Anaheim will soon prohibit city employees and councilmembers from using personal devices and accounts for their City Hall work and will start keeping records longer as part of efforts to stamp out opportunities for future bad behavior.
The City Council has embarked on exploring reforms to make following Anaheim’s corruption saga, and Tuesday night its attention turned to preventing employees or elected officials from sidestepping public records requests.
The reforms come after former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu admitted in his plea agreement with federal prosecutors to using his personal email address for communications in the Angel Stadium negotiations and then deleting those records. The changes will give the city more control over accessing records and devices of its employees.
“The risk of having either documents not preserved, or the intentional sidestepping of the public records act, really calls us to do what is in the safest and the best interest of our city,” Mayor Ashleigh Aitken said. “It might require us to have a heavier purse, but I think it’s a small sacrifice.”
The updated policy will require councilmembers and employees issued city cellphones, such as upper level managers, to only use those devices for city-related business. The phones would have software installed to restrict deleting accounts and allow data to be backed up.
Anaheim will also begin keeping email records for at least 24 months, substantially longer than the current 90-day retention period. City Clerk Theresa Bass also said the city will look into posting PDFs of records requests responses online.
The council supported the recommendations discussed Tuesday. However, Councilmember Jose Diaz expressed concerns that someone would still be able to circumvent the rules if they wanted.
“All we are doing here is to keep honest people honest,” Diaz said. “If a crook wants to use and bypass the law with intention, (they) will use their personal email, regardless of…
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