JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) -- A southwest Missouri newspaper's recent attempts to obtain emails from three former public officials in Joplin resulted in two denials because the records were wiped clean soon after the leaders left office.
The Joplin Globe, which requested the records, reported that the denials raise questions because bulk deletion of a public official's email records is inconsistent with retention rules established by the Missouri Secretary of State's office and the Local Records Board. Emails, which are seen as public documents, should only be deleted immediately after they have been assessed -- and only if the content has no public value -- according to the rules.
In the first instance, The Globe sent a request to the city of Joplin under the Missouri Sunshine Law in October seeking emails of former City Manager Mark Rohr from 2013 regarding the purchase or proposal to purchase properties by the Joplin Redevelopment Corp.
Rohr was fired by the City Council in February 2014.
City Clerk Barbara Hogelin responded to the newspaper's request by noting that the city no longer had any of Rohr's emails.
"The city has no written policy regarding retention of emails after an employee separates from employment. The city's IS (Information Systems) Dept.'s policy is to delete the employees' emails 30 days after the separation date," she wrote.
Missouri Southern State University has a similar policy of deleting emails of faculty, staff and administrators 31 days after they leave, said Al Stadler, chief information officer at the university.
Asked if the school kept any emails pertaining to Bruce Speck's tenure as president before he was fired in the summer of 2013, Stadler said they would have been deleted within those 31 days.
Joplin School District spokeswoman Kelli Price said her district doesn't have a policy on record retention, but does use the state guidelines. The district keeps emails of former administrators and superintendents for two years, including former superintendent C.J. Huff, which the Globe had sought.
Wholesale purging of emails written by public employees and officials is not in the public's interest, but it's happening at agencies around the country, said Adam Marshall, the Jack Nelson-Dow Jones Foundation Legal Fellow with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
"Email today is something the public really needs to have access to know what their government is doing," he said. "If you have a short retention schedule, you are cutting off the ability to see how government functions."
The Missouri Secretary of State's office has numerous schedules on its website that specify document retention rules, including for email. One is for municipalities, while another is a general records retention schedule.
Both state that it's the responsibility of local government to ensure the continued preservation of records of essential evidence that have "enduring and permanent value."
Neither makes any provision for wholesale deletions of emails after an employee has left a public body. Instead, they indicate the decision about whether to keep an email record depends entirely on content.
Email pertaining to routine matters involving existing policies and procedures are to be kept for at least a year, while correspondence that has no documentary or legal value can be deleted right away.
Policy correspondence, including emails that form the basis of policy or set important precedents in the operation of a government body are to be kept permanently, according to the rules.
"The retention schedule is legally binding," said Stephanie Fleming, spokeswoman for Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander. She said concerns about compliance should be forwarded to the Missouri attorney general.
"Unlike the Sunshine Law, the state and local records law does not contain an explicit enforcement provision related to local government compliance with the records retention schedule," said Nancy Gonder, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office. "In the absence of such provision, aggrieved parties may be able to pursue remedies through civil action."
Information from: The Joplin (Mo.) Globe, http://www.joplinglobe.com