Gov. Jared Polis should immediately ask state agencies to pause plans to purge thousands of state employee emails that are more than two months old. The purges, planned for Nov. 1, will forever erase public records that could someday be needed to facilitate any number of investigations into how the state is operating using taxpayer dollars.
The Denver Post’s Alex Burness reported Wednesday that two state departments — the Department of Regulatory Agencies and the Department of Corrections — had adopted policies to delete employee emails after 60 days and 30 days, respectively. That’s not nearly long enough to ensure proper oversight and maintain the ability for both the public and the state to investigate allegations of wrongdoing.
Worse, it’s unclear if this is a state-wide change. When Burness asked what other agencies were instituting these policies, he was told to file a Colorado Open Records Act request for the information. If you harbored any delusions that this was about keeping government transparent by making it easier to search for records — something one of the agencies had the temerity to claim — go ahead and let that last little obfuscation of crucial public information disabuse you. If this were about increasing transparency, someone would have quickly answered that simple question after doing a bit of research. This is about decreasing transparency. This is about reducing the length of time the state is open to public scrutiny. This is not good government.
Email records, when used to conduct public business, are frequently used in investigations of all manner.
City of Denver officials pulled email records between a city-contracted employee and individuals with Mortenson Construction to investigate allegations that the entities colluded to help Mortenson win a $233 million project to expand the downtown convention center. Those emails were forwarded to the district attorney’s office to start a criminal investigation. They showed clear correspondence about cost estimates for various parts of the construction, and as a result, the city relaunched its search for a construction firm.
The Denver Post has used old e-mail records to document changing attitudes between administrations about how best to combat teen vaping. Emails, while Gov. John Hickenlooper was in office, showed enthusiasm at the health department for taking some drastic vaping measures, including raising the age to buy all tobacco products and banning flavored vaping products. After Gov. Jared Polis took office, officials with the health department were much less keen to ban flavored products at the state level and pressed instead for an increase in tobacco tax and closing the vaping exclusion from the tax.
And The Denver Post exposed email evidence that some officials with the Regional Transportation District were miffed that the public-private partnership had the nerve to file a claim for a lightning strike. The employees said in emails that the companies hired to build the A-Line commuter rail had ignored their advice that a lightning wire above the train’s power lines would prevent interference.
Polis should encourage any department heads — many of whom are members of his cabinet — to adopt much longer retention periods for emails than one or two months.
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