Sunshine law saga continues in Missouri
Another update on this interesting email compliance case development. While I originally read that an ex-aide accused Missouri governor Blunt of violating the states Sunshine law, I did not realize that accusations were made that the missing electronic communications were part of a plan to intentionally cover up political activities. Is it possible that the missing emails were by the governors own doing?
Scott Eckersley, former deputy legal counsel to governor Blunt, has filed a law suit accusing Blunt, three members of his staff and a high ranking state administrator of wrongful discharge, defamation, and violations of the states Sunshine and Whistle Blower laws. The law suit also alleges that Blunt and his staff evaded the Sunshine law by sending out text messages on Blackberries so they were not publicly available. Eckersely has said that when he notified Blunt that backup tapes contained copies of emails for years even after they were erased off the offices computer systems, that Blunt ordered they be destroyed. Although governor Blunt has maintained that his office supplies more copies of electronic documents and emails under the Sunshine law than any other elected official, there is obviously a lot of controversial evidence weighing against him.
Here are some of my personal thoughts: Will text messages become the new email archiving? How would this be regulated? Would phone companies turn to partnerships with email archiving services to gain the necessary technology? Are text messages even a valid part of the Sunshine law? There are some serious questions here regarding text messages and how they should be regulated. How will governor Blunt respond to the allegations made by Eckersley during electronic discovery proceedings? How will this change public perception of backup tapes? Should backup tapes even be allowed anymore with email archiving appliances and services in full swing? Personally, it seems that backup tapes just cause too many problems for the modern business in an electronic communication golden age. The first case that comes to my mind is the case of Palgut v. City of Colorado Springs which I just wrote a blog entry about recently. When a company has backup tapes that are not even accessible without spending millions of dollars what is the point?
There is also the issue of email retention: at what point is an email retention period enough? Outgoing House democratic leader and 2008 attorney general hopeful Jeff Harris has said that a commission Blunt led while secretary of state said that emails should be maintained for 3 years. Is a typical 3 year period really the right amount of time to preserve electronic records? It will be interesting to see what happens with this case and if any rulings are handed down in court that effectively strengthen email management policies.
Missouri Sunshine law: not so bright?
Well, not for Missouri governor Matt Blunt anyway, but understandably so. His administration took a bit of heat recently as public claims of some deleted emails began to surface. A former staff member raised the possibility of the Blunt administration violating the states Sunshine law. I was not familiar with it, so I decided to look it up and see why it was so significant. On http://ago.mo.gov I discovered that the essence of the Missouri Sunshine law is public accessibility to meetings, records, votes, and deliberations of public governmental bodies. Electronic records also fall under this realm thus making email archiving and email retention essential solutions to be implemented in the Missouri government. Missouri governor Blunt is beginning to share the same sentiment, as he has recently directed his staff to come up with a permanent email retention policy. The governor’s chief of information director has estimated that such a system could cost up to 1 million to integrate, and 250,000 yearly to maintain. The high prices of many corporate estimates only toss more fuel into the fire in the debate between implementing an in-house solution which is typically more expensive, and an out-sourced service which is usually much more cost efficient.