On September 13, 2009 I posted concerning the City of Margate's (Atlantic County) policy of requiring its officers and employees who use e-mail for municipal business to use their "margate-nj.com" e-mail addresses and not their personal e-mail addresses (e.g. Yahoo.com, Gmail.com, Verizon.net, etc.). That posting is on my blog.

Today, I learned that the Township of Andover (Sussex County) has drafted--but not yet implemented--a more comprehensive policy designed to a) ensure that all official e-mails are preserved on the Township's server and b) prevent e-mail conversation from becoming "meetings" as defined by the Sen. Byron M. Baer Open Public Meetings Act. That draft policy is on-line here.

While it's not perfect, Andover's draft policy is the best I've seen so far. Readers may want to forward it to their own municipalities and school boards and suggest that they adopt something similar.