A citizen has forwarded an email exchange with Champaign Assistant City Attorney Laura Jayne Hall, wherein Hall attempts to creatively explain why Champaign City staff delete emails after just one year. The citizen had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in November of 2018, but received only a limited number of documents based on the City’s aggressive deletion practice.
According to Laura Hall:
“With 500 employees, we get billions of e-mails as you might imagine. We have the ability to save/archive e-mails if we choose to. The local records act requires us to save them for one year and for most employees that’s long enough. Not everything is worth saving and most work is concluded within that time frame.”
This statement can’t possibly be accurate. If the City of Champaign receives “billions” of emails and has 500 employees, that would mean that each employee receives roughly 10 million emails per year, or roughly 30,000 emails per day. Such a quantity does not seem even remotely plausible.
From the emails, Hall also appears to argue that the City of Champaign can only store one year’s worth of emails due to limitations of technology. However, even free email account providers generally have no problem storing a lifetime of emails for an individual user.
Here is the most plausible real explanation: the City of Champaign only stores one year of emails because that is the minimum state requirement. Saving any more than a year would simply open up the City to public records requests which may ultimately be damaging to the City. Therefore, Champaign destroys records as quickly as possible in an effort to conceal their past activity form the public. There simply isn’t any other viable explanation. It is unfortunate that Laura Hall has attempted to lie to an inquiring citizen about the City receiving vast quantities of emails instead of giving the real reasons behind their aggressive deletion practice. It is worth noting that CU-Underground has received several other complaints about Laura Hall’s deceptive practices.