Los Angeles city officials use Google Chats which is disappearing. City prosecutor investigates

The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office is currently conducting an internal review of city employees’ use of Google Chat messages that are automatically deleted after 24 hours.

The investigation was the result of an agreement between the city and a community group, the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition, which discovered the messages were disappearing during a dispute over the construction of a house in Mount Washington.

Critics say automatically deleting posts allows authorities to circumvent the California Public Records Act and the city’s. document retention policies.

City officials acknowledged last week, in response to inquiries from The Times, that employees have long had the ability to communicate with people, both internally and externally, through messages that are automatically deleted after 24 hours. Officials would not explain how the practice complies with state public records law and city policies that require most records to be retained for at least two years.

“The city of Los Angeles has a history of corruption and self-dealing, which makes it possible to create a platform for these transactions without fear of anyone finding the evidence because threads are deleted within 24 hours,” Jamie said T.Hall. , an attorney representing the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition. “The Public Records Act exists to ensure openness and transparency, and when records are deliberately suppressed, it undermines democracy and facilitates corruption. »

In a lawsuit filed in July 2023, the coalition challenged the city’s approval of the construction of a single-family home on a steep hill on Mount Washington.

Among other allegations, the suit claimed that the coalition’s appeal of the construction project did not get a fair trial because of an alleged practice of holding closed meetings and disseminating confidential reports among the city ​​employees, which sometimes included council members’ positions on projects or appeals, before a public hearing with the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee.

The coalition denounced a series of perfunctory public hearings in which the issues appeared to have already been settled in advance.

Lawyers for the coalition became aware of the disappearance of the messages through the lawsuit’s discovery process.

One of the documents the coalition obtained through the lawsuit was a July 16, 2020 memo from the city’s Information Technology Agency. The memo states that Google Chat is “unofficial for direct and group messages” and includes “the ability to chat with external users.”

An April 6, 2022 memo from the agency informed city employees that in individual and group Google Chat messages, “your conversation is not recorded and will be automatically deleted after 24 hours.” The memo contrasted these messages with those sent through another feature called Chat Rooms which would have the “history” setting enabled and “be discoverable.”

Eduardo Magos, deputy director general of the Information Technology Agency, confirmed the ongoing practice last week, writing in an email response to the Times that “individual and ad hoc group messages from Google Chat are automatically and permanently deleted. after 24 hours.

The disappearing chat feature is part of a Google Workspace suite accessible to about 26,000 employees and available in one form or another since the early 2010s, when the city started to contract with Google for email and other services, Magos said.

Sean McMorris, an ethics and transparency expert for the good-government watchdog group Common Cause, said automatically deleting Google Chat messages “could potentially violate local and state laws and is certainly not, in my opinion, a good practice and is not transparent. »

“State law is pretty clear on the public’s right to access most things that concern public affairs,” McMorris said. The city doesn’t keep messages long enough to even determine whether they are subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act or exempt, he added.

He said the disappearing messages allow city officials to discuss public affairs, including their positions on issues or how they might vote, knowing that the messages will be deleted after 24 hours and will not be forwarded to requests. public archives.

Over the last year, the Times has sent questions to city departments about employees’ use of Google Chat. The Times also filed public records requests for Google Chat messages sent in the 24 hours before the request.

Documents obtained by the Times showed that use of Google Chat by city staff was widespread and that public matters were sometimes discussed on the platform. Screenshots of employee chat logs are displayed prominently: “STORY IS DISABLED. Messages sent without history are deleted after 24 hours.

A Times public records request to then-City Council Speaker Paul Krekorian’s office regarding Google Chats sent or received by anyone in the office on Dec. 5 produced 38 pages of messages ranging from personal topics mundane, such as lunch and dinner plans, to city business, including the activities of Krekorian and Mayor Karen Bass.

Another records request produced documents showing that Hugh Esten, a spokesperson for Krekorian, discussed an “appointment” last year with Chelsea Lucktenberg, a spokesperson for council member Eunisses Hernandez, over Google Chat. Esten also discussed the “emails” with Stella Stahl, a spokesperson for council member Nithya Raman.

The Times received these messages from Krekorian’s office after requesting correspondence regarding the City Council’s unusual decision. vote against the appointment of neighborhood council leader Jamie York to the city’s ethics commission. The Times requested public records on August 21, 2023, for relevant correspondence from August 16 to 21.

Esten did not respond to several questions about whether the use of Google Chat in Krekorian’s office violated public records laws. The office of current City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson did not respond to questions about Google Chat.

In response to questions from The Times earlier this month, Zach Seidl, a spokesman for Bass, would not say whether the “vanishing” feature violated any rules regarding record retention.

He said the city’s Information Technology Agency “exclusively controls the system settings.”

Last month, the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition threatened additional legal action over the city’s use of Google Chat.

The agreement between the city and the coalition, signed by a judge on Dec. 11, states that the city attorney’s office would “immediately conduct an internal investigation regarding the city’s records retention and related policies and seek to notify the municipal council in closed session.

Karen Richardson, spokeswoman for City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office said, “We are gathering information and reviewing our processes,” adding that “we do not comment on pending litigation.”

The city council was scheduled to speak with legal counsel about the matter during a closed session on Dec. 11.

“The city has an obligation to preserve these records, so we hope the city council will end this practice,” said Mark Kenyon, president of the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition and a Mount Washington resident. “We believe the public has the right to know what their government is doing.”