Last summer, when journalists in Montana obtained copies of e-mail from the governor's office, they found a story they had never envisioned.

A former aide to Gov. Judy Martz was continuing to advise the governor by e-mail, even though he had resigned from his job in disgrace. That aide, Shane Hedges, pleaded guilty last year to negligent homicide after a drunken driving crash in which the state's House majority leader was killed. Hedges, the e-mail showed, was helping write speeches, shape policy and raise money for Gov. Judy Martz from the halfway house where he was serving his sentence.

The Associated Press reported that in one message about a speech, he wrote: "Don't let any of the staff forget that this is a strategic production. I nearly tripled the number of applause lines because it doesn't matter whether the lines deserve applause, what matters is the story saying her 30-minute address was interrupted 20 times by applause."

		"Officials just don't think that this hastily done communication can have the same [importance] that a memorandum can," says Rebecca Daugherty of the RCFP

The AP also reported finding "a handful of instances" in which members of the governor's staff used state e-mail to write or forward political fund-raising messages, which is prohibited by state law.

The case in Montana and another case in Utah are bringing to surface a debate over whether e-mail messages to and from government officials should be treated as public documents.

As public officials have turned to e-mail to streamline the workings of government, they have created a wealth of documents that reveal how government business is done.

But e-mail can present liabilities for government officials as well. As a cross between a memorandum and a phone call, the line between the right to privacy and the right to know can be hard to find. The first cases are cropping up with little case law for guidance.

"It's caused a lot of grief, because there's such a fast-paced transition to conducting all communication by e-mail instead of formal memorandum," said Rebecca Daugherty, director of the Freedom of Information Center for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Officials just don't think that this hastily done communication can have the same [importance] that a memorandum can."

She recommended that reporters specifically request e-mail when they ask for public records.

"If you don't apply the open government statutes to e-mail, then you lose public oversight of government," she said. "It's amazing to me that citizens don't make more use of open records laws to find out everything they can."

Many elected officials are learning that the public does expect full view of their e-mail. In a recent poll of 520 mayors and city council members, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that one-third of the local officials said that they had received requests for their e-mail from the press or citizen groups. More than half of the respondents reported that their e-mail was subject to public disclosure.

These requests, however, could not only spur public officials to be more cautious about their e-mail habits, but could also invite policies that restrict the public status of e-mail.

The messages in Montana were released only after lengthy negotiations. Montana, like many states, has specified that e-mail qualifies as a public document in order to sanction sending notices of public meetings electronically. But now, advisers to the governor may see the issue differently.

"The governor's chief of staff wants to seek some legislation to make e-mail more of a private document," said John Kuglin, Montana bureau chief for the AP.

In Utah, in response to a lawsuit from four news organizations, Gov. Mike Leavitt's advisers are preparing a policy that will specify which messages should be kept and which should be deleted. The Salt Lake Tribune, the Salt Lake City Weekly, KUTV and KTVX sued the governor after learning that he routinely destroyed his e-mail messages.

"We and others felt this was not good for historical reasons, for good government reasons, under plain democratic principles," said Jay Shelledy, editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. "Business leaders, constituents, legislators and officials routinely sent things we felt should be classified as public record."

Unlike many states, Utah has not passed a law that specifically places e-mail under its public records law.

Natalie Gochnour, spokeswoman for the governor, said the new policy would be released soon.

"Our major concern has been the protection of the deliberative process," she said. "E-mail is very often just a conversation."

The goal, she said, is to separate messages that legitimately reflect government business from housekeeping messages that say things like, "The meeting's at 6."

Drawing the lines between public business and private communication cost the state of Montana more than $25,000 in legal fees. After the Associated Press and Lee Newspapers requested 3,500 e-mail messages from the governor's office, state lawyers saw a need to protect the privacy of those who had sent messages to the office.

Those people ranged from tourists asking where they could see bears in Montana to constituents asking questions about medical benefits. The lawyers read every message before it was released and blacked out the names and home towns of individuals, along with information about criminal convictions, trade secrets and welfare benefits.

"To be responsible to either the right-to-know god or the privacy god, you have to look at everything," said Dal Smilie, chief legal counsel for the governor's Department of Administration.

"If you're going through thousands of messages, a pretty simple little request is staggering."

He recommended that government officials sort out which messages should be saved for the record and which should be deleted. When going through state employees' e-mail for the reporters' request, he said, lawyers found very few messages that were inappropriate. But he said that government lawyers should constantly educate employees about appropriate uses.

"You need to be as professional and businesslike with e-mail as anything else," he said. "It's not a little conversation at the water cooler. Keep in mind, it could be requested."

Rebecca Fairley Raney is a freelance writer who has written for The New York Times, Writer's Digest, The Atlantic online, Interactive Week and Red Herring magazine. To receive e-mail notification of her stories on e-government, click here.