Email & Public Records

The tie between open meetings and public records is indistinguishable. But the status of email as public record is not well understood. We were told the other night that while the listserv constitutes an official meeting (due to the quorum), email between 3-4 individuals was not a problem. That's not accurate according to the Records Branch of the NC Office of Archives and History. Nor do they have a definition of substantive. They do distinguish between those records that have long term value and those that have short-term value. I'm still waiting on a response from the Attorney General's office about how email/listservs are viewed in terms of open meetings.

QUESTION
Are email communications considered to be official records? It's my understanding that 'substantive' discussions are considered as official, but I'm not sure what constitutes 'substantive' and if the email has to be sent from a town-owned computer/email address to fall under this provision of the law. My advisory board has begun making our listserv discussions public:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/chtechcomm/
In this case, does the website itself become the public record, the individual emails, or only those emails sent from town addresses?

RESPONSE
Any record (email or not) is a public record if it's by or to someone in government for the purpose of transacting public business. How 'substantive' the email is not an issue. For example, my emails to Linda (in our office) that simply give her a completed form are still public records, even though there's nothing interesting about them. They do qualify for destruction under the Guidelines for Public Records with Short-Term Value, because they transmit a document without comment.

The sending or receiving address is irrelevant. That's part of why we strongly recommend that elected officials, especially, do not conduct public business with private email accounts. While their personal records do not become public records simply by association, those personal records would be at risk of exposure in the case of a dispute over a request.

I would judge the website you've set up for the listserv as public. I would limit that judgment to the files most closely associated with the text of the list itself, thereby excluding both the code that causes the website to function, and any other web content that may be hosted by the same account, server, or provider. Again, I know of no mandate that public records must be posted to the web.