I am so glad that you shared this information - more evidence that technology is never neutral and needs iron-clad guardrails to protect democracy, currently in grave peril on many fronts. 

Also, I thank you for bringing “Signal” to my attention so I can use it!

Jon: There is no doubt we have a corrupt government, but that is very different than doing something that is illegal. If you are accusing someone of a crime, you need to tread lightly unless you have evidence. It is illegal to delete anything considered a public record under our state Public Records Act and any elected official or public employee knows that. They receive training on this.  We have archives and schedules for deletion after so many years based on classification.  The only person you have mentioned that you know uses the Signal and would be breaking the law if using Signal for public business is the PUD Commissioner but you do not tell us what evidence you have of this action or if it used for public business.  See RCW 42.56.335.  Members of political parties would not be covered by the WA Public Records Act, at least until they are elected. What you say may be true, but you should not be saying this publicly unless you have evidence that would likely stand in a court of law.  And if elected officials are using Signal for non-public business, it is not a crime.  Knowing or believing something and proving it are two different matters.  I am not big on defending local government, but I am big on defending democracy and our legal system. I also do not wish to see you lose your credibility because we need public watchdogs like you. 

Hat tip to Wendy (Hi Wendy!) for explaining those critical distinctions!   What truly matters, IMHO, is that the decision-makers - whether elected (and frankly, even “the employed”) - keep all, and I mean ALL PUBLIC BUSINESS (the mechanics:  communications, deliberations, action-taking processes) completely  transparent and open to us.  Whether our public business is conducted by ‘staff’ or electeds, the clarity of the legislative intent of both the Public Records Act and the Open Public Meetings Act brilliant - I dearly love this:

Signal, Session et al. E2EE messaging tools are essential these days.  Anyone without more than a passing sense of what ‘privacy’ means (or mass surveillance, corporate data brokering, etc.) would do well to learn about it.

As for politicians…

Old days—a simple phone call was more or less private (unless someone was evesdropping, or you were sharing a partyline with a neighbor).  The content of these calls was not normally recorded.  Meetings where nobody took notes.  Hallway conversations.

I remember lobbying for a bill years ago—lots of reps / senators backing it.  Had to do with contract bargaining for WWU staff—the October deadline / status-quo-if-you-can’t-find-agreement-by-then rule that inclines so heavily toward management who can use it as a ‘wait-them-out’ tactic to block cost-of-living increases, etc.  Everyone we talked with loved it, supported it; and most signed-on to it.  Then one day, it disappeared.  Not a politician to be found who could remember ever hearing of it, let alone supporting it.  We were advised later, by an insider, that someone with connections to the UW had made a phone call to someone in Olympia…

It’s the access enjoyed by insiders, donors, power-brokers et al.—the proverbial “smoke-filled back-rooms” that seems most worrisome to me.  Whether they use Signal or not—I mean, signal may save them a keystroke (specifically, the delete key), but it’s not enabling them to withold public information that they weren’t already well practiced at withholding. 

For what it’s worth—Signal and similar messenging apps could be blocked from gov. computers / phones / etc.  But with so many other ways to communicate “off-the-record”—I’m not sure it would do much good.

That said—if a politician is using Signal—and has no records to show for it (or you don’t believe their account of the conversation, etc.)—then they deserve to be called-out for it—publicly—just as we might do if we found out who the mystery person was who disappeared our bargaining bill all those years ago.  And inline with @Wendy Harris above—if a judge thinks there is probabl cause (or “reasonable suspician” if they’re a cop in the mood for a potentially deadly vehicular persuit through a town year you—shout-out to you Reps Rule & Timmons 😉 ) to think they’re breaking the law with Signal—then a formal investigation seems appropriate.

Thanks everyone for your valuable commentary. Wendy, since this publication has actual credibility, they would not have printed this article with no evidence to back it up. Unlike Ralph Schwartz of Cascadia Daily News who prints whatever he is told to on the topic of broadband by the Corporate Democrats. Well, ok, Ralph prints whatever they tell him to on any topic.
Hence, before I released this article, I provided the owners with screenshots of the Signal accounts of the people I’ve mentioned here. I have also been pouring through public record requests from the Port and PUD.
I do know for a fact that they insist on discussing public matters that should be discussed in public via untraceable communications methods as they insisted on doing this on the topic of broadband. I would love to see a real investigation on this matter as it’s obvious that Atul is probably NOT the only one doing this. For example, Todd Lagastee tired to “broker a peace deal” between Andrew Reding and I after Sharon Shewmake and Andrew went on their pathological lying spree about me after my legitimate work linking the Shewmake Cartel to big telecom and Rick Larsen to species ending technologies and warmongering like nukes. My only “crime” was telling you the truth. When Andrew Redding said, “no Todd, we’re going to screw Jon and his family over. That’s the Party Order!!!,” Todd informed me of Andrew’s decision via Signal and was happy to do it. They even sacrificed the TAGNW Broadband Strategy Document over it. So much for caring about the community and workers. It’s why he insisted on using Signal in the first place. I can go on… Redding’s fascism knows no bounds. If you say anything bad about the Shewmake cartel, especially if it’s the truth, they will act like any other fascists in history and fire up the propoganda machine.  
I think the complete lack of real progress on most issues that effect workers in this town shows us that a lot of serious corruption is taking place in the background.
Yes, Satpal specifically is incredibly corrupt and allows his personal beliefs to dictate every conversation he has. He needs to be investigated. He is also too immature to be in charge of so much money. I put it this way when describing most of the Corporate Democrats to others, “if you had a free cure to cancer and AIDS and wanted to talk to him about it, but Satpal didn’t like you personally, he would refuse to listen to you.” But again, that’s true of most of our elected officials.