Iowa County Circuit Court Judge Margaret Koehler issued a temporary order on Wednesday to stop the destruction of public records in the form of text messages, following the filing of a civil complaint against the village of Arena.
Former Village Clerk Taylor Scott filed the complaint against the village and its records custodians a day after the Arena Village Board voted 5-1 to declare that text messages henceforth were “not subject to maintenance as a public record,” according to a press release from Scott’s attorney. In her order, Judge Koehler found that, to the contrary, state law “appears to provide that text messages are records.”
The same ordinance also changed the formula for calculating fees for locating public records to include the total cost of personnel, including wages, fringe benefits and all other benefits and related overhead expenses.
