The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

I'd think it's pretty common. It's not necessarily "on-call" as in "waiting for you", but depending on what you do, you end up having contact with different lawyers in different areas. And in doubt, it's better to stick with someone knowing your situation.

Like, I had a few issues with the last place I rented, and during that, I entered the Mieterschutzbund, an association for tenant protection. Through this, I can get access to an hour of consulting with an expert from the association as well as one or two hours of a lawyer specializing in tenant laws. This doesn't take much longer than 1-2 days. So I guess I have a tenancy lawyer on call.

I am familiar with the system and many serious problems with it. Some people who want to fix things about government go work there. You are complaining that they think of you as an adversary, but it's clear that you are thinking of government employees as adversaries, who have been frustrating you for years, and at least sometimes you're clearly being a dick about it.

You're attributing way more malice than I think is warranted. Take a breath, friend. I've been largely calm and collected in this conversation, but you've (ironically) raised this to a higher adversarial point. I have no ill will towards you.

Funny enough, I tried to get a gov job recently. A chief data officer job in a niche group which I think I'd do a damn good job at. They denied me immediately because I don't have a degree, despite my qualifications. So yeah, I actually agree to a point that joining gov can be a way to 'fix things'... but, welp?

But even further, I have tried working with gov agencies on issues I've felt deep anguish towards. In late 2019 I did a significant amount of free data analysis of Chicago's parking tickets for the Chicago mayor's office to show how excessive ticketing can be. They reached out to me, they said they loved the work, but did shit-all with it. Later that year, the mayor ended up doing a 180 on the desire to have more-just ticketing policies. A month after I gave them that analysis, in a FOIA lawsuit trial, the city's counsel threw me under the bus by arguing that my end goal in that litigation is to gain access to their data so that I can modify it. Completely baseless argument that actively ignored that I put significant effort in trying to help with the highest office of the city. For free. So dude? I've fucking tried. In the end the city acted (and acts!) like a bully for the sole purpose of winning their cases. When that's the standard of behavior we receive, it's a damn wonder we even try to make any intentional effort to be kind.

Also, when I've been told over the phone and email countless times, "we are not obligated to answer questions under the law"... even for the most basic of things.. it's pretty clear where the disconnect is.

I could go on with these stories, but since it really sounds like you didn't read the article I shared -- please do, and you might better see where many of us are coming from.

No, you misunderstood. Perhaps I stated it poorly.

My statement is that every interaction with local government in the US generates a public record. This is true even when email is not involved. For example, let’s say that you have purchased a property. The deed is registered with a county government. The tax assessor decides how much property tax you will owe. They record whether you have actually paid that tax or not. All of these records are public information, and there is very little concession to privacy. In the US, there is no expectation of privacy around these records. Anyone in the US can look up these records for any property at all, and your name is there for all to see. The amount you paid for the property is there for all to see, and so on. Your phone number and email address would be there too, except for the fact that they don’t collect or store that information. They don’t need too, because they always do business with you by mail. These days you can also use their website to pay your property tax, or to look up information about a property you are interested in, but that is ancillary.

The same holds true for almost all other ways that you might interact with the government. Building permits and inspections are public records. Arrest warrants are open. Trial records. Water bills are public records, if the water is provided by a utility owned and operated by the government (varies from place to place). Drivers licensing is almost entirely open. Vehicle registration. Bids on providing goods and services to the government are only sealed for a short time; once the winning bidder is selected all of them become public records. All of this is business as usual in the US.

Finally, all of the official communications of government employees and elected officials, whether internal to a government department or not, are public records. That means that if you talk to a mayor, whether by phone or by email or by written letter, and the mayor is acting in an official capacity, then the entirety of your communication is a public record. That includes the type of communication, how it was delivered, your phone number, your email address, etc. All of it is to be recorded and made available to the public upon request.

Of course public records may contain information that is not public. When a member of the public requests a public record, such non–public information should be redacted from the copy that they receive. That includes things like credit card numbers and social–security numbers, but not necessarily phone numbers or email addresses. Especially not the phone numbers or email addresses of the parties to the communication. Maybe it’s different where you’re from, but here those are important parts of the public record. If you want to talk to the mayor but don’t want your email address to become part of the public record, then don’t talk to the mayor via email! Write a letter instead.