New Orleans' City Hall flying without a net
by Stephanie Grace - Times-Picayune (excerpt)

Nagin told the television station the council e-mails are "public record, so you gotta make sure the public has access to those documents."

This from the man who doesn't seem a bit bent out of shape that his own e-mails were so casually destroyed.

Irony alert: The administration actually has a procedure, signed by City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields, for handling public records requests.

It says that, upon receiving a record request, the custodian must forward it to the law department within four hours, and provide the records themselves to the law department, not to the person making the request. The memo also spells out the law's exceptions.

Of course, there was a written procedure for retaining e-mails as well. It was submitted by the mayor's technology office, and posted right on the city Web site -- although it was labeled a proposal and apparently never implemented.

Moses-Fields' memo, however, does specifically state that public officials "shall exercise diligence and care in preserving the public records for at least three years."

You'd think the folks in charge of technology, which Nagin has always claimed to be a high priority, would pay attention to the rules for dealing with electronic records.

But then, who bothers to read memos at a circus?