The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office is conducting an internal review of city employees’ use of Google Chat messages, which are automatically deleted after 24 hours.

The investigation was the result of an agreement between the city and a community group, the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition, which learned of the missing messages during a dispute over the construction of a home in Mount Washington.

Critics say automatically deleting messages allows officials to circumvent the California Public Records Act and city lawmakers Document Retention Guidelines.

In response to questions from the Times, city officials acknowledged last week that employees have long had the ability to communicate with people both internally and externally through messages that are permanently automatically deleted after 24 hours. Officials would not explain how the practice complies with state public records law and city guidelines, which require most records to be retained for at least two years.

“The city of LA has a long history of corruption and self-dealing, and this allows a platform to conduct these deals without fear of anyone finding the evidence as the chats are deleted within 24 hours,” said Jamie T . Hall, an attorney representing the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition: “The Public Records Act exists to ensure openness and transparency, and when records are intentionally deleted, it undermines democracy and encourages corruption.”

In a lawsuit filed in July 2023, the coalition challenged the city’s approval to build a single-family home on a steep slope in Mount Washington.

The lawsuit alleged, among other things, that the coalition’s appeal against the construction project did not receive a fair hearing because of its alleged practice of holding closed-door meetings and disseminating confidential reports among city employees, sometimes including the positions of council members Projects involved making appeals before a public hearing before the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Board.

The coalition claims there is a pattern of perfunctory public hearings where the issues appear to have been decided in advance.

The coalition’s lawyers learned about the missing messages through the lawsuit’s discovery process.

One document the coalition obtained through the lawsuit was a July 16, 2020, memo from the city’s Information Technology Agency. The memo states that Google Chat is “off-the-record for direct and group messaging” and ” the ability to chat with external users.

An April 6, 2022, agency memo advised city staff that in individual and group Google Chat messages, “your conversation will not be saved and will be automatically deleted after 24 hours.” The memo contrasted those messages with those sent through another feature called “Chat Spaces,” which had the “history” setting turned on and was “discoverable.”

Eduardo Magos, deputy director general of the Information Technology Agency, confirmed the ongoing practice last week, writing in an email response to The Times that “individual and ad hoc group messages in Google Chat will be automatically and permanently deleted.” 24 hours.”

The disappearing chat feature is part of a Google Workspace suite that is accessible to about 26,000 employees and has been available in some form since the early 2010s, when the city began contracting with Google for email and other services, Magos said .

Sean McMorris, an ethics and transparency expert at the good government watchdog group Common Cause, said the automatic deletion of Google Chat messages “could potentially violate local and state laws and, in my opinion, is certainly not best practice and is not transparent.” “

“State law is pretty clear about the public’s right of access to most things relevant to public relations,” McMorris said. The city doesn’t retain the messages long enough to even determine whether they are subject to or exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act, he added.

He said the missing messages would allow city officials to discuss public matters, including their positions on issues or how to vote, knowing that the messages will be deleted after 24 hours and will not be turned over in public records requests .

Last year, The Times sent questions to city officials about employees’ use of Google Chat. The Times also filed public records requests for Google Chat messages sent in the 24 hours before the request.

Documents obtained by the Times showed that use of Google Chat by city employees was widespread and that public matters were sometimes discussed on the platform. Screenshots of employee chat logs prominently displayed: “HISTORY IS OFF. Messages sent with history disabled will be deleted after 24 hours.”

A Times public request to then-City Councilman Paul Krekorian’s office for Google Chats sent or received by anyone in the office on Dec. 5 yielded 38 pages of messages ranging from everyday personal matters such as lunch and dinner plans to to… city business, including the activities of Krekorian and Mayor Karen Bass.

Another records request produced documents showing that Hugh Esten, a spokesman for Krekorian, discussed a “nomination” on Google Chat last year with Chelsea Lucktenberg, spokeswoman for Councilman Eunisses Hernandez. Esten also discussed “emails” with Stella Stahl, spokesperson for Councilmember Nithya Raman.

The Times received the messages from Krekorian’s office after requesting correspondence related to the City Council’s unusual decision to reject Neighborhood Council Chairman Jamie York’s nomination to the city’s Ethics Commission. The Times made a public records request on August 21, 2023 for relevant correspondence from August 16 to 21.

Esten did not respond to several questions about whether the use of Google Chat in Krekorian’s office violated public records laws. Current City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson’s office did not respond to questions about Google Chat.

In response to questions from The Times earlier this month, Zach Seidl, a spokesman for Bass, would not say whether the disappearing feature violated records retention rules.

He said the city’s Information Technology Agency “exclusively controls the settings of the system.”

Last month, the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition threatened to file another lawsuit over the city’s use of Google Chat.

The agreement between the city and the coalition, signed by a judge on Dec. 11, states that the district attorney’s office will “immediately conduct an internal investigation into the city’s record retention and related policies and attempt to resolve the issue.” “To inform the city council in a closed meeting.”

Karen Richardson, a spokeswoman for City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office said, “We are gathering information and reviewing our processes,” adding that “we do not comment on pending litigation.”

The city council was scheduled to discuss the case with legal counsel in a closed meeting on December 11th.

“The city has an obligation to maintain these records, so we hope the City Council will stop this practice,” said Mark Kenyon, president of the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition and a Mount Washington resident. “We believe the public has the right to know what their government is doing.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.