Outrage by free-press advocates and others supporting open government may have contributed to Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s decision to delay an announced policy of deleting City Hall emails after a year.
San Diego City Beat reported that Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, had warned San Diego officials that the policy on email retention “invites litigation.”
“An unknown but no doubt growing number of cities have been taking steps in recent years to purge emails on a 30-, 60-, or 90-day horizon,” Francke told City Beat. “We believe that state law requires them to preserve emails for at least two years, like other records.”
The proposed policy, announced via internal memo in late February, was OK’d by then-interim Mayor Todd Gloria and City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and included electronic communications, defined as “email, memoranda, calendars, tasks and attached documents.”
But the new mayor’s communications director tweeted that Faulconer is putting the email deletion policy on hold “pending further review,” saying: “All City emails will continue to be stored.”
City Beat reported that Francke had sent Gloria a letter, saying that the policy “contravenes existing law” and that “destruction of public records may also be punishable criminally.”
The city’s move to purge old email was meant to save its archive system $500,000. But critics told KPBS Wednesday that the cost to retain email would be far less.
Ben Katz of Open San Diego, made up IT professionals, told KPBS “Midday Edition” that “We did a small … survey and the ranges were from $20,000 for really cheap easy solution to $120,000 on the high end. We can archive every email of all 11,000 city employees going back a decade for no more than $120,000 for the high end.”
