Memo to towns: Save your email records

by: Jason Springer

Sat Jul 19, 2008 at 07:33:03 PM EDT

Apparently not everyone in Bloomingdale has been paying attention to the recent email controversies surrounding governmental bodies. Something tells me going forward, they will be keenly aware of all pertinent policies:

Borough workers had to spend 12.5 hours poring through their inboxes and sent boxes to find e-mails to and from a councilwoman. The borough attorney sifted through the copies for three and a half hours. The governing body's also considering plans to buy a e-mail server to avoid such headaches.
It all started with a feud between Councilwoman Linda Huntley and the head of the recreation commission, Jonathan Dunleavy.
I requested the e-mails in the beginning to see what pertained to recreation and what possibly affected me, he said. And when she said she didn't retain them, it became a second issue: a violation of state law.

The Department of State has guidelines and best practices for managing electronic mail available to those with questions about the policies they must follow. The Councilwoman says she doesn't remember being told to save any records, but that account is being disputed:

Borough Attorney Joseph MacMahon said he has told council members several times in the past several years that e-mails are considered public records and could be requested though he did not advise them on how to retain them.

Even as she is being told now that emails are public records, I don't know if the Councilwoman is taking away the correct message from the situation:

And for the future, she said she'd conduct borough business by phone or in person.

So she's just going to stop using email to solve the problem? The object isn't to avoid situations where you have to keep records, it's to actually save the information so there is a trail for the public to follow. For its part, Bloomingdale is considering purchasing software to archive their email records, but I would think this problem will occur more regularly as electronic communications are sought to help fill in the story for public record.

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