Muscatine County won't archive emails

The Iowa county whose jail employees used a Taser on a mentally disabled woman multiple times to force her to change her clothing has passed a new policy that may lead to fewer public records being available for examination.

Muscatine County's new policy allows departments and individual employees to decide what emails, if any, to maintain on their local machines. The county government's emails will no longer be stored on a central server that helps ensure its electronic communications are secure and can be retrieved.

The change is a result of a public records request made by The Des Moines Register as part of an investigation into the Taser incident, a county official acknowledged Tuesday.

It means that emails sent by Muscatine County employees could theoretically be deleted and inaccessible to the public — and even that employee's immediate supervisors — almost as soon as they are sent.

Questions about Muscatine's policy prompted deep concern by Bill Monroe, the chairman of Iowa's Public Information Board. Monroe called the policy "bad government" and said it's an issue that should be dealt with swiftly by the Legislature.

Another Iowa Public Information Board official, deputy director Margaret Johnson, warned that Muscatine County's new policy could have dire consequences. That's because emails often serve as official documents that can help a government verify and show that it took action, notified or acted appropriately in a wide range of circumstances.

"It could help show you did something properly," said Johnson, a former Fremont County attorney. "The problem is when you delete things that you shouldn't. That's the one that's probably going to turn around and cause you a lot of problems."

Muscatine Information Services Director Bill Riley said Tuesday that the new policy has nothing to do with the Taser case involving inmate Marie Franks, although statements made later by County Attorney Alan Ostergren indicated otherwise.

A jailer used his Taser on Franks, 58, four times while five or six other employees hovered over her during an Oct. 7 incident that was recorded on video by the county and made public by the Register. Franks was handcuffed or shackled while some of the Taser's 50,000-volt shocks were delivered, the video shows.

Muscatine County is already part of a federal records lawsuit involving Disability Rights Iowa, an advocacy group with federally protected investigative powers. Disability Rights Iowa has alleged the county failed to make various records and employee testimony available for review of the case.

Riley, the information services director, declined to answer questions about how the new policy will work, citing pending litigation in the Franks case. Riley also refused to provide the Register with copies of the county's old and new policies, referring the questions to Ostergren.

Ostergren, the county attorney, said the new policy is in response to a records request from The Des Moines Register. One of the Register's requests for emails took the county a long time to compile because the messages were stored on "magnetic tape," Ostergren said. He said the county will review other systems and possibly purchase centralized storage equipment in the future.

"I don't specifically think it's because we've been in the news," Ostergren said about the policy change. "I think it's because it was more technically difficult to retrieve the emails that you had requested than we would like, so we'd like to have a better way to archive them."

Robert Howard, vice chairman of the county's Board of Supervisors, said the new policy is intended to free capacity on servers. He also maintained the action has nothing to do with the Franks case. "Like I say, it is part of an overall larger policy," he said.

Muscatine County did not review how much it might cost to purchase equipment that would allow it to retain emails, said Howard, who noted he inquired about that idea.

Iowa law doesn't mandate that local governments, which include counties and cities, retain emails.

Polk County, Iowa's largest county government, has a policy similar to the new one in Muscatine County. Polk County can search employee email. but once a worker permanently deletes a message from his account, that communication is generally gone, said Anthony Jefferson, a staff member in the county's technology department.

Records advocates were quick to chastise Muscatine County's actions, saying the new policy fails to provide public transparency or accountability.

Kathleen Richardson, director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and another member of the state's Public Information Board, said the action taken in response to the Register's request "raises alarm bells."

Monroe, who is also Gov. Terry Branstad's transparency adviser, compared today's emails to file cabinets of 30 years ago. Would local governments instruct employees to simply throw away anything they want from government file cabinets? No, he answered to his own question. The same should be true of email, he said.

"I'm not going to try to second-guess what their motives are, but it begs the question: 'What do you have to hide?' " Monroe asked. "Why would you destroy a public document? Why would you not save it for further inspection down the road?"

New email policy

This is the language unanimously approved this week regarding an email retention policy by the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors.

EMAIL ARCHIVING: Other than what may be stored on the email server at any given time, Muscatine County does not archive email and any person(s) that wish to use the AutoArchive feature of Microsoft Outlook are to store the PST file(s) on their local (C:) drive and not on the network. These PST files will not be backed up on Muscatine County's backup servers and are the responsibility of the user if they wish to create a backup.

Source: Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren