The mystery of Gov. Tim Walz's missing texts

With just four days left until the Legislature's May 20 adjournment deadline, Gov. Tim Walz told reporters his phone had pinged late into the previous night about tense negotiations over billions in infrastructure spending .

"I think my last text exchange was about 12:30 last night, that we were going on this," he said on the morning of May 16.

Yes, but: When Axios asked for the texts from that night about the capital investment bill using the state's public records laws, the governor's office said there weren't any.

Why it matters: The DFL governor's office later told Axios he likely misspoke, but the response raised fresh questions about the administration's approach to transparency and the state's public records laws.

Zoom in: Axios used the state Data Practices Act , which sets requirements for the preservation and release of government records, to request all written communications about the negotiations received or sent by Walz and his staff in the six hours before and after midnight on May 15.

• His office responded with 31 pages of emails, including recaps from news outlets, a forwarded request to include wastewater plant funding in the bill, and a high-level digest of vote schedules and constituent emails sent to Walz, his wife Gwen Walz, and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan by a policy aide.

Between the lines: The response shows Walz did not send or receive any texts or emails of substance about the bill — his biggest legislative priority — during a crucial negotiation window days before adjournment. What they're saying: "If there was no text data responsive to this narrow request, it was likely the case that this communication happened over the phone," press secretary Claire Lancaster told Axios in late June after the request was fulfilled.

• Lancaster said Walz's texts are routinely searched for material responsive to DPA requests, and noted that the administration has "turned over tens of thousands of pages of data in the last year alone."

Zoom out: This isn't the first time the DFL governor, elected in 2018, has faced questions about his office's retention and disclosure of the governor's emails and texts.

• The nonprofit Public Record Media (PRM), which has publicly criticized the administration's handling of such requests, has at times received hundreds of pages of responses with no apparent emails from the governor.
• In 2022, Lancaster told the group the "Governor's decisions are made primarily in meetings with advisors."

Plus: In 2019, his first year in office, he reneged on a campaign promise to release his daily calendars.

• His office points to an advisory opinion that classified the records as private data .

The intrigue: The administration's records retention schedule doesn't specify how long they keep phone text messages.

• PRM's Matt Ehling, a DPA expert, told Axios he interprets that to mean they could delete at will texts that aren't documenting a final government action, as long as someone hasn't asked for them first.
• Lancaster said Walz's office makes public data determinations based on the content of the materials — not the device or means of communication used — and that messages were not deleted or deemed otherwise exempt from the records law in this instance.

The bottom line: A leave-no-(digital) paper trail approach to governing deprives the public of a "documentary record of the governor's decisions" on key issues, Ehling said.

• "I just don't feel like this administration has been as forthcoming as they should."