It appears a state panel will not recommend a plan to save all emails as public records. See why.
RALEIGH -- It appears a state panel will not recommend a plan to save all emails as public records.
The email records review panel met again Wednesday in downtown Raleigh. The review stems from controversy surrounding the governor's office deleting certain emails.
For weeks this panel has met to determine if the email retention policy obeys the public records law. Currently, state employees can determine for themselves whether individual e-mails should be saved for public record or can be deleted.
"The current law is adequate, the current state policy is lawful," said Charlotte attorney Mac McCarley. "I think the best thing we can do is recommend some accessible, good high-quality training."
The panel was formed after controversy surrounding Gov. Mike Easley. A lawsuit filed against the governor claims his office violated the state's public records law by telling cabinet agency employees to delete or destroy email messages to and from the governor's office.
"If there were violations let's deal with those as violations but let's not try to build some huge new system over one violation," said McCarley.
Wednesday the panel focused on training to fix the problem. It could include this online program, but most of the panel doesn't want it required for all state employees. That would be up to department heads.
The email records review panel met again Wednesday in downtown Raleigh.
It was also clear the panel will not recommend putting in place a system to permanently keep all state employee emails -- up to five-million a day.
"What we've heard to date is that massive archiving over a long period of time -- by that 10, 15, 20 years -- would be very costly," said Franklin Freeman of the panel.
But Freeman says some sort of archiving system is necessary. The question is then which emails, how long should these emails be saved and how much would it cost. Those are all questions this panel hopes to answer by the middle of May.
The will meet again next week and possibly make recommendations. There are no proposals on the table to change state law so it would not require approval from the General Assembly.