"Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, whose text messages are missing for a 10-month period that includes the peak of last year's Black Lives Matter demonstrations, at some point had an iPhone set to automatically delete texts older than 30 days, her office acknowledged Tuesday.

"The missing texts could spur changes in how public records are handled at City Hall, and a mayoral candidate Tuesday asked state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to investigate. The matter would need to be referred by law enforcement for Ferguson's office to consider investigating, according to his office

.

"Durkan's texts were not retained from late August 2019 to June 25, 2020, a whistleblower investigation report revealed last week. In an email Tuesday responding to several days of questions about how that happened, the mayor's office said a forensic analysis has determined that Durkan's text retention was set to 30 days 'on one of the three phones issued' to her at some point between late August 2019 and July 24, 2020."

"Text messages are public records subject to disclosure that generally must be retained under state law. Durkan's missing texts could be particularly important, because several lawsuits are pending against the city stemming from the events of last June when police used violence to quell public protests and abandoned an area to demonstrators on Capitol Hill where two fatal shootings later occurred.

"Under state law, anyone who willfully destroys a public record that's supposed to be kept is guilty of a felony. Most elected and public officials in Washington are required to take public-records training, which includes information about records-retention requirements.

"In general, it would be 'really hard for someone in an elected position … to say they didn't know that records had to be kept,' said Toby Nixon, a Kirkland City Council member and president emeritus of the Washington Coalition for Open Government, who added that, in his view, setting an iPhone to automatically delete texts after 30 days represents 'willful ignorance of how record-retention laws work.'"

"Local governments also have a legal duty to preserve evidence relevant to any potential lawsuit."

All true in Kentucky, as well, where retention is based on content (official, routine, non-business related) and type of agency (state, local, university, school district) and promulgated into administrative regulation by the Libraries Archives and Records Commission. Format (hard copy, electronic, memo, email, text) is irrelevant. Retention for routine correspondence (the vast majority) ranges from a fixed two years to "no more than two years." Official correspondence must be maintained permanently and non-business related can be deleted immediately or when no longer needed.

https://kdla.ky.gov/records/Documents/Retention_Scheduling_Guidelines-M…

https://casetext.com/regulation/kentucky-administrative-regulations/tit…

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=19864

Litigation (or a pending open records request) suspends the scheduled retention and premature destruction may be punishable as a felony.