After widespread criticism, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration on Friday ended a policy of automatically deleting New York State employees’ emails after 90 days.
Moving forward, email deletion will be “entirely manual,” Alphonso B. David, the governor’s counsel, said at a meeting convened by Mr. Cuomo’s office.
The decision was a rare reversal for an administration that is generally not inclined to concede in response to criticism. The deletion policy attracted condemnation over the winter, with government watchdog groups and some lawmakers arguing that the speedy deletion of emails destroyed public records and undermined transparency.
Though the state had adopted the policy for state agencies in 2013, it came under particular scrutiny this year as the state finished rolling out a centralized email system and applied the policy in a consistent manner. The outcry reached a high point in March, with several lawmakers unveiling legislation to require the preservation of emails.
The issue of how government emails are preserved has been a much-discussed subject in recent months in light of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of a private email address as secretary of state.
In New York, Mr. Cuomo’s administration has long had a reputation for secrecy, and the deletion policy only added to that image.
Amid mounting pressure to reverse the policy, his office tried to defuse the issue by promising to convene a meeting with other state government leaders to develop a uniform policy on email retention and access to records under the state’s Freedom of Information Law. A letter sent by the governor’s office in March said the meeting would be held within two weeks.
Two weeks ended up turning into two months; the governor’s office said it was difficult to schedule the event given the number of parties involved. The meeting, held at the governor’s office in Midtown Manhattan, fell short of a historic gathering: From the Legislature, only a representative from the Assembly’s Republican minority participated.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, was represented at the meeting by three members of his staff, including his top aide, William J. Mulrow, who expressed disappointment at what he described as a boycott by most of the Legislature.
Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman and Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, both Democrats, sent representatives, and a Republican assemblyman from western New York, Andy Goodell, joined via telephone.
Mr. David said that the administration had conducted extensive research of how other states retained emails, and that that work informed how officials decided New York should proceed.
“The 90-day policy is being eliminated as of today,” he said. “The administration is looking forward to creating a uniform policy that’s consistent with the best practices across the country.”
Mr. Cuomo’s office had a second goal for the meeting on Friday: to push for uniform standards for the Freedom of Information Law, which currently applies to the Legislature in only a limited manner. His aides said the governor’s office planned to introduce legislation that would make the law apply to the Legislature in the same way it applies to the executive branch.
In a telephone interview afterward, Assemblyman Goodell described the meeting as “a press conference in the guise of a summit, aimed at criticizing the Legislature.”
He said it took days of phone calls to the governor’s office just to find out when and where the meeting would be held. “I don’t think his staff wanted me there, or even wanted me to participate, but just couldn’t figure out how to get rid of me,” he said.
In a joint statement, a number of government watchdog groups said they welcomed the end of the 90-day policy. But they called on the governor to issue an executive order under which emails would have to be retained for seven years.
“It’s good that they’re not automatically deleting anymore,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t bring back all of the thousands and thousands of emails and possibly public records that were permanently lost when the automatic deletion policy was adopted.”
Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, a Manhattan Democrat who sponsored legislation to require that emails be retained for at least seven years, said the automatic deletion policy should have been stopped when the criticism first cropped up this winter. The policy, he said, “was entirely driven by the governor, and the governor had the right to suspend it immediately.”
“Instead, he dug himself in, and said, ‘No, I’m right, I’m always right, of course I’m right, I’m the governor,’” Mr. O’Donnell added. “And no one agreed with him.”
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