Gov. Bob Ferguson set the rules of the game. On Feb. 17, 2025, he announced that he was suspending Washington’s auto-deletion of Microsoft Teams chats, a policy that was quietly erasing tens of millions of public records every week, pending a six-month review.
That deadline has come and gone. It has been seven months. What has the public received?
Silence.
If Ferguson needed more time, he could have said so. He could have announced an extension, explained the complexities, and invited public input. Instead, he’s abandoned his responsibility entirely, leaving the people to wonder why transparency only applies when it’s convenient.
This isn’t a minor bureaucratic slip. It’s a breach of trust. The attorney general’s own Model Rules warn that auto-deletion policies are dangerous. His staff issued memoranda years ago flagging Office 365 and Teams as creating obvious risks: unreliable searches, inability to preserve records, exposure to litigation. Agencies were warned that the law demanded greater care, not shortcuts.
The problem was never that the governor lacked notice. The problem is that when confronted with it, after defending what he knew shouldn’t be defended, he promised leadership and transparency, but has delivered neither.
And the review he promised? Conducted behind closed doors. No hearings. No legislative engagement. Even the Washington Coalition for Open Government, the state’s leading open government watchdog, has repeatedly reached out to the governor’s office to offer expertise. They’ve been ignored.
This secrecy directly contradicts the spirit of Washington’s Public Records Act. The PRA’s preamble says: “The people … do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.” Yet Ferguson is doing exactly that … deciding behind closed doors what the public may and may not know.
Meanwhile, the destruction was staggering. WaTech staff acknowledged that tens of millions of chats were being erased every week. Entire streams of government business, including conversations about avoiding transparency, vanished.
In court, Ferguson and his successor, Attorney General Nick Brown, have compounded the problem by advancing one of the most cynical legal arguments imaginable: that if the government destroys records before a request is filed, the public has no remedy. In other words, the faster and more thoroughly an agency erases the people’s records, the more insulated it becomes.
For two men who frequently rail against the anti-democratic habits of President Donald Trump, how do they square this paradox? They denounce secrecy in Washington, D.C., while defending it in Washington state. They warn against autocracy in the other D.C., while running an accountability process at home with the transparency of a locked vault.
So what now?
First, Ferguson must release the review immediately. He must also release, or better yet, publish on his website now, all records and communications pertaining to his suspension and review, including any legal advice from the Washington Attorney General’s Office. His office has been slow-walking responses to public records requests on this matter. That delay is unacceptable.
Second, auto-deletions must be ended permanently. No more loopholes, no more “transitory” excuses. A record is defined by its content and function, not by how inconvenient it is for an agency to retain it.
Third, the Legislature must step in. This process cannot be left to executive fiat. Lawmakers must codify protections for digital communications, Teams chats, text messages and other platforms so that our most modern records do not become our least accountable.
Finally, any reform must include independent oversight and public engagement. The PRA belongs to the people. Its administration cannot be left to agencies that have already shown a willingness to exploit its gaps.
Washington once led the nation in open government. The people adopted the PRA to prevent exactly this sort of bureaucratic erasure. Ferguson’s failure to meet his own deadline is not just a missed deliverable. It is a flashing warning light that our most basic democratic safeguards are being treated as optional.
Ferguson set this course in motion, he set the deadline, he made the decision to handle this behind closed doors. He cannot now hide from the people who are owed an explanation.
The people’s right to know is overdue.
