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Issaquah council receives Public Records and OPMA training; staff urges caution on texts and social posts
Summary
City attorney Rachel Bender Turpin and City Clerk Tisha Gizer told the Issaquah City Council that public records law can reach texts and social media posts tied to city business, that the city archives roughly 80 million emails and is now capturing council text messages, and warned of civil penalties and heavy redaction workloads for complex requests.
City attorney Rachel Bender Turpin and City Clerk Tisha Gizer gave the Issaquah City Council a detailed briefing May 4 on the Public Records Act and the Open Public Meetings Act, with a special emphasis on social media, texts and electronic records.
Turpin summarized the legal standard: records “relating to the conduct of government” are broadly defined and may include emails, texts, images and social posts. She advised officials to assume substantive communications about city business are public records and to preserve them. “Text messages and social media posts on your personal devices and accounts may constitute an agency’s public records,” Turpin said.
Gizer told the council the city’s digital footprint is large — roughly 40 terabytes outside third‑party systems and about 80 million emails — and that public records requests were up 56% year‑over‑year. To reduce legal and operational risk, the city now archives text messages from senior staff, the police department and council cell phones, enabling e‑discovery if records are requested.
Both presenters emphasized practical steps: prefer city accounts for city work, avoid forwarding city emails to personal accounts when possible, retain substantive texts and social posts, and use OneDrive or other city systems to preserve records. They also outlined the high cost of redaction and the narrow scope of statutory exemptions (attorney‑client, certain personnel and investigative records), and warned of potential court fines and attorney‑fee awards for violations.
What happens next: Staff encouraged council members to consider dedicated city accounts for work communications, to keep substantive records on city systems, and to expect occasional requests to attest (Nissan affidavits) about searches of personal devices when those devices are implicated in public records requests.
Sources: City attorney Rachel Bender Turpin and City Clerk Tisha Gizer at the May 4, 2026 meeting.
