On his last day in office, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley signed an executive order declaring that email messages are just like other public records and should be saved. This is a remarkable turn of events given the months of a law suit over this very issue. (See NC Gov Holds Hearings on What Emails to Delete from April 2008.) In March, Debbie Crane, the former public affairs director for the state Department of Health and Human Services, was fired and shortly afterwards she said in an interview that she and other top public information officers were told to delete email after sending it to the governor's office.
But now the rules have changed. New Gov. Beverly Perdue learned of the order Friday, according to the Charlotte News and Observer.
"It was a fitting end to a puzzling tenure," said John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, a Raleigh think tank that publishes the Carolina Journal and is a party to the lawsuit. "I guess the idea caught him on a good day and he said, 'OK.' "
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