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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is under severe scrutiny after deleting a text message she sent during the area’s tragic January fire.
But she was not the only elected civil servant who escaped her correspondence during those history-making days.
Katherine Berger, LA County superintendent who represents an area that has been devastated by Eton Fire, also routinely removes her text messages, her spokesperson said.
“The automatic iPhone setup for Supervisor Burger’s iPhone is set for 30 days. She may also manually delete text,” Burger spokesman Helenchavez Garcia said last month.
The Times submitted a request for public records regarding Burger’s communications with Bass from January 7th to late February. Burger’s office publicly said it was sending buses and text messages late into the evening on January 7th, but did not provide written communications in response.
Four other supervisors — Lindsay Hovas, Hilda Solis, Holly Mitchell and Janice Hahn — should not use the auto-emitting feature on your phone, according to their spokesman.
Chavez Garcia said in an email that “there is no pre-determined way that a supervisor applies when selecting a message to be manually deleted.”
Horvath spokesman Constance Farrell said her understanding is that county officials are supposed to hold text messages for two years to comply with the county’s record-keeping policy. Horvath’s office released some of her text messages in February after a Times Public Records request. The message showed that supervisors would sparr in bass during the fire.
The county’s record keeping guidelines do not mention text messages, but it says that everyday “management records” should be kept for two years.
The board’s executive branch said the public records law applies to text messages, but in some cases it may be exempt from disclosure.
“Whether a supervisor’s text is a public record depends on whether it is a text about people’s business conduct,” Stephen Hernandez, Chief Deputy Chair of the Executive Office, said in a statement.
According to county policy, employees must sign an agreement each year that allows all electronic communications, such as emails and instant messaging, to which all electronic communications sent to county devices, are in the county’s property.
Bass previously maintained the phone in a 30-day car setting, much shorter than the two-year retention period outlined in the city’s management code.
However, after being forced into the Times, who submitted a request for public records of the mayor’s communications during the Palisade fire, Bass’ Office said it could use “specialist techniques” to recover deleted messages.
(The Times sued the city over the mayor’s texts in March, and it challenges the city’s argument that even if city officials ultimately provide some texts, the Times doesn’t need to release them under state law.)
Also, President Markey Harris Dawson, president of the Los Angeles City Council, has removed text messages from that period, remaining unclear whether he had buried it as mayor acting as a bus agent when the fire broke out.
After the Times submitted a request for public records for a correspondence sent to Base by Harris Dawson, Harris Dawson, received it from her between January 6th and January 16th, Harris Dawson’s office said there was “no responsive record.”
Harris-Dawson’s office did not respond to repeated questions in a few months about why there was no correspondence or whether it was deleted.
“It’s a shame to see that practice climbing the streets. [to the County]. Referring to Bass and Harris Dawson, Unrig LA founder Rob Quan said:
Kuan, who leads a good advocacy group focusing on transparency, said he believes that proper recordkeeping from January is even more important given the historical importance of the fire.
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