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Judge warned city a year ago about its e-mail deletin' ways

By adamg on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 8:29am

The Globe keeps on top of the story. The judge's comments came in a ruling related to the controversial Roxbury mosque, built on land originally owned by the BRA.

Outraged Liberal: Wow, is this what it's like to watch a car crash in slow motion?

... For a group seemingly skilled in fixing problems, the daily drips of information about the Menino administration's failure to understand, let alone follow the state's public records law is mind-boggling. ...

WBUR interviews a computer-security guy on what's involved in retrieving "deleted" e-mail.

Free tagging: 
Tom Menino
mayor
2009 elections


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Comments

By oddjob60 on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 9:02am.

If this statement from the article is true:

"State public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." Penalties include fines of up to $500 or prison sentences of up to one year."

Then what possible line of thought could have convinced the Archives and Records Advisory Commission that their "new policy" (which they'd been working on since 2007) was legally defensible:

The policy, which took effect May 21, requires employees to move substantive e-mails that would be subject to public records laws into folders that will be backed up city servers.

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By adamg on Wed, 09/16/2009 - 11:00am.

In this editorial:

The David Project, a pro-Israel, anti-terrorist watchdog group, has twice gone to court seeking disclosure of a broad range of documents and e-mails regarding the transfer of the publicly owned land, located near Roxbury Community College. The courts have twice rebuffed the David Project's attempts to gain access to information contained in e-mails that the BRA says have been deleted.

In his judgment of the case, Justice Ralph Gants of the Superior Court, who appears headed for a seat on the State Supreme Court, writes, in effect, that since the mosque has already been built, requiring the BRA to take special steps to retrieve e-mails is not worth the effort. This seems shortsighted. Is not scrutiny of past actions a valuable guide for the future? Gants found that Massachusetts law governing what e-mails are — or are not — public documents is not sufficiently precise. Gants's decision is certainly politically convenient. It means that a potentially embarrassing — perhaps even nasty — political fight might be avoided.

This is where Secretary of State William Galvin should step up to the plate. Galvin should seek redefinition of public-record law, so that when similar issues arise in the future, state law guarantees full disclosure. "Oops, we deleted the e-mails" should not be a plausible or acceptable defense when legitimate issues of public interest are at stake.

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