By CYDNEY GILLIS
Staff Reporter

Keith Gormezano doesn’t like how the mayor uses his monthly newsletter to communicate with citizens. So he’s taken matters — or at least the mayor’s email list — into his own hands.

In January, Gormezano made a public disclosure request for the email list so he could send out a reply to last month’s Nickels Newsletter, in which the mayor touted a newly pared-down tunnel option to replace Seattle’s aging Alaska Way Viaduct.

Gormezano, a Seattle Housing Authority resident who’s active in city politics, considers the message propaganda that shouldn’t be sent on the taxpayer’s dime. The mayor’s office considers Gormezano something of a nuisance, so its public disclosure officer, Nancy Craver, sent an email to all 2,300 newsletter recipients telling them the list would be turned over. She also provided Gormezano’s name and email address if they wanted to ask him to leave them alone.

That’s when the angry email exchanges started over what’s considered illegal spam, or unsolicited commercial email, and how to stop it — an issue that could drag Gormezano into court.

He has yet to send out a counter message on the viaduct, but says 20 people have already emailed asking him to take them off the list, which people put themselves on at the mayor’s website. He sent his correspondents replies saying that taking them off the list would cost them $50 and that he accepts PayPal, the online payment service.

A few people found the proposition outrageous and reported it to the mayor’s office.

“You can’t use a public disclosure request for a commercial purpose,” says Nickels spokesman Marty McOmber. “We’re going to look into whether that crosses the line.”

Gormezano says it’s the mayor’s office that crossed the line. Craver had no right, he says, to disclose his name and both of his email addresses to the Nickels Newsletter recipients. As a result, he says, it’s the messages he’s getting from people on the list that are unsolicited email. He’s only replied to people who have written him, he says — he’s not broadcasting spam. Whether that entitles him to ask for money is an open question.

“I’m asking for the $50 for the hassle of receiving emails from them because the mayor’s office provided my email,” he says.

That was a move, he adds, that was aimed at getting people on the list to harass him. The mayor’s office could have notified newsletter recipients without sharing his personal information; then, if they had wanted his name and email addresses, they could “file a public disclosure request of their own,” he says.

It’s not Gormezano’s first time. In August, he requested newsletter email lists from both the housing authority and the mayor’s office to send out a message opposing Sybil Bailey as the mayor’s choice for a tenant seat on the SHA board. At that time, the mayor’s office did the same thing, providing his name and email address to people on the list. But this time, he says, he specifically told the public disclosure officer she did not have permission to do so.

McOmber responds that information provided in a disclosure request is public and the mayor can share it. If that’s the case, Gormezano says, then the mayor’s office should have just handed over the newsletter list to him.

“If they can’t release the names on the list without a public disclosure request, then what gives them the right to release my email to everyone on that list?” he asks. They “do not have a right to violate my privacy.”