L.A. city officials use disappearing Google Chats. The city attorney is investigating

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office is conducting an internal review of city employees’ use of Google Chat messages that 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 found out about the disappearing messages in the course of litigation involving the construction of a home in Mount Washington.

Critics say the auto-deleting of messages allows officials to skirt the California Public Records Act and the city’s own document retention policies.

City officials acknowledged last week, in response to inquiries from The Times, that employees have long had the option of communicating with people, both internally and externally, through messages that are permanently auto-deleted after 24 hours. The officials would not explain how the practice complies with the state public records law and city policies that require most records be preserved for a minimum of two years.

“The City of L.A. has a history of corruption and self-dealing, and this allows a platform for those deals to be facilitated without fear that anyone will find the evidence, because the chats are deleted within 24 hours,” said Jamie T. Hall, an attorney representing the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition. “The Public Records Act exists in order to ensure that there’s openness and transparency, and when records are deleted purposefully, it undermines democracy and facilitates corruption.”

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

Among other allegations, the suit claimed that the coalition’s appeal of the construction project did not get a fair hearing because of an alleged practice of holding closed-door meetings and circulating confidential reports among city employees, which sometimes included council members’ positions on projects or appeals, prior to a public hearing with the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee.

The coalition has alleged a pattern of perfunctory public hearings where the issues appeared to have already been decided in advance.

Attorneys for the coalition learned about the disappearing 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 said that Google Chat is “off-the-record for direct and group messages” and includes “the ability to chat with external users.”

An April 6, 2022, memo from the agency advised city employees that in one-on-one and group Google Chat messages, “your conversation is not saved and will automatically delete after 24 hours.” The memo contrasted these messages with those sent through another feature called Chat Spaces that would have the “history” setting turned on and “will be discoverable.”

Eduardo Magos, an assistant general manager for the Information Technology Agency, confirmed the ongoing practice last week, writing in an emailed response to The Times that “Google Chat one-on-one and ad-hoc group messages are automatically, and permanently, deleted after 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 expert in ethics and transparency for the good government watchdog group Common Cause, said the auto-deletion of Google Chat messages “could possibly be violating local and state laws, and is certainly in my mind not best practice and not transparent.”

“State law is pretty clear on the public’s right to access most things that are relevant to the public’s business,” McMorris said. The city isn’t retaining the messages long enough to even determine whether they are subject to disclosure under the Public Records Act or exempt, he added.

He said the disappearing messages allow city officials to discuss public business, including their positions on issues or how they might vote, knowing the messages will be deleted after 24 hours and will not be handed over in public records requests.

Over the last year, The Times has sent questions to city departments about employees’ use of Google Chat. The Times has also filed public records requests for Google Chat messages sent in the 24 hours preceding the request.

Documents obtained by The Times showed that the use of Google Chat by city staffers was widespread and that public business was sometimes discussed on the platform. Screenshots of employee chat logs displayed prominently, “HISTORY IS OFF. Messages sent with history off are deleted after 24 hours.”

One public records request from The Times to then-City Councilmember Paul Krekorian’s office for Google Chats sent or received by anyone in the office on Dec. 5 produced 38 pages of messages that ranged from mundane personal matters, such as lunch and dinner plans, to city business, including the activities of Krekorian and Mayor Karen Bass.

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

The Times received those messages from Krekorian’s office after requesting correspondence related to the City Council’s unusual decision to vote down the nomination of neighborhood council leader Jamie York to the city ethics commission. The Times made the public records request on Aug. 21, 2023, for relevant correspondence from Aug. 16 to Aug. 21.

Esten has not responded 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 spokesperson for Bass, would not say whether the “disappearing” feature violated any rules regarding the retention of records.

He said the city’s Information Technological Agency “exclusively controls settings for the system.”

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

The agreement between the city and the coalition, signed by a judge on Dec. 11, said the city attorney’s office “would immediately conduct an internal investigation regarding the City’s record retention and related policies and seek to brief the City Council in closed session.”

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

The City Council was scheduled to confer with legal counsel about the case during a closed session Dec. 11.

“The city has an obligation to preserve these records, so we’re hoping that the City Council will stop this practice,” said Mark Kenyon, president of the Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition and a Mount Washington resident. “We think the public has the right to know what its government is doing.”