Chapter 44
The General Retention Schedule is issued by the Clearwater State Archives and applies to every municipality. This is the working explanation, not a substitute for the schedule itself.
Every municipal record belongs to a series. The number tells you which retention rule applies, and it is the first thing to establish when a request or a disposal question lands.
Agendas, minutes, ordinances, resolutions, proclamations, board and commission records. Minutes and ordinances are permanent. Agendas and packets are 5 years. The recording of a meeting is 90 days unless your municipality has adopted a longer local rule.
Budgets, audits, warrants, purchase orders, bank records, bonds. Adopted budgets and audits are permanent; most transactional records are 7 years, which is the retention people most often get wrong in the direction of keeping too much.
Applications, employment files, payroll, benefits, discipline. Employment file is 60 years from date of hire. Unsuccessful applications are 3 years. Medical information is filed separately and always has been.
Business, liquor, animal, building and special-event licences and the applications behind them. Generally 5 years after expiry. Building records are the exception and run with the structure.
Ballots, poll books, candidate filings, campaign finance. Federal contests carry a 22-month federal minimum that overrides a shorter state retention. Do not dispose of an election record on a state schedule alone.
A municipality may keep a record longer than the GRS requires. It may never keep one for less. If your local schedule is shorter than the GRS on any series, the GRS wins and your schedule needs amending.
Retention runs from the triggering event named in the schedule, which is often not the date on the document. “5 years after expiry” and “5 years” are different rules and land in different years.
Litigation, audit, and open records requests all suspend disposal. A record subject to a pending request under Chapter 42 may not be destroyed even if its retention expired yesterday. This is the one that becomes a news story.
The certified records officer authorises disposal. Some municipalities also require a governing body resolution — check your local rule before, not after.
The disposal log is itself a permanent record under GRS 100. A municipality that destroyed correctly but logged nothing cannot demonstrate it did, which in practice is the same as having destroyed it wrongly.
Revised 2027
The State Archives issued a revision effective January 2027. Most changes are clarifications, but the electronic communications provisions are new and interact with HB 1149.
The practical work is the crosswalk: reconciling your municipality’s local schedule against the revised GRS and taking an amendment to your governing body. CAMRO publishes a crosswalk template and runs a webinar on it.
Read the summaryWhere HB 1149 stands
The 2027 crosswalk workbook and the model disposal log are in the member library.