Delete keys

The more we learn about the Easley administration's document deletion policies, the more cause there is for concern

With a keystroke or two, e-mail messages can vanish from view. In North Carolina state government, that may be happening all too often.

The Easley administration's records retention policy gives free rein to state employees to delete "ephemeral" e-mails that have "no administrative value" or "no reference value" -- whatever those terms might mean. The deletion policy, which has come to light in connection with The News & Observer's "Mental Disorder" series, allows each state employee to decide each e-mail's value on his or her own, and to kill it out at will.

With electronic communications rapidly replacing paperwork, such a policy could leave a black hole in the public's right to know what its government is doing. And North Carolina has a strong government records law mandating that, with minor exceptions, documents created in connection with official business should be available for public inspection.

N&O reporters didn't have to look far to find examples of how an overly permissive e-mail deletion policy could be working against the public interest.

At the Department of Transportation, spokesman Ernie Seneca -- who's been forthright about his daily deletion of many e-mails -- routinely gets electronic reports from DOT officials showing who they met with and what they talked about. An example was a report from the Division of Motor Vehicles' chief showing that he'd met with officials about two DMV matters that have been much in the news. That information might be available elsewhere, or it might not be. But it appears that e-mail reports of such a nature are routinely deleted. Members of the public or reporters trying to track the ins and out of official business could come up empty.

Can't blame Seneca, though -- his boss Lyndo Tippett, the DOT secretary, gave his employees permission this week to destroy messages "when they no longer have reference value to the sender or receiver of the message."

Note the highly permissive "or," and the conveniently vague "reference value." Together they offer just about all the wiggle room anyone would need for widespread deletions.

Contrast that with the state's overall policy guide about how public documents are to be retained for posterity from the Department of Cultural Resources: "When in doubt about whether a record has short-term value, or whether it has special significance or importance, retain the record in question."

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A report about an e-mail of interest in the mental health reform controversy surfaced in yesterday's N&O. Carmen Hooker Odom, former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (who now works at a non-profit agency in New York), wrote on Feb. 21 to the paper's news staff outlining four "concerns" that she had had while DHHS secretary about the mental health legislation during the months when it was being considered.

Two of the four points, she said, had been resolved satisfactorily in the bill-drafting process. The other two were not.

This editorial page has been critical of Hooker Odom's unwillingness to comment publicly on the mental health mess or to make herself available to the newspaper for an interview. Her Feb. 21 e-mail, while well short of an interview in its value to the public, did address some of the pertinent issues. Had the editorial staff been aware of the e-mail, the criticism of her stance would have been tempered.