No one is taking responsibility for loss of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages

Lewis Kamb

The Seattle Times

Two weeks after an ethics report revealed that Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s text messages were missing for a 10-month period that included the peak of last summer’s Black Lives Matter demonstrations, no one has taken responsibility for the loss of the potentially key public records and no outside authority is investigating.

Durkan’s office acknowledged last week that at least one of three city-issued phones she used in 2019 and 2020 at some point was set to retain her texts only for 30 days, rather than forever.

But the mayor later said she didn’t choose the 30-day setting (the shortest of three “keep messages” options on an iPhone) and Seattle’s information technology department, which provides phones to city employees, also isn’t taking the blame.

Durkan switched phones in October 2019 so she could have access to a first-responder network, and in July 2020 due to “a screen crack and water damage,” according to her office.

In an email last week, Megan Erb, a spokesperson for the IT department, said all three phones used by Durkan were “set up in accordance with our standards” and then “handed over to her staff.”

Since then, Erb repeatedly has avoided answering direct questions about whether that means someone in the IT department or the mayor’s office set one or more of Durkan’s phones to delete texts and to not store copies in the city’s online accounts. The mayor’s texts are missing from late August 2019 to June 25, 2020.

While other Seattle officials also are missing texts for periods that include June 2020, the 30-day setting has been cited as an issue only in Durkan’s case.

“It is not the practice of Seattle IT to change retention settings on phones,” Erb replied when asked whether the department selected the 30-day setting.

The point could be crucial in determining whether someone intentionally set the mayor’s phone to delete texts, counter to the state’s public records law that generally requires communications about government business to be retained.

Whether intentional or a mistake, it was Durkan’s responsibility under state law to keep such texts. It also was her responsibility per Seattle’s IT security policy. The policy puts the burden of retaining public records on “each city employee,” Erb noted.

The city’s IT security policy also says: “When the City receives a public disclosure request, a discovery request in connection with litigation, or other form of request to which it is legally required to respond, records on a City-owned device must be retained until the City responds to the request.”

There are multiple active lawsuits against Seattle that hinge on City Hall’s decision-making last June. Many of Durkan’s text conversations with other city employees have been obtained through those employees’ phones, but not all. At least eight other Seattle officials are also missing texts.

State law requires each local elected official to take a training course on the Public Records Act, and the law about preserving and improperly destroying records.

The ethics report focused only on the records requests rather than investigating how the texts were lost. Since its May 8 release, large portions of the report have remained blacked out based on the mayor’s attorney-client privilege assertions.

The mayor’s office hasn’t acted on requests this week by The Seattle Times and, separately, by the nonprofit Washington Coalition for Open Government (WCOG), for Durkan to waive her attorney-client privilege so the public can see the May 8 ethics report in full.

The eight other officials missing texts from periods including last June include then-Police Chief Carmen Best, Fire Chief Harold Scoggins and four members of the Police Department’s command staff. Lawyers suing Seattle over last summer’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone warned City Hall in June to retain texts.

Visit The Seattle Times at www.seattletimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.