Michigan quickly deletes government chats, raising transparency questions

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Want to know what top Michigan economic development officials were chatting about online as their office was raided by Attorney General Dana Nessel in June amid an earmark embezzlement investigation?
Or what state officials and employees were telling each other as President Donald Trump returned to office in January?
Many of those communications may be permanently shielded from public view under a state government policy to automatically delete communications through
Microsoft Teams, a communication and collaboration platform widely used in Lansing.
State government agencies delete those chats after 30 days, meaning they generally are no longer available to the public through the Michigan Freedom of Information Act. Emails, by comparison, are retained for seven years and remain available through public records requests.
A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which oversees most of the state’s technology systems, said the quick deletions were for storage reasons, not hiding information from the public.
Bridge Michigan discovered the issue earlier this year when the Department of Technology, Management and Budget denied a reporter’s FOIA request for Teams chats about Trump’s return to office.
An October request for online chats during the June raid of MEDC offices was similarly denied because “the information requested does not exist,” according to a government response to a Bridge request.
Michigan’s open records law does not mandate how long state and local governments must hold on to records, meaning the policy to automatically delete online chats after 30 days does not directly violate the statute.
But it “certainly violates the spirit of transparency” intended under the law, said Derk Wilcox, a senior attorney with the free market-oriented Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
“This is an issue that needs to be dealt with.”
‘Doesn’t make any sense’
FOIA laws at the federal, state and local levels are considered vital tools to prevent corruption by allowing the public to see internal government documents and communications, including how lobbyists interact with state policymakers and how tax dollars are spent.
State officials call the automatic deletion policy an information technology limitation, not an attempt to hide government communications, however.
“These timeframes are not record retention periods, they are about storage only,” an official told Bridge in one FOIA denial.
Department of Technology, Management and Budget spokesperson Laura Wotruba told Bridge the policy “is just helping us efficiently manage our networks and systems.”
Wotruba told Bridge it shouldn’t allow employees to skirt FOIA obligations, either.
“If there was information that you were sharing in a chat that would need to be retained, (state agencies) should make those determinations,” Wotruba said.
But there do not appear to be any mechanisms for reviewing messages between officials before they’re deleted. Given all messages are automatically purged, it becomes difficult to know if anything was deleted that should’ve been retained.
Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act does not have any requirement for how long state and local governments have to hold onto records. It’s something defined under the state’s Management and Budget Act, but left up to officials to decide.
That’s unusual, said David Cuillier, director of the University of Florida’s Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project.
It is “weird to have emails be one time length, then Teams messages be a lot shorter,” he told Bridge Michigan. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I imagine there’s a lot of important business being conducted in Teams that should be retained longer and the public should be able to see it.”
Michigan is one of just two states that fully exempts the Legislature and governor’s office from its FOIA law, which generally applies to all state government departments and local governments across Michigan.
State House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, has repeatedly said this year that his chamber will not take up state Senate-approved legislation to expand the law. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has not followed through on a 2018 campaign pledge to unilaterally open her office to public records requests.
A different approach
The federal government and at least one state have taken steps to expand the availability of Microsoft Teams chats through public records requests.
In a July 2023 memorandum, the National Archives instructed federal agencies to begin handling Microsoft Teams chat messages the same way they do emails, telling federal agencies the chats should generally be considered electronic communications available to the public.
A federal judge recently ordered Trump’s administration to preserve chats on the encrypted Signal messaging app after transparency advocates argued automatic deletion violated the Federal Records Act.
In Washington state, Gov. Bob Ferguson this year temporarily banned automatic deletion of Microsoft Teams messages, which had been purged every seven days. He ordered a review of the policy.
Ferguson’s decision reportedly followed a $225,000 settlement the Washington Department of Children, Youth & Families paid for destroying public records, allegedly in violation of that state’s FOIA law.
There, open government advocates have urged a permanent policy to preserve records of state employee chats on Microsoft Teams or any other “officially endorsed communications platforms.”
“Technology is increasingly being used to quickly and automatically destroy records that should be preserved, organized and made available,” The Washington Coalition for Open Government said in February.
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This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.