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How long should government officials retain text messages sent in the course of doing government business?
Within Sonoma County government, it’s largely up to the officials sending the texts.
The county’s record retention policy — crafted to comply with state public records law — lays out how long county officials must keep records depending on the type of record, its content and, in some cases, the medium in which it was shared.
But despite an update to the policy last year, text messages are not specifically included, leaving government officials to determine whether the contents of any message sent or received meet the description of other records included in a 22-page document referred to as a record retention schedule.
The guidance on text messages does not align with best practices for local governments, said David Snyder, executive director of the San-Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit which advocates for government transparency and media rights.
Text messages “are a significant means of communication for many people and even if they are on a personal phone, they are a public message if the message conveyed on that phone relates to the public’s business,” Snyder said.
Sonoma County’s five elected supervisors say the text messages they send in the course of doing county business do not often include substantive information.
“A text message is a quick way to send a message. I’m not conducting county business on my texts,” board Chair Rebecca Hermosillo said. “Are we saving our Post-Its — or are we saving work memos and notes and emails that are a work product? To me, that is a difference.”
Hermosillo told The Press Democrat she deletes her texts as often as the next day.
The length of time other supervisors keep messages runs the gamut: Supervisor David Rabbitt said he “cleans out” his text messages weekly; Supervisor Lynda Hopkins uses her phone’s setting to automatically delete messages after 30 days; Supervisor James Gore uses that same setting to delete messages annually and Supervisor Chris Coursey said he hardly ever deletes texts.
The county’s top civil attorney, County Counsel Joshua Myers, did not object to the deletions of text correspondence, nor the self-enforced practice.
“I think it would be permissible if what they’re deleting, if the substance of what they’re deleting isn’t in the record retention schedule,” County Counsel Joshua Myers said, referring to the document that details how long government officials should retain certain records.
While the state’s bedrock Public Records Act dictates the preservation and disclosure of records created in the course of government business, it does not specify how long those records should be retained. Those timelines are left to California cities and counties.
The county updated its policy last year, resulting in the lengthy retention schedule for everything from audits to messages sent using Microsoft Teams. Some records, such as directives establishing or revising policies, must be kept permanently, while emails must be retained for two years. The record with the shortest lifespan is a Microsoft Teams message which is only kept for 30 days.
That update extended the retention period for county emails from 60 days to two years.
When asked why text messages were left out of the record retention update, Myers initially described the record retention policy as “media neutral,” but later acknowledged the policy does specify different retention periods for some types of communication.
“Non-substantive or transitory communications may be deleted in accordance with county policy. Examples may include spam, advertisements, meeting scheduling messages, duplicate copies, or informal logistical communications that do not document substantive County business activities or decisions,” Myers said in a lengthy written explanation.
In that same explanation, he said emails and Microsoft Teams messages are used more regularly than text messages by government workers to relay pertinent information.
But that guiding principle is not written anywhere in the county’s policy and is instead based on the county’s past practice, Myers said.
“As we discussed the other day, the county does not have a specific policy that states what I wrote, below,” Myers said, referring to his previous written explanation sent three weeks prior. “Rather, the purpose and intent of the county’s record retention policies is to preserve official records of county business regardless of the format or media.”
The questions over county record retention have arisen as demands to produce written records of government business spike.
Since June alone, the county has received 650 requests. Of those, Permit Sonoma has received the most, with 215 requests, followed by Public Infrastructure with 94 requests and the Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector with 65 requests, said Matt Brown, the county’s communications specialist.
In 2025, the shared Board of Supervisors and County Executive’s Office received 96 records requests and so far this year has received 90, Brown said.
While many requests pertain to more routine records — call logs for the Sheriff’s Office, land-use planning documents and county contracts — some of the records subject to public disclosure can provide a crucial window into the inner workings of local government.
For example, text messages obtained by The Press Democrat in the wake of the 2017 North Bay firestorm shed critical light on how county supervisors and other top officials reacted behind the scenes amid mounting questions over the county’s failure to send mass cellphone alerts during the first hours of the deadly fires.
Among the nearly 1,000 pages of records obtained by the newspaper at that time was a text thread among elected officials and administrators complaining about increasing media scrutiny over the county’s emergency communication failures with the public — a key storyline for years after the 2017 fires, ultimately spurring local and statewide advancements in emergency notifications and technology.
It’s not clear the county has an established pathway to ensure any similar text thread among supervisors and other top officials today would remain available for public disclosure.
The relevance of text exchanges among public officials in the course of government business arose more recently when The Press Democrat sought messages discussed during a quarterly meeting held in July 2025 for the county’s Emergency Medical Care Council, an advisory committee.
The EMCC is an appointed council that advises the Board of Supervisors on emergency medical care and oversees the county’s emergency medical system.
While a majority of the members attended the July 28, 2025 meeting in person, a few, including Steve Herzberg, an appointee who has long represented Hopkins on the committee, were virtual. As the meeting started, Petaluma Fire Chief Jeff Schach said none of the remote committee members could vote or participate in the discussion.
But not much later, Schach mentioned during a discussion that Herzberg was texting him about his interest in the item they were discussing. He did not read the texts aloud. A county attorney then advised committee members not to exchange text messages during the meeting, citing the Brown Act, the state law governing public meetings. At a later point, Schach said the texts were permitted because he was acting as Herzberg’s proxy. He added that Herzberg was merely responding to an email on the same subject Schach had sent out a few days prior.
A records request submitted by The Press Democrat seeking those texts and emails six months later came up empty. County officials handling the request said committee members were asked to check their texts and emails for any relevant records.
“The county confirmed with the board members that they had no responsive text messages in their possession,” county spokesman Matt Brown said in an email. “The county has no knowledge of whether text messages responsive to the request existed at all or at the time of the PRA request; or, if they did exist at some point, what happened to them.”
A recording of the meeting is available on the EMCC’s website. In a follow-up request seeking the texts, The Press Democrat shared quoted statements from Schach speaking on that recording, discussing agenda items and mentioning the text messages.
Schach did not respond to multiple emails and a phone call seeking comment.
Herzberg did not respond to several emails. When reached briefly over the phone last month, he told a Press Democrat reporter he was in the middle of a meeting and hung up. He did not respond to a follow-up text message and voicemail.
Brown said the county was reviewing the training and support it provides to its many boards and commissions.
The opacity of the county’s current policy can pose a problem both for county employees who do not have clear instruction on how long to retain a text message, and any member of the public seeking information through the state Public Records Act, said Snyder, the First Amendment Coalition leader.
“Weekly or daily deleting of records is inherently problematic especially if it’s not on a particular schedule,” he said. “Then the public has no way of understanding if they can quickly get those requests in.”
The First Amendment Coalition advocates for a two-year retention period of any local government correspondence as best practice, allowing time for the public to seek any relevant records while not overwhelming limited archival system.
“Airing on the side of greater preservation rather than less is better from a transparency perspective,” said Snyder.
Hopkins, Gore and Hermosillo said they delete their messages regularly to save memory space on their phones and will often direct constituents to send an email instead.
“I wish there were an option on iPhones between 30 days and a year,” Hopkins said, referring to the auto-delete setting she uses. “A year overloads my memory and my phone stops working. It becomes a physical data-flood limitation.”
County Counsel Myers and the county’s five supervisors noted the record retention policy can be reevaluated and updated at any time. However, the board members were largely lukewarm on the idea of specifically adding text messages to the policy.
The supervisors all maintained their text messages do not have much substance and rarely contain anything being sought in a PRA request.
“I came into the job figuring that anything you put in writing is discoverable and also I try and keep my communications professional and keep emotions out of them and save anything that I don’t want other people to read for phone calls and personal conversations,” Coursey, a former newspaper reporter and columnist, said.
That approach is similar to the advice county counsel has given supervisors over the years, instructing them to treat texts like a Post-It note message, Gore said. He added that when it comes to texts, Gore follows Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lead, who he said he knows well enough to text.
“If I text him something positive he writes me back,” Gore said. “If it’s positive he says ‘thanks.’ If it’s negative he says ‘appreciate it’ or ‘will have Courtney follow up with you or have somebody call you.’ I started to do that like he did.”
Rabbitt, the county’s longest serving incumbent supervisor, who, like Gore, is in the final months of his tenure on the board, said his text messages, in most cases, would not add to public discourse.
“In the past where there’s a PRA (request) for texts, I snicker a little bit,” he said, referencing exchanges with relatives and endless political fundraising appeals. “What the hell do people think are in texts aside from family, everybody looking for money?”
You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or [email protected]. On Twitter @MurphReports.
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