You know that video you seen in our newscasts of people voting? Mainly just the backs of their heads and shots from a distance? Well, you won't see it from any polling places in Travis County. The county elections coordinator has banned all cameras from polling places (even those in public buildings), per state statute.
The Secretary of State's office says it is state law, but that counties kind of decide on their own what their individual policies will be regarding cameras. Some counties are more lax, which means our early voting video today will come from our sister stations in Dallas and Houston, which WERE allowed to shoot. More on this to come.
Governor Rick Perry spoke for the first time about his office's questionable policy of deleting emails from its server after seven days. This policy was the reason for The Purge series, and The Purge: Part One inspired open government activist, John Washburn, to request several weeks worth of the governor's emails as a challenge to the policy.
Because of the cost of the emails -- which are considered public records -- Washburn could only get four days worth. From just that snapshot, reporters have been able to find previously uncovered stories about Texas government:
The Star-Telegram found communication within the office about Governor Perry spending his time campaigning for Rudy Giuliani, among other things.
Perry was asked about the policy in a longer-than-usual press conference in his office this afternoon. Jay Root, the Star-Telegram reporter who first combed through the emails, asked Perry about the policy. In answering the question, he makes a slight personal dig at Root:
"If an email actually has some impact on an issue rather than 'so-and-so had a liquid lunch', which is salacious, and I know you love voyeurism. I mean, I know that about you," Governor Perry said. "The fact of the matter is that if we're allowed to make a decision about keeping records that are important, then I think we do that."
Washburn describes it as "most of it drivel and dross, but others can now look for themselves and see if there is any "paydirt" in this chaotic, mash-up of data".
Finally, some actual emails released as a result of John Washburn's original request!
God bless Star-Telegram reporter Jay Root, who has already combed through the four days worth of Texas Governor Rick Perry's interoffice emails requested by Wisconsinite John Washburn. Washburn did mail the CD of the emails to me, so I'll try to put them on an FTP server before the weekend.
Some highlights from the emails released by the Governor's office, which were sent between November 2 to November 5, 2007:
Emails about Ron Wilson, the former state lawmaker turned temporary assistant House Parliamentarian:
One e-mail from former Secretary of State Jack Rains, for example, sparked a heated discussion about the possibility of former state Rep. Ron Wilson, D-Houston, being appointed by Perry to a high-level state post, such as the Texas Department of Public Safety oversight commission or the University of Texas Board of Regents.
"I cannot imagine a worse Republican appointment," Rains wrote Perry's office Nov. 2 in response to a Star-Telegram report about a Wilson appointment. "I would hope every Republican will urge the governor to never consider this racist for any office."
After receiving a copy of the e-mail, Perry's appointments secretary, Ken Anderson, shot back that Rains, a veteran power broker in Texas Republican circles, had been drinking when he wrote the message.
"Ron might be called many things, but racist is NOT one of them," Anderson wrote of Wilson. "Jack must have written that late in the afternoon after coming back from one of his long liquid lunches." (See Rains' response in the story here.)
Emails about State Senator Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo:
In one series of e-mail exchanges, aides passed around a news article about state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. In the Texas Weekly article, one of Zaffirini's opponents, former Webb County Judge Louis Bruni, calls the longtime senator an "evil, vindictive, mean woman."
"Can you believe this quote?" Kathy Walt, Perry's deputy chief of staff, wrote in an e-mail to fellow top aides.
"Truth can be mean," responded Perry spokesman Robert Black.
If you've read this blog before, you know John Washburn. He's the software developer in Wisconsin who also thinks it's mighty important for the public to be able to see the process by which its elected officials make decisions.
So he challenged the Governor's office policy of deleting emails from its server every seven days, and continues to fight for a change to this policy. (Stiles tells me the City of Houston, as an example, backs up all their city emails for two years, which Washburn has argued is a more appropriate time frame than seven days.)
Anyway, I think I've found another John Washburn, if you will.
Mike Conwell is another computer whiz, a database expert who lives and works in Austin. He volunteers his time as an election judge in a small precinct, and discovered a few years ago a lot of complaints about active registered voters in Travis County being randomly deleted from the rolls for one reason or the other.
As a result, he took on a four-year-long project of identifying voters in Travis County who were randomly purged from the rolls due to clerical error. He says the problems are as simple as careless data entry, mishandling registration or proof of residency forms, or not checking and double checking records before deleting what looks like a duplicate record, but is not.
Conwell told us today that he found 1,800 voters deleted from the rolls since 2004, who are still in Travis County and should still be registered. Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector, Nelda Wells-Spears, says he can't be right.
I should do my part in drumming up anticipation for Governor Perry's soon-to-be-released emails, since a blog journey of mine inadvertently motivated a Wisconsin-based open government crusader to "mess with Texas" last November.
One week's worth of Governor Rick Perry's office emails have been received by John Washburn in electronic format, just as requested. Of course, it cost him $611, which generous donors opened up their pockets to pay for, but soon, we'll all see what the Governor's office was sending, replying and forwarding during the first week of November, 2007. I'll let Washburn explain the files himself:
There were 1993 files occupying 233 MB. My first question is where are the other 3,000 to 6,000 emails the $568 dollars was supposedly paying for? The Governor's office estimated the emails for Friday November 2, 2007 to Monday, November 5, 2007 numbered between 5,000 and 8,000. Either the estimating process faulty or the Governor's office sent 3-6 thousand emails to the Office of the Attorney General for review as per this letter.
I am currently sorting through the files to see if they are responsive and, if not, why not.
My initial impression is that the set is not very responsive because email attachments were stripped even though attachments were part of the PIR. Also this was considered an email and responsive. Yes, you saw correctly. A screen shot of various .MSG icons was considered the same as providing the emails contained in those .MSG files.
The most charitable description I can give is that these files (most are PDF versions of email text cut and pasted into an MS Word doc) is that the organization is chaotic.
This all started when Washburn caught the first entry of The Purge, a blog series in which I thought we could journey together to discover what our state's various offices do with the emails on their public computers. The Purge began by examining the Governor's office policy of deleting emails every seven days, because Missouri Governor Matt Blunt was taking heat for it from his Democratic challenger, Missouri AG Jay Nixon.
Thanks to the generous donations of people from around Texas and the country, John Washburn, who requested several weeks worth of emails from Governor Rick Perry's office, was able to pay for seven days worth of email.
The cost? $611.
Washburn requested these electronically, so there won't be any charge for paper. The governor's office estimated dozens of hours of staff time to extract the emails, which explains the cost.
Washburn, a software developer, actually took the time to create source coding to export emails, sort them by date, and automatically redact any non-governmental email addresses found in little to no time at all, but apparently it's not being used.
“The Office of the Governor has chosen the most inefficient method possible to search for and produce these emails. The Governor has asked each member of his staff to interrupt their day, search through their mail boxes, and print out emails the staff believes are responsive to my requests”, explained Washburn. “I deliberately designed these requests so the emails could be exported directly from the email server without bothering the staff at all.”
Let's get caught up on where we are in this open-records journey. (If you are new to the blog, click on the Open Government category to your right to read previous Purge entries).
Open-records requester John Washburn hasn't been able to get copies of the Governor Rick Perry's office emails because of the cost charged by the office. The governor's office said it would fill his request, but only if he paid a few thousand dollars for about a month's worth of emails.
This triggered a complaint to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott's office. Washburn received a response yesterday. In part, it reads:
To determine the appropriateness of the charges, we consider the following elements:
The test performed;
The number of computers that will require a search for responsive records;
The volume of emails responsive to the request and;
The charges used in the calculations.
Upon review of those elements, we find that the estimated charges are appropriate.
The complaint file is closed. UPDATE:Download file
Washburn has responded, though it's unclear what he can do now that the AG's office says it won't play. Parts of his response are below:
My objections to the dismissal of the complaint are:
1) You have accepted Ms. Thornton method of records production as reasonable. It is not. As I stated to Ms. Thornton in my telephone conversation with her on November 12, 2007, her client side approach is inefficient and excessively costly. During that telephone conversation I offered to provide the server-side programming* which would be more efficient, less error prone, easier to review and redact, and would not bother the 250 staff members of the Governor’s office.
2) You have accepted Ms. Thornton’s unsupported statement that it is beyond the technical capabilities of the IT staff to export the responsive records using programmatic means. Ms. Thornton’s statements of incompetence are difficult to believe and I don’t believe them. The close parsing of her words would indicate she has never asked her technical staff for assistance in exporting the requested electronic records and has instead deliberately chosen the most inefficient and expensive method to produce the requested records.
3) By deliberately choosing costly and inefficient methods, The Office of the Governor is deliberately overcharging for the requested records. This is, as you know, tantamount to blocking the release of the requested records.
The Governor’s office is pursuing a series of decisions and methods which evinces but one object; the execution of tactic three of the attached essay, “How to Hide Public Records”. Tactic three is excerpted below:
Make them pay for what they really want. Like a parking ticket or a speeding ticket, levy a fine. Claim that finding the record will incur a tremendous amount of time. You can charge for time to find long-buried records. If your budget is tight, urge your superiors to set a higher per-page copying cost to help offset those copier expenses. You're not responsible for reducing costs. You are able by law to charge to help offset the cost of producing some kinds of records.
*You see, in an effort to help streamline the process for future requests of governor's office email, Washburn himself -- a software designer -- actually took the time to create a program by which the office could easily extract the emails being requested. He believes his program would reduce the time and number of employees required to fill his request, thereby reducing the charge for the emails. But the office never responded to his offer, even though it appears he designed what could be a very helpful program for other state agencies to use to fulfill the TPIA.
Two "Purge" entries in one day, because I had the opportunity to take the question about Governor Perry's email retention policy to U.S. Senator John Cornyn.
Cornyn is pretty well-known for his strong support of open government laws. During his time as Texas Attorney General, his office was charged with interpreting the Texas Public Information Act, and reporters who were around during his tenure say he made fair calls. Since he's been in the Senate, Cornyn has authored numerous pieces of legislation to expand government transparency. In a recent column, Cornyn wrote this:
...As we move to protect our society, we must make certain that government operates in full view of the people who fund it, and give their consent. Our democracy is based on the right to know. This is one of our most treasured civil liberties in America, one that should never be lost or forgotten.
So, given his stance on the issue, what does he make of the governor's office policy of deleting emails after seven days, and allowing these emails to fall into the cyber-abyss unless they are requested before the weekly purge? Cornyn says he'll do more research:
Read more of "The Purge" by clicking the Open Government label to your right. It's also important to note that my colleagues Cody at the Texas Observer and Jay at the Star-Telegram continue their coverage of all of this. Here's some recent stuff:
In Part Five of this series, you saw the responses from the governor's office to public information crusader, John Washburn, about his twice-weekly requests for emails that end in "governor.state.tx.us".
Now Washburn is responding. With a formal complaint to the Texas Attorney General's office.
Dear Mr. Simpson:
I would like to file a formal complaint with the Attorney General of Texas regarding the excessive charges to copy electronic records to electronic media. The charges amount to $568.00 for one CD-ROM worth of data.
As I articulated below, I believe Texas statues and administrative rules only allow for the charge of two dollars ($2.00) not $568.00 as asserted by the Office of the Governor. Attached are the relevant correspondences. I am also mailing the attached to the Austin address of the Attorney General.
As an aside I must say the “itemization” leaves something to be desired. What services exactly am I getting for $567.00?
Washburn also wrote back to the governor's deputy counsel, disputing some of the charges as well as the governor's office contention that Washburn has not paid for his total of seven TPIA requests. Washburn says this is untrue, because he only got an itemization of costs for one of his seven requests.
Anyone have $2,300 to spare? That's how much the office of Governor Rick Perry estimates it's going to cost to fulfill John Washburn's public information requests for about two weeks worth of the Governor's office emails.
If you are new to the blog, a quick summary:
In state offices, emails are considered public records. Perry's office policy (dating back to Governor Bush in 1999) is to delete internal emails after seven days. Individual staffers decide which emails need to be kept longer for the public record. This weekend, the Star-Telegram's editorial board weighed in...
But who's to know whether crucial missives are being tossed with the trivial? What if a staffer's e-mails setting up lunch are relevant to, say, improper contacts with lobbyists? What if a staffer's non-job-related e-mails reveal conduct unbecoming a state employee?
Twice a week for the last three weeks, open government crusader John Washburn has sent out a TPIA request for the governor's office emails, excluding constituent mail. He received an itemized response from the Governor's Deputy General Counsel this week, with charges for FOUR DAYS worth of emails:
31.5 hours of staff time at $15/hour = $472.50 (to compile and redact emails)
Overhead at 20% of staff charge = $94.50
CD for compiled material = $1
TOTAL for four days worth of emails = $568
The letter from the Governor's office once again encourages Washburn to narrow his request to save money.
The Purge project aims to take a look at the email retention policies of state agencies and offices beyond the Governor's, but the Governor's office policy of deleting every seven days continues to drive additional questions.
Just asking for government records triggers a requirement that they be preserved, so Perry has temporarily halted the automatic erasures to give staffers time to comply with the request, officials said. Once that happens, and after installing more sophisticated computer software, [Perry spokesman Robert] Black said Perry will resume enforcement of a seven-day retention schedule for e-mail.
The Governor's office has argued that it creates too much electronic clutter to save everything, and that redacting emails when they're requested is laborious, since they can only redact hard copies.
"There might be other exceptions to the PIA that we must assert, thus making redacting necessary. Our office can only redact hard copies of the documents," Perry Asst. General Counsel Chelsea Thornton wrote.
But the Texas Department of Transportation, TXDOT -- is doing what the Governor's office says cannot be done. The open-records-crusader, John Washburn, pointed me to TXDOT's testimonial on the website of its consultant, Messaging Architects. Not only does TXDOT keep its emails, it can electronically search and sort them from its archives.
As a state agency, TxDOT needs to be compliant to the Texas Public Information Act, which was designed to provide access to public information, including email messages and other electronically delivered documents. To fulfill this requirement in the most cost-effective way, TxDOT needed an enterprise-class solution capable of processing over 11,000 GroupWise mailboxes while also providing quick and easy access to the contents of archived mailboxes. In addition, given the scope of the project, access to expert-level GroupWise technical support in the deployment phase was seen as a priority.
It seems even TXDOT -- an agency roundly criticized for its secrecy -- has found a permanent home for its emails in order to comply with the TPIA.
The Purge: Another Texas Governor Gets In Email Trouble
If you've stopped by this here blog within the last few months, you know we've been examining Texas Governor Rick Perry's office policy of deleting state emails after one week*.
"Our emails get automatically deleted every 7 days," said Governor Perry's spokesman Robert Black. "We kept the same policy and schedule as Governor Bush."
But does Bush set a good example for open government? This just came across the wire:
WASHINGTON - A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against.
U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.
The White House is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government and the National Security Archive.
The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White House e-mails. The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton, is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies of White House e-mails.
The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States.
It sounds like we must have touched a nerve with the Purge project, which examines our state officials/agencies and what they're doing to your public records. The open-government crusader, John Washburn, has now been interviewed by the Star-Telegram and an Austin radio station wants to talk to him, too.
Meanwhile, we shall soldier on in our learning.
As I mentioned in earlier Purge entries, each state agency/governmental office establishes its own retention schedule for all of its records, and creates a time frame to archive or delete depending on subject of the record. This is the retention schedule of the Texas Governor's Office, which I've uploaded to a divshare account because it was too big for google docs.
It's lengthy, but take a look at schedules are 1.1.007 and 1.1.008. (Pages 14 and 15 on the pdf):
1.1.007 Correspondence - Administrative
Incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any format, pertaining to the formulation, planning, implementation, interpretation, modification, or redefinition of the programs, services, or projects of an agency and the administrative regulations, policies, and procedures that govern them.
1.1.008 Correspondence - General
Non-administrative incoming/outgoing and internal correspondence, in any media, pertaining to or arising from the routine operations of the policies, programs, services, or projects of an agency.
The Governor's established retention period for correspondence (in any media and format) is for the term of his office plus one day -- not seven days. The term ends in early 2011. So, is the Governor's office violating its own retention policy by deleting its emails every week? It says no. Here's spokeswoman Krista Moody:
Official correspondence, such as constituent inquiries and contracts, are saved in some format until the end-of-term. Transitory correspondence, according to the Texas State Library, is communication that is only useful for a limited amount of time and then is no longer needed. This correspondence is exempt from the end-of-term retention policy.
An example of this would be back and forth emails between multiple people trying to set up a meeting time. Once the meeting is set, the emails are no longer needed or useful.
This seems to open up some new questions. The office is creating a distinction within their own public records, between "Official Correspondence" and "Transitory Correspondence". Who deems whether something is "official" versus "transitory"? Each individual employee.
So Perry's office says that it is letting individuals within a public office decide whether something "is needed" for the public record or not. The example about setting a meeting could very well be important public information -- what if the emails "setting up a meeting time" actually discussed having lunch with a powerful lobbyist with interests related to a measure the Governor was pushing?
What is "transitory" and therefore "not needed" to one person, may be something "official" in the eyes of another. What's the danger in saving it all, for a longer period of time?
Anyone want to weigh in on this? The journey continues...
The original aim of my meandering reporting journey, The Purge, was to question whether it was good policy for our state's government offices to be routinely deleting its email communication within a short time, and not backing it up. Emails are part of the public record, only, they weren't staying around very long in the Texas Governor's office.
Background - Washburn read The Purge: Part One and decided to begin challenging the Texas Governor's office and its email deletion policy, by routinely asking for all of those public documents BEFORE they were deleted. The Governor's general counsel replied, asking him to narrow his request and saying the emails could only be available on paper -- not electronically. Washburn shot back, and that's where we're at right now.
A few weeks ago, we began the reporting journey I dubbed The Purge, which focused on public records -- specifically email retention policies -- of governmental bodies in Texas. The Governor's office was singled out, because the impetus for this examination was the Missouri Governor and his office's practices.
The Texas Governor's Office routinely deletes its emails (which are considered public records) every seven days. It backs up some of the emails with hard copies, but not all of them. A retention schedule which classifies the emails based on topic or state agency is in place that specifies how soon various emails go bye-bye.
Enter John Washburn. He's a man who believes in open government. He lives in Wisconsin. I don't know much about him besides that. He saw The Purge, Part One when it was promoted on an open records wiki, The Carnival of Open Records. After learning of the Texas situation, Washburn was inspired to request email communication from the Texas Governor's office weekly, before it was deleted. Below is Washburn's first request:
Dear Ms. Counts
I must first state my displeasure that the current policy of the Office of the Governor of Texas is to destroy public records after seven days. Public records such as e-mails should archived for at least one year. The retention period should be longer given the simplicity of archiving electronic data.
The following are requests for public records under the Texas Public Information Act (Texas Government Code, Chapter 552)
1. I would like a copy of all governmental e-mail (electronic mail) received by the Office of the Governor of Texas which was received on or after 12:00 am (midnight) Friday, November 2, 2007 and received before 12:00 am (midnight) Tuesday, November 6, 2007.
2. I would like a copy of all governmental e-mail (electronic mail) sent by the Office of the Governor of Texas which was sent on or after 12:00 am (midnight) Friday, November 2, 2007 and sent before 12:00 am (midnight) Tuesday, November 6, 2007.
Since, by definition, e-mail is electronic, I would request that all the records produced as part of these PIA requests be provided in electronic form.
Today, Washburn received a reply from the Governor's office, to which he replied. See the she-said-he-said after the jump. It's interesting stuff.
Texas Weekly's Ross Ramsey calls the Texas Senate's private committee of the whole meetings "a joke". Here's the FWST:
Behind closed doors
Texas lawmakers employ other tactics that allow them to operate outside public scrutiny.
The entire Senate sometimes meets behind closed doors, although the 31-member chamber votes in public. Proposition 11 would not end the Senate's private meetings.
Ross Ramsey, editor of the Texas Weekly political journal, said the "Senate is a joke" when it comes to operating in the open.
"They disappear from the floor and they go into a room," Ramsey said. "They say they're not talking about issues, but when they go in, they're not settled, and when they come out, they vote 31 to nothing."
Mike Wintemute, a representative of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the powerful presiding officer of the Senate, said Dewhurst does not have unilateral authority to end the private meetings. "When the 31 senators meet in caucus, they do so under the rules of the Senate that are approved by the senators," Wintemute said.
The Texas Senate sometimes uses a parliamentary device known as "Committee of the Whole", where the entire body is considered one large committee. NCSL says since it's a parliamentary thing, every state can use this -- but most all other states use Committee of the Whole while they're still on the floor and in public view.
In Texas, the Senate can meet as Committee of the Whole OUT of public view, back in the proverbial smoke-filled room. For example, The C of the W was used before the entire Senate decided to come back after dinner hours in Februrary to call for TYC to be put under a conservatorship.
An NCSL survey of various legislature's rules shows the Texas Senate is one of only a handful of bodies with the ability to close a floor session to the public.
It seems antithetical to the idea of open government, so I took the question to onetime Texan Charles Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.
"It sounds like a cabal," he said. "Clearly it's done for a reason and the reason is to dodge accountability. It may be something that's common in legislatures but that doesnt make it right."
And since open government was the topic of the day, we also took the question to State Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, who successfully passed a measure in the spring session to require recorded votes on final passage of bills. (Now voters have to approve it, in the form of Propsition 11.)
In his response to the question, Branch was careful not to call out any particular members of the Upper Chamber, but did bring up another question -- what's up with the Senate conference calls?
Jake Dyer, FWST: Given your commitment to open government, would you stop the Senate from having committees of the whole?
Branch: It's an interesting question. As an observer, I have a natural reluctance to interfere in how they take care of their business. As an observer, well.. there's reasons for committees of the whole, but I think that we need to be careful that when that procedural device is used, that it's not abused.
So there oughta be a stated purpose for why we're coming together as Committee of the Whole, and that oughta be open and transparent.
And it's my understanding that that chamber uses a lot of conference calls to get a sense of where members are at. And again, there's probably an appropriate use of conference calls or member dialouge, but ultimately, I think you have to say at some point, conduct the people's business in the most transparent fashion possible. And don't abuse devices like committees of the whole to place a veil on what otherwise should be open government business.
Earlier this week I began a reporting journey called The Purge, which aims to take a closer look at email retention in state government as it pertains to open records laws.
Turns out The Purge made The Carnival of Open Records, a "blog-centered project to build and promote awareness about open records issues and concerns". I bring this up for those defenders of the First Amendment* out there, who want to keep up-to-date on the goings-on in the world of open records.
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end. -Ursala K. LeGuin
I'd like to take you on a reporting journey that I'm beginning today, called "The Purge". With some reader interaction, perhaps this can become like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure novels (remember those?*).
Here we go.
There's an interesting showdown going on Missouri between Republican Governor Matt Blunt (US House Minority Whip Roy Blunt's son) and Attorney General Jay Nixon. Blunt is defending his office's routine deletion of office emails, even though he acknowledged "emails often are a public record," in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The Missouri AG said that the policy violates not only the state's record-preservation law but also their Sunshine Law, which provides public access to government records. More from the Post-Dispatch:
Nixon asserted that actions of the governor’s staff appeared to be “an anathema to openness in government. This is public business, these are public records, this is what we do,” declared Nixon, a Democrat who is challenging Blunt for governor in 2008.
Blunt, in explaining his staff's intentions, said with a chuckle, "I think people are trying to have a clear and manageable in-box. That's what they're trying to do."
Overall, Blunt offered conflicting views of how e-mails should be treated under the state's Sunshine Law. He said the law is directed more at agencies and institutions, than at individuals.
In the case of e-mails, he said, "Once requested (under the Sunshine Law), and if they exist, they're definitely a public record."
It seems like he suggests here that emails don't need to be retained unless they are requested BEFORE the routine deletion.
That brings us back home to Texas. The routine email purging happens in the Texas governor's office, too.
"Our emails get automatically deleted every 7 days," said Governor Perry's spokesman Robert Black. "We kept the same policy and schedule as Governor Bush."
This isn't illegal. I've learned from conversations with various attorneys that Texas doesn't have a records preservation law that speaks to this specifically -- and the TPIA doesn't forbid the purging of emails. Emails are considered a public record; but only if requested before they're deleted into the cyber-abyss.
So this opens up questions about whether emails ought to be kept -- not just for the sunshine reason, but for historical purposes. (I mean, those LBJ phone calls are interesting!) Is it good policy to routinely delete official communication in public offices, when email is the way most of us communicate?
I put the question to State Senator Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, this afternoon. He's the Chairman of the Senate Jurisprudence committee, which oversees public information legislation.
"This is case of first impression with me, but it sounds like something that we oughta have hearings about, what the practice is government-wide... Arguments for keeping the emails for a certain period of time and arguments against it, for whatever reason," Wentworth said.
