Records Retention & Access Review

Most governance regimes give members an inspection right and impose no retention obligation to make it meaningful. The record that would answer the question is not withheld; it no longer exists, and no rule was broken by its not existing.

The gap this addresses

Minutes are summarised rather than recorded. Contracts sit in a departed manager’s files. Officer email accounts close at turnover. A member who asks in year three for the year-one authorisation is told, accurately, that it cannot be located.

The points below test two separate things that are often conflated: whether the record exists, and whether the member can reach it. An entity can fail either independently.

The review points

10 points, grouped by what each tests. This set is a draft. It would be versioned, opened for public comment, and re-applied to every prior review when it changes, in line with our Methodology.

What must be kept

1. Retention schedule. Whether any written retention schedule exists, what it covers, and who adopted it. Its absence is itself the finding.
2. Minutes as a record of authority. Whether minutes record motions, movers, votes, abstentions, and dissents — or only that a meeting occurred and business was discussed.
3. Contract file. Whether executed agreements, amendments, and change orders are retained with the approval that authorised them.
4. Custody at turnover. What happens to records, email, and shared drives when an officer, board member, or managing agent is replaced, and whether a handover inventory exists.

What a member can reach

5. The inspection mechanism. Who decides an inspection request, on what standard, within what period, and whether a refusal must state a reason.
6. Cost and format. Fees charged, whether copies are permitted, and whether records are produced in a form that can actually be read and searched.
7. Redaction practice. What is withheld, on what stated basis, and whether the withholding is logged so its scope can be tested.
8. Confidentiality provisions. Whether any adopted policy, house rule, or portal term reaches, on its face, records a statute opens to members.

Integrity of what is produced

9. Revision history. Where records are published through a portal or document library, whether a document was replaced after posting, and whether the superseded version is still obtainable.
10. Completeness against known events. Whether the produced set accounts for meetings, resolutions, and payments that other documents show occurred.

Where this applies

• Residential community governance — minutes, contracts, and the document library.
• Public agencies — records-request handling, exemption logs, and response timeliness.
• Municipal governance — meeting minutes, resolutions, and the retention schedules that already bind most public bodies but not the quasi-public ones.
• Hospital & health boards — committee minutes and conflict disclosures.

How this connects to the rest of the work

A retention schedule with a stated period, a custody rule at turnover, and a duty to state a reason for refusal are three lines of statutory text. They belong in a model records standard, and they make every other review practice on this page enforceable.

The in-field evidence base for Focus 1 — building by building, firm by firm — is published at condoscoopsnyc.org, which documents the underlying statutory gaps this practice was built to detect.

Other review practices

TASFGA is pre-incorporation. This review practice is a published draft, not an offered service, and no engagement is available. Members of a governed body who wish to apply these points to their own entity are free to do so.