Editorial: Government emails are public records. Deleting them too quickly is not OK

A basic precept of a free and open society is that residents have a proper to know what’s happening inside their authorities. An important manner Californians train this proper is with the state’s Public Information Act, which permits folks to see e mail correspondence, contracts and different paperwork held by native and state officers.

It’s how, early within the pandemic, journalists have been capable of reveal the main points of California’s scramble to acquire medical masks, together with the collapse of an almost $800-million deal with a politically linked vendor and the choice to secretly wire practically half a billion {dollars} to an organization that had been in enterprise for simply three days — solely to shortly name off the deal and claw again the cash.

Emails obtained beneath the legislation allowed The Occasions and environmental activists to show how Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration labored to affect selections in favor of a controversial water desalination plant. And paperwork The Occasions obtained beneath the legislation confirmed that the state parks division let some staff dwell at government-owned properties in a few of California’s most scenic locales for cut-rate rents averaging $215 a month.

The legislation is evident that state companies should, with some exceptions, launch data of their possession. However what’s not clear is how lengthy they need to cling onto these paperwork. And that is important, as a result of the federal government can successfully disguise data it doesn’t need the general public to see by destroying or deleting them earlier than anybody asks for them. Nothing to see right here! Actually.

Laws shifting by the Capitol addresses the difficulty by requiring that each one state companies retain digital and paper data for not less than two years. State legislation already requires that native governments do that, however state companies have been allowed to determine for themselves how lengthy to hold onto totally different sorts of data, and the vary is big. Simply throughout the California Environmental Safety Company, for instance, retention timelines differ from 90 days for casual emails, to a decade for paperwork associated to environmental justice investigations of beginning defects, to everlasting storage of correspondence with tribal governments.

Just lately, when the Division of Insurance coverage introduced plans to begin deleting emails after 180 days, an worker complained that they wanted entry to older emails to maintain observe of previous communications in enforcement instances. The division, already dealing with litigation for not releasing detailed calendars requested beneath the Public Information Act, backtracked on the plan to hurry up e mail deletion.

Meeting Invoice 2370 would clarify that each one state data, together with e mail, should be retained for not less than two years. Its creator, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-Greenbrae), is working for insurance coverage commissioner this 12 months with a marketing campaign echoing the identical considerations raised by Shopper Watchdog, the group that sued present Insurance coverage Commissioner Ricardo Lara for calendars detailing his appointments with trade executives who contributed to his marketing campaign. So this invoice clearly has some political overtones.

However that doesn’t negate the truth that it might advance authorities transparency and serve the general public curiosity. We urge the Legislature to proceed advancing the invoice.

Related laws handed in 2019 however was vetoed by Newsom, who mentioned it might be too pricey to retailer knowledge and rent the mandatory personnel to handle retaining data. The Legislature’s price ticket on that invoice was imprecise, saying that “state prices might attain into the thousands and thousands of {dollars}.”

Lawmakers should do a extra thorough price evaluation this time round, together with bearing in mind advances in know-how which are frequently lowering the price of knowledge storage. After which weigh that in opposition to the ethical penalty for protecting the general public at the hours of darkness.