Shasta County supervisors on June 30 approved a new countywide email-retention policy after a discussion that weighed transparency, records compliance and administrative burden.
By a 3-1 roll call vote, with Supervisor Crye opposed and Supervisor Plummer absent, the board adopted Policy Resolution No. 2026-02, which updates the county’s Administrative Manual and establishes Policy 4-400, Electronic Message Retention Policy while repealing the older Policy 3-401, Electronic Message Retention.
The adopted version sets county email retention at two years, followed by a one-month grace period before the new rule takes effect, according to the board’s June 30 draft minutes. During the discussion, Senior Administrative Analyst Bryce Ritchie said the change was intended to balance fiscal responsibility, public transparency and security, while County Counsel Joseph Larmour said staff remain responsible for preserving records that must be kept outside Outlook.
Chief Information Officer Tom Schreiber also told the board that there was no way to automate the process without additional software, and that staff would need to save emails they were required to keep in shared servers or other locations outside Outlook, according to the minutes.
The policy package also renumbers the county’s HIPAA privacy and security policy from 8-400 to 9-101 and makes other administrative manual updates, the meeting summary shows.
