What�s more important, maintaining appearances at City Hall or the public�s right to know?

After disabled rights activist Eileen Feldman read a letter in the Journal from the city�s public health director disparaging Feldman�s claims � truthful ones � that the Armory was not accessible, she wanted to know how that letter was written and which officials were involved. After Human Rights Commission chair Barry Rafkind saw an HRC meeting � a meeting in which he planned to discuss that letter � canceled at the last minute, he wanted to know how long officials had been discussing the cancellation, which was based on the HRC�s lack of approved members.

So they filed a public information request for e-mails sent between several people at City Hall, e-mail chains that discuss Feldman�s claims and the city�s response and chains that examine applications for HRC members. Health Director Paulette Renault-Caragianes was in those chains, as was current mayoral spokesman Jackie Rossetti and then-mayoral spokesman Tom Champion. So were city attorneys Frank Wright and David Shapiro, as well as mayoral Chief of Staff Janice Delory and Mayor Joe Curtatone himself.

City officials have released some of those e-mails, but most are heavily redacted, with even subject lines and signatures entirely black in some cases. When ordered by the state Division of Records to release the unredacted e-mails or better justify why they are redacted, city attorneys continued to assert that public records exemptions for attorney-client privilege and policy development, among other allowable exceptions, excuse the redactions.

Those exemptions exist for a reason � sometimes the release of information, like a commission applicant�s medical history, will cause undue harm. But the standard is to release information, not to look for ways to avoid its release. And undue harm does not apply to embarrassing e-mails from public servants.

What the city has released is embarrassing enough for Champion, who writes how he wants to "pick a fight" with Feldman through the Journal. But it�s telling that Champion, who resigned his position at the end of 2012, well after the Armory brouhaha and well before this e-mail release, seems to be the only person whose e-mails are released at length.

Though Champion�s e-mails frequently copy Wright and Shapiro, they apparently do not fall under the attorney-client privilege exemption, while e-mails from Curtatone and Delory do and are blacked out entirely. And more to the point, why were Curtatone, Champion and other officials using attorneys to craft a letter to a newspaper? How does writing a letter justify the exemption of attorney-client privilege?

Even more troubling is the justification for not revealing how officials chose new members of the HRC. Disclosing that "would have a chilling effect on the ability of government officials to discuss possible recruitment or staffing of a city board or commission," according to city attorneys� letter to the DOR. In other words, the public has no right to know how a public board made up of citizens is filled, because it might make the public servants who do the appointing uncomfortable. Who exactly is being served by this logic?

"We pride ourselves that we are the most transparent administration in the city�s history," Curtatone told the Journal this week, while mostly deferring to the attorneys he employs as to why he�s not being transparent in this case. That�s a statement with a loophole you could drive a truck through. However Curtatone�s City Hall compares to prior administrations, it is not being as transparent as the citizens of Somerville deserve. By pushing back on releasing public documents, it looks like the mayor and other officials have something to hide. Releasing the e-mails might embarrass more than just long-gone employees, but maintaining public servants� public image is not in the public interest. If Curtatone does want to serve the people who pay his salary, he�ll order the e-mails released. Unredacted.