County council will keep e-mails

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. --- Horry County will begin saving all of county council members' e-mails after some were deleted within 24 hours.

A council committee voted Thursday for the change, which will be temporary until a permanent policy is drafted, The Sun News of Myrtle Beach reported.

E-mails are considered public records in South Carolina.

The newspaper has reported council members regularly deleted e-mail, keeping most for a month but deleting others within a day.

In January, The Sun News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a year's worth of council e-mail. Some members turned in none or very few because they had been deleted, some of them pertaining to county business.

"I think for right now we should keep them all," Councilman Harold Worley said.

The state Department of Archives and History's policy is that e-mail is treated like paper correspondence in three categories.

One, a policy category, should be kept indefinitely. A second category includes budget and administrative business and should be kept five years. The policy sets another category for correspondence that can be deleted immediately.

In 1998, then-County Administrator Linda Angus agreed to use the categories for county correspondence.

Before Thursday's meeting, e-mail was kept for 30 days before being deleted unless council members saved them to their inboxes. E-mail deleted in 24 hours wasn't archived at all.

The temporary policy will require council members to send a copies of e-mail to Council Clerk Pat Hartley, who will archive them.

Councilman Gary Loftus said he has concerns about who determines what e-mail is saved and whether e-mail sent to personal accounts must be saved. He wants those concerns addressed in the new county policy.