Staff photo by Doug Strickland / Chattanooga City Councilman Larry Grohn listens to a presentation on the city’s wastewater infrastructure during an afternoon agenda session at the City Council building on March 29, 2016, in Chattanooga.
Staff Photo by Dan Henry / The Chattanooga Times Free Press- 9/6/16. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke stands in his office at the Chattanooga City Hall a few hours before kicking off his re-election campaign.Chattanooga City Councilman Larry Grohn, who is running for mayor opposite incumbent Andy Berke, has accused Berke of using WhatsApp to deliberately evade records rules.
The mayor has admitted to using WhatsApp to conduct city business, and Grohn in a news release charged that “this was a deliberate attempt to evade the [Freedom of Information Act] laws and keep these communications from taxpayers.”
The app allows message senders and recipients to store messages and phone calls. But, unlike an email sent using the city’s email server, Whatsapp does not store messages sent by its users.
“The mayor and any of his staff, in the spirit of transparency, could have saved the messages in order to comply with the law,” Grohn said.
City spokeswoman Marissa Bell said, “City of Chattanooga employees have the right to use any app they choose on their personal phones, including common messenger apps like the popular What’s App which is owned by Facebook and used by over a billion people worldwide.”