly all – of the jobs.
