COLUMBUS — Attorney General Marc Dann, whose office is the focus of a sexual harassment complaint, refused The Columbus Dispatch’s request that he release e-mails between him and his former scheduler, the newspaper reported Sunday.

Dann, who was elected in 2006, has said e-mails are public records and he also sought numerous messages from public offices when he was a state senator and the Democratic candidate for attorney general.

The Dispatch reported that Dann’s office refused the April 2 request, four days before the newspaper reported on the harassment complaints filed by two women against their supervisor.

The Dispatch asked for e-mail messages between Dann and his then-scheduler, Jessica Utovich, who was reassigned in January as the office’s travel director. The request asked for e-mails from September through November.

Dann’s office said the Dispatch request was “overbroad,” the newspaper reported.

Dann’s office on Sunday denied that the Dispatch request was refused, spokesman Ted Hart said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Whittaker’s letter asks the newspaper to narrow its request “so that the responsive public records can be processed,” Hart said.

Two staffers in Dann’s office, neither of them Utovich, filed sexual harassment complaints against Anthony Gutierrez, 50, Dann’s director of general services, who was placed on paid leave last week as the investigation evolved.

Copies of the complaints, obtained by the Dispatch, allege that almost from the beginning of their employment in the attorney general’s telecommunication office, the women were confronted by sexual comments and situations, including unwanted touching. Gutierrez, who is paid $87,500 a year, supervised the section.

In one of the written complaints, an employee reported seeing Utovich, 28, in Dann’s condo at night wearing pajamas or sweats last September.
Utovich was reassigned in January as the office’s travel director. She earns $44,300 a year, up from the $35,000 she made when hired in early 2007.

The request “lacks the specificity and particularity that the law requires to assist both requesters and public offices in carrying out their responsibilities,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa G. Whittaker wrote the newspaper.

One of Dann’s first acts as attorney general was to order his staff to retain e-mail messages for 180 days.
“Good government is open government, and we cannot be responsive to citizen requests for information if the information is routinely destroyed, including electronic communication such as e-mails,” Dann said at the time.  

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