ROCHESTER — For 15 years, thousands of town of Rochester emails were stored not on government servers, but on a private resident’s personal system under an informal arrangement that cost taxpayers nothing.
Now that unusual setup has erupted into a legal battle, with the town suing the man who hosted the records and asking a judge to force him to return them — even authorizing the seizure of his server if necessary.
The town filed a lawsuit on May 5 in state Supreme Court in Ulster County against Richard Miller, an Ellenville resident who also serves as Rochester’s chief constable. According to the lawsuit, Miller stored town emails on his personal server free of charge under an unofficial agreement he described as a favor to former Town Supervisor Carl Chipman…