Unknown e-mail survey source turns out to be Commissioner Largent

An anonymous e-mail survey to gauge county employees’ perception of county commissioners showed up in e-mail boxes at the courthouse Friday.

The anonymous request generated more questions than responses. Most wanted to know the source.

Chris Nelson, director of the county’s information technology department Monday morning sent an e-mail advising staffers the source of the survey request was unknown and any employees responding would do so “at their own risk.” She also advised any responses should not be done on county time.

Tuesday, Commissioner Michael Largent admitted he sent the survey request from his county-owned laptop computer.

Largent late Friday sent the e-mails from a newly created e-mail address that allowed him access to the surveymonkey.com web site which formats surveys. The resulting e-mail went out to all but a few county employees.

Among those not getting the survey were commissioners Greg Partch and Pat O’Neill.

“I wanted to get a sense from our employees of how I was operating. What constructive criticism I needed to hear,” Largent told the Gazette Tuesday night.

But by not attaching his name, Largent’s e-mails prompted employees to flood the county’s information technology department with questions.

“It got to be a big hulabaloo,” said Largent. “It was way more of a hulabaloo than it should have been.”

The survey instructed respondents to rate each commissioner’s communication skills, knowledge of county issues and relations with employees among several other leadership skills.

Largent said he added commissioners O’Neill and Partch to the survey for context and comparison.

Largent Tuesday said he wanted the information to improve his job performance. He said he never intended to release results of the survey to the public.

Employees in the e-mail were advised to send an e-mail to an anonymous account to receive results from the survey. A Gazette e-mail to that account did not receive a reply.

“It’s probably not proper use of county e-mail addresses,” said Commissioner Partch. “I’m really disappointed in our fellow commissioner.”

Partch said Tuesday he approached Nelson about the origin of the e-mails after hearing from several employees.

“We asked Chris to track it down because we didn’t know where it came from,” said Partch.

Partch said workers in the IT department uncovered the Internet Protocol, or IP, address from the computer on which the survey was created.

An IP address is a series of numbers and decimal points that define the address of a device that connects to an internet service.

Through an IP lookup web site, sort of a reverse directory, IT staff found the computer that created the survey was Largent’s laptop.

Largent said his decision to issue the survey anonymously was intended to let people speak freely about their bosses.

“The reason it wasn’t signed was to attempt to allow people to express their objective opinions,” he said. “It didn’t work. Lesson learned.”

Largent is running for a second term this year, but said that had nothing to do with the survey.

“My purpose in doing this survey was purely personal,” he said. “I guess what looks good at 10:30 on a Friday night looks a lot different at eight in the morning.”