Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

When a government official writes a memo questioning whether the taxpayer is about to be cheated on a multimillion-dollar deal, that memo is presumed to be a public record.

You, the ordinary citizen, can get your hands on it through the Texas Public Information Act.

When that same memo is written in an e-mail, however, the rules — at least in practice — change remarkably.

More and more governments are automatically deleting e-mail. Some cities, school districts and counties are deleting every 14 days. Some offices have been deleting every seven days.

Nobody thinks that governments should be responsible for archiving junk mail.

But, when governments delete e-mails about official business, they’re obviously interfering with the public’s legal rights.

Here’s what the law says:

“Under the fundamental philosophy of the American constitutional form of representative government that adheres to the principle that government is the servant and not the master of the people, it is the policy of this state that each person is entitled, unless otherwise expressly provided by law, at all times to complete information about the affairs of government and the official acts of public officials and employees.

“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.

“The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”

Governmental bodies that are routinely destroying information about official business are interfering with legal rights.

The argument made by some governments that they can’t possibly archive everything required by the law is less convincing today than it was a few years ago.

It’s relatively easy to create e-mail accounts that archive automatically. The cost of storing electronic information is reasonable.

We’d like to see the Texas Legislature get involved in setting a standard.

And, if you’re looking for a more reasonable standard than 14 days, here’s a suggestion. Keep records on public business for four years. That’s the statute on limitations in lawsuits involving contractual-based claims.

If a city, county or school district has to preserve records of official business to protect the public’s interest for four years, why shouldn’t that be the standard for public access?