Not only did Bend City Councilor Nathan Boddie not show up at a Council meeting this week, he failed to respond to a recent public records request. It’s more evidence that Boddie is no longer doing his job and should resign from the Council.

Last week, we asked the city for all text messages sent by councilors or City Manager Eric King about Boddie. The time period requested included two critical events. The first was when FuturePAC, the political action committee of House Democrats, and other groups announced they were pulling support for Boddie’s candidacy to represent Bend in the Oregon House. FuturePAC claimed he engaged in sexist behavior and remarks, used a homophobic slur and promoted the illegal consumption of alcohol. The second was when Moey Newbold of Bend, an employee at Central Oregon LandWatch, alleged that he groped her six years ago — sticking his hand under her underpants in a bar. Boddie has denied the allegations.

We got back responses to our request from everyone but Boddie. (We should also note that the city did not fully comply with our request. We asked for all texts by councilors and King about Boddie. The city only sought to give us texts sent among councilors and King about Boddie. That could exclude texts sent to other people by councilors about what to do about Boddie serving on Council or action they might take in the House race. We have no idea.)

Government text messages are considered public records under Oregon law if they deal with the public’s business. But most public bodies across the state do not automatically archive the records, as many do with email or social media. Instead, it’s up to the individual elected official or government employee to be the custodian of their own, personal records.

The problem with that is individuals may destroy or fail to release records that the public has a right to see. That’s what happened in this case with Boddie.

We know Boddie failed to reveal records responsive to the request because Mayor Casey Roats and Councilor Sally Russell both included text messages with him. For instance, Boddie told Russell that “a Portland PAC is circulating some horrible slander about me….I questioned some of their campaign finance behavior and they threatened to create some story if I didn’t go along with it.” He said he told the PAC he wasn’t going to pay the PAC any of his campaign funds and it “led to lots of threats from them.” It’s similar to some other statements Boddie at the time.

Boddie is a custodian of public records and failed to release them. He’s not doing his job. He needs to resign from Council.