HONOLULU— Laws in all but a handful of states give the public access to government e-mail. But what if that e-mail was intentionally deleted or routinely purged?

In Hawaii, Gov. Linda Lingle’s office allowed e-mails of her top aide to be purged. In North Carolina, Gov. Mike Easley’s administration allegedly ordered state workers to delete their e-mail correspondence with his office. And in Missouri, lawsuits claim Gov. Matt Blunt’s office deleted e-mails and ordered the destruction of backup e-mail tapes.

These and other cases raise concerns that millions of public records in the form of e-mails may be disappearing before anyone outside government can read them.

Experts say e-mail archiving systems and better training for state employees will help ensure e-mail is not lost.

“We’re not saying states are trying to do something bad,” said Kevin Joerling, a certified records manager with the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, International, a trade group. “But they don’t understand how important e-mail records can be, and they have to be protected.”

A 50-state survey by the Associated Press of government e-mail retention earlier this year found a wide variety of laws and practices, with the vast majority of states officially treating e-mail like printed documents. But most of the states with e-mail laws allow officials to choose which ones to turn over in Freedom of Information requests and to decide on their own when e-mail records are deleted.

In Hawaii, a recently settled blackmail case that involved undisclosed allegations against Lingle’s former chief of staff, Bob Awana, hinged on e-mails.

The blackmailer, Indian national Rajdatta Patkar, was sentenced last October to a year in prison for demanding $35,000 by e-mail from Awana. According to Patkar’s lawyer, Pamela Byrne, her client discovered e-mails that showed two women served as escorts for Awana and a Hawaii businessman on an official state trip by Lingle to the Philippines.

Awana resigned after Patkar’s arrest, saying nothing about the case, but Lingle has denied that he did anything wrong on a state time.

Russell Pang, chief of media relations for the Lingle administration, said in May that government e-mail records are deleted every two months. He said Awana did not save e-mails to his hard drive or print them out and that Awana’s computer was cleared for use by someone else after Awana resigned last June.

Only a handful of e-mails related to Philippine trips were disclosed to the media, none of them providing evidence of any wrongdoing.

William Tolson, director of legal solutions for Mimosa Systems, Inc., a California-based company that sells e-mail archiving software, said there is no reason states can’t retain e-mails longer. “If companies do it, why can’t the government?” he asked.

Associated Press reports