Email Destruction Halted in Texas Governor's Office
Gov. Rick Perry’s state office has temporarily stopped deleting emails every seven days — as its official document retention policy allows — thanks to the efforts of a Wisconsin-based political activist who thinks they should be preserved longer.
Government transparency advocate John Washburn has devised a computer program to automatically spit out requests, twice a week, for all of the emails generated by the governor’s office. That has had the impact of halting the routine destruction of the records, because the law says files can’t be destroyed if somebody asks for them under the Texas Public Information Act.
Soon ...
Comments (15)
Richard Melaun via Texas Tribune on Facebook
wishes he were stunned by this. He is not.
David Huang via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Every seven days? Good grief. I think I still have emails dating back to 2000 somewhere. This sounds irresponsible and quite frankly, criminal.
Tom Erickson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Maybe they just wanted to keep the emails away from the liberal media. Does a big campaign contribution give you access to all the emails?
Larry Jansch via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It was OK when Governor Mike Easley (D) dumped emails in North Carolina. So what?
Cate Sitton
There goes Ricky once again,taking zero responsibility when criticized.
WUSRPH
From now on we can be certain that the Governor's office will carefully and completely obey the 5th Rule of Politics:
" Don't put anything on paper (or an e-mail, tweet, etc.) that you would not be afraid to see on the front page of the Dallas Morning News."
It is just too bad we will never get a chance to see what they wrote before they started paying attention to the Rule.
John Washburn
Yes, A political contribution of $62,400 will preserve the emails over the course the next year. $1200 is need in the short term in order to preserve the emails from August 26, 2011 to September 1, 2011.
The donation link, found in the orginial article, is:
http://tinyurl.com/3we7hes
at page from;
RickPeryEmails.BlogSpot.com
John Washburn via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Even if you accept the ludicrious proposition tha tht "print and File" program the Governor's office claims wityhout evidence it has implimented, it is still against the law
Because a paper printout of an email is not a true and faithful copy of that email.
Don Wade via Texas Tribune on Facebook
If corporate world can not delete then, turn about should be fair trade.
Wallis Parnelle
Seems the Perry Admin. is above the Law. These people need to be prosecuted, as stated, as they continue to ignore the law, knowing there will be consequences. Lets keep all of Perry's Admin. emails on a server at the FBI, for safekeeping, investigate all concerned and punish, as Perry loves to be a punisher, and be punished.
Stuart Greenfield
while I've been retired from the State for 10+ years, I would assume that the Governor's office has a disaster recovery plan which backsup the email weekly. I'm not sure if they use the State Data Center for email, but why not just ask for a copy of their backup file and then reload into a duplicate email server?
Texascattleco
The e-mails that would be of interest have already been long destroyed unless there is a hard drive somewhere that has not been erased or destroyed.
John Washburn
RE: <i>These people need to be prosecuted</i>
Breaking the law as Perry is doing with the email destruction is only a legal peril if there is a prosecutor willing ot prosecute. Both the Travis County DA and the TX Ag dook a dive on this back in 2008.
The state law as codified byt State Library and Archive Commission is electronic records retained from a state-wide office are required to be stored in electronic form.
John Washburn
To Stuart Greenfield:
On the participation in the disaster recovery process, you assume wrong because you assume Governor Perry obeys the law. On this topic I have not found evidence to support that assumption.
As this obnoxious video makes clear:
http://tinyurl.com/5v54m9f
Governor Perry is the Decider and he ain't going to allow no fishing escapades by the media or political opponents.
Robert White
Open government & transparency means nothing to these fascists. When will Texas wake up? I guess when we run out of water & our burns up from wildfires, we might get rid of these no government t heads!