Approximately 10 months after first criticizing the integrity of Hamilton County’s email retention policy, Mayor Weston Wamp is planning to make two appointments to a committee that oversees public records, which last met July 20, 2022.
Wamp is asking the Hamilton County Commission to appoint Commissioner Lee Helton, R-East Ridge, and Judge Barry Steelman to the seven-member board. The County Commission will vote on the appointments Wednesday.
On Oct. 24, Wamp’s office announced he intended to ask the public records commission to review the county’s policy regarding the length of time emails are stored. The existing policy, his office said, appeared to “evade the intent of state guidelines.”
At the time, Wamp’s office said the county was storing emails for 10 days before automatically deleting them. The County Technical Assistance Service, which aids the operation of county governments in Tennessee, recommends the county store “correspondence files” for five years, the news release said, and before disposing of them, appraise them for “continuing administrative usefulness or historical value.”
Mary Francis Hoots, the mayor’s spokesperson, said in a phone call that the office was waiting for the new budget to go into effect to make the appointments. It provided the funding necessary to increase the storage capacity for emails.
The announcement last year came as Wamp was locked in a struggle to oust County Attorney Rheubin Taylor, who has since had his four-year contract upheld by Hamilton County Chancellor Jeffrey Atherton. One reason Wamp listed for attempting to fire Taylor was his office’s destruction of documents related to public records requests, which were being sought by the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / Judge Barry Steelman speaks at Hamilton County Criminal Court on Aug. 19, 2022.
“We realized it wasn’t even constituted,” Wamp said in a brief interview Wednesday about the public records commission. “In order for it to meet and revisit some of these arcane policies that have enabled bad practices within county government, we have to have the commission full.”
The appointment of Helton and Steelman will allow the commission to meet and consider new business, which will include the mayor’s request. Wamp said the new budget includes funding for modern data storage methods.
“We’re going to be able to properly store emails moving forward,” he said. “In other words, we’re actually going to have the storage capacity to do it because we’re paying for it. But, that’s going to cause this commission to need to revisit some of the policies that, again, we have every reason to believe were designed to protect people who’ve been around the courthouse for a long time.”
Early on, Wamp said, his office realized the county would need to make significant investments in the IT department to properly preserve emails.
“We made those investments in the previous budget, which enhances our ability to retain emails and so now we’ll revisit the policies,” he said.
Required by state law, the Hamilton County Public Records Commission is the only panel authorized to destroy public records. Hamilton County’s has seven members, and the mayor appoints three of those, which all must be confirmed by the commission. The county clerk, the county register, the county historian and the IT director also sit on the committee.
Finance Administrator Lee Brouner said in a phone call the board last met July 20, 2022, and officials expect its next meeting will occur in August. The board typically meets about once a year.
The state sets the guidelines for when records can be destroyed, he said. County staff will identify documents that have met the state’s retention schedule, and they review those records with the commission to verify whether they can be destroyed.
In April, the county brought on Mike Collins & Associates to help assess and acquire upgraded IT security software and services. One of the key byproducts of the security upgrade, Brouner said, was a boost in storage and archiving capabilities.
The county also increased the capital budget for the IT department from $200,000 in fiscal year 2023 to $660,000 in the budget year that started July 1. In addition to many other improvements, Brouner said, that funding boost will also help with the retention of emails.
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / Hamilton County Commissioner Lee Helton asks a question during a meeting of the Hamilton County Commission on Dec. 14.