WATCH: Status of Ferguson’s temp ban on auto-deletion of public records unclear

(The Center Square) – It’s been six months since Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson ordered state agencies to stop automatically deleting Microsoft Teams chat messages every seven days.

Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based software application that allows users to communicate, set up meetings, and share files within a workspace environment, typically via email.

As reported by The Center Square, in February, Gov. Bob Ferguson told state agencies to retain all instant message conversations for the following six months, after a $225,000 settlement against the Department of Children, Youth & Families for the destruction of public records.

At the time of the directive, Ferguson said he would review the policy and make a decision after six months.

That deadline came on Sunday, Aug. 17, with the Governor’s Office indicating the Friday before (Aug. 15) that it would have no response about a decision by the Sunday deadline.

The Governor’s Office did not respond to a Monday email about any decision Ferguson may have made.

Open government advocate Jamie Nixon filed a lawsuit in 2024 against the state over the seven-day retention policy for Teams messages and other alleged violations of Washington's Public Records Act, including lawmakers' use of legislative privilege.

In a recent podcast, Nixon detailed what he refers to as “a growing crisis inside the Washington State Auditor’s Office,” all related to the Teams chat deletion controversy.

The podcast included audio recordings of a September 2023 meeting in which SAO’s top legal counsel, Al Rose, publicly accused WaTech, the state agency that promoted the seven-day auto delete program starting in 2021, of a yearlong cover-up and knowledge that WaTech was aware the policy was in violation of Washington’s Public Records Act.

Rose then backed off and, a few months later, offered a letter of apology for his “tone” at the meeting and has since refused to audit WaTech. He was also heard in the 2023 meeting advising state agency employees that they didn’t have to respond to questions about the auto-delete policy.

Nixon spoke with The Center Square on Monday about his frustration.

“It is particularly gross for me to see that somebody who is the director of legal affairs for the Auditor's Office, which is charged with accountability, transparency and open government, counseling other agencies' staff members to not answer questions about a seven-day auto deletion policy that they obviously all knew was problematic and not OK,” Nixon said. “They didn't tell the public that they were destroying 50 million records a week.”

The Center Square reached out to the SAO and Rose individually.

SAO Director of Communications Kathleen Cooper sent the following email to The Center Square: “Mr. Nixon is suing the State of Washington and continues to argue that the State Auditor’s Office should be included in his ongoing litigation. As a standard practice, we do not comment on matters subject to active litigation.”

In May, Nixon said he asked the Governor’s Office for details on how the six-month Teams policy review was being conducted but received very little information and no specifics.

“The idea that the governor would engage in a process of deciding how and when people can access their records on his own, behind closed doors with no hint of a public process or stakeholder input, is absurd on its face,” he said. “Whatever decision he comes to needs to be seen immediately with a high level of skepticism and suspicion.”

Transparency is the answer, Nixon continued.

“And he needs to release every record involved in this decision-making process immediately to the press and the public,” he said. “He should just publish them all in emails, text messages, whatever it is, because he is just making the problem worse, because there is a massive scandal.”

Washington Coalition for Open Government Secretary George Erb emailed The Center Square on Monday about Ferguson's office not yet issuing any statement about the expiration of the Teams auto-delete policy pause.

“Six months have passed,” he said. “We have reason to believe the Governor’s Office will say something about the outcome of the evaluation soon. If that happens, WashCOG will issue a statement, and I will notify you directly.”