Director orders Grand County to run Vault search, rejects custodian self‑report approach

Maggie McGuire, publisher of the Moab Sun News, told the director that Grand County's records officer had stopped running technical Google Vault searches and instead asked subjects to self‑report responsive records on their own accounts — an approach she said was not a reasonable search when the county controls the email accounts. She said a prior Vault query returned tens of thousands of hits and that the records officer declined to rerun a narrower query; she asked for a formal vault search and better documentation of search methods.

County administrators said denials were based on outside counsel advice about pending claims and that some denials stemmed from nonresponsive custodians; the administrator asked to stand on legal advice. Director Pearson found that the county failed to conduct a reasonable search by substituting self‑reporting for a technical search of accounts the county controls. He ordered the county to run a Vault search using parameters provided by the petitioner, disclose the number of hits per account, and submit a notice of compliance within 30 calendar days.