Records Retention

The bad news is that the staff of the mayor and council members had not taken any training in managing local government records in many years.There are no state or local laws that make such training mandatory.

The good news is these employees started taking this training soon after The Austin Bulldog filed a lawsuit against the mayor, council members, and City of Austin over failures to comply with the Texas Public Information Act, Government Code Chapter 552.

The Austin Bulldog’s April 6 report detailed deficiencies in how council members and their staff have failed to collect, assemble, and maintain local government records as required by the Local Government Records Act and the city’s Local Government Records Control Schedules. The city also permitted every city official and employee to conduct public business by creating or receiving local government records via e-mail and to keep them secret by using personal e-mail accounts.

These recordkeeping deficiencies make it virtually impossible for city officials to respond in a complete and timely manner to requests filed by citizens and journalists under the Texas Public Information Act.

As reported by The Austin Bulldog April 15, the City Council has adopted a new policy to require council members and the officials they appoint to use city e-mail addresses as the primary means of communicating via e-mail. When personal e-mail accounts are used for city business the policy requires prompt forwarding to a city account.

The council directed the city manager and city clerk to develop similar policies for other city employees and members of sovereign boards and commissions.

The Austin American-Statesman and some television reports had a field day serving up e-mail exchanges among the mayor and council members that reveal the proclivity of some officeholders to hold side discussions among themselves during council meetings in which they demeaned certain citizens and showed a lack of confidence in high-level employees, including the city manager, an assistant city manager and the fire chief.

This rush to dish the dirt out of the e-mails that have been released—in response to open records requests filed under the Texas Public Information Act, first by The Austin Bulldog and later the Statesman and other media—has been entertaining, in a sense, and has triggered profuse apologies from the offending officeholders. A heaping helping of humble pie has been served up and choked down.

What has not been reported is how these elected officials, and their staff members, may be failing to properly manage e-mails and other correspondence to make sure that local government records are collected, assembled, and maintained in accordance with the Local Government Records Act.

At present, the city permits every city official and employee to conduct public business by creating or receiving local government records via e-mail and to keep them secret by using personal e-mail accounts.

The city also permits every official and employee who uses a computer to choose—without review by anyone else—when to delete local government records in the form of e-mails created or received on the city’s computers. Once e-mails are deleted, the right of access to them through the Texas Public Information Act, Government Code Chapter 552, is soon permanently lost.

The city’s failure to comply with the Texas Public information Act and the Local Government Records Act was the basis for the lawsuit, The Austin Bulldog v. Mayor Lee Leffingwell, et al, as reported March 2. The city has until April 11 to file its initial reply to the pleadings.These shortcomings are also the basis for The Austin Bulldog's complaint filed with County Attorney David Escamilla,as reported March 23.

The city’s response to The Austin Bulldog’s open records requests for deleted e-mails indicate that some e-mails that should have been retained are being deleted.

Records retention basics