
Judge issues temporary order to prohibit destruction of records
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.” In her order, Judge Koehler found that, to the contrary, state law “appears to provide that text messages are records.”