Every retention rule in Dekree is extracted from the official DTMB schedules and checked line by line against the source. In July 2026 that process caught a defective row in the state's published General Schedule #29. We reported it, and the state fixed the file the next day.
Every records vendor says some version of the same sentence: we monitor the regulations so you do not have to. It is easy to say and hard to check. So here is what the sentence means at Dekree, concretely, and one occasion where the process produced something you can verify yourself on a state website.
The retention rules in Dekree are not typed in from a summary or reconstructed from general knowledge. Each of the 31 current DTMB General Retention Schedules for Michigan local government is pulled from the official source, and every record series in it is extracted item by item: 2,149 active series in all. The counts are reconciled in both directions, so an item in our table that is not in the document, or an item in the document that is not in our table, fails the check. Retention periods and statutory authority are quoted as the schedule prints them. And because the state genuinely revises these documents, we check the official schedule index every week and re-pull anything that changed.
That level of reading has a side effect. When you reconcile a document line by line, you notice things a casual reader never would.
In July 2026, working through General Schedule #29 (Township Treasurers), our extraction stopped on item 209, Bond Files. In the tabular PDF published on michigan.gov, the row was defective: the description ended mid-sentence at the bottom of page 9, and the retention column was missing the disposition entirely. The document simply never said what a township treasurer should do with bond files, or when.
That is not a cosmetic problem. Under Michigan law, an approved Retention and Disposal Schedule is the only legal authority to destroy a local government record (MCL 399.811-399.812, with criminal penalties for unlawful destruction under MCL 750.491; the full framework is covered in our records retention guide). A treasurer working from the published PDF had no printed authority for an entire record series, and nothing in the document flagged that anything was missing. Unless you read to the bottom of page 9 and noticed the sentence stopped halfway, the schedule looked complete.
Our rule for source documents is strict: quirks are preserved exactly and flagged, never guessed at and never quietly repaired. A truncated row is not something we would ever fill in with a plausible number. So instead of guessing, we went upstream to the signed 2009 original of General Schedule #29, the document the tabular PDF was derived from. The original shows the complete item: bond files are retained until final maturity of the bond plus 11 years, then destroyed, with the schedule citing MCL 600.5807(7) as the underlying limitations period.
At that point we had two documents from the same authority that disagreed, one signed and complete, one published and truncated. The published one is the copy every township treasurer in Michigan actually downloads.
On July 12, 2026, we reported the defect to DTMB Records Management Services: which schedule, which item, which page, what the signed original shows. The reply came back the next day: the published file was fixed. Download General Schedule #29 from the state’s records management site today and item 209 is complete, description and disposition both, exactly as the signed original has said since 2009.
Credit where it is due: a one-business-day turnaround from a state records office is excellent, and it reflects well on the people who maintain these documents. Our part was simply reading closely enough to notice, and caring enough about the answer to ask. The result is a small, durable public good: every Michigan township that downloads that schedule now gets the complete rule, whether or not they have ever heard of Dekree.
This is the process behind every retention rule Dekree applies. All 2,149 series from the official DTMB schedules, quoted as printed, with the source document behind every item. A weekly watch on the state index catches revisions, and when a schedule changes, the rules underneath your records are re-pulled from the source. Where a document prints something unusual, Dekree preserves it exactly and flags it for your review. The schedule stays the state’s; the close reading is ours.
The uncomfortable truth about compliance software is that the buyer usually cannot audit the dataset. A retention table looks equally authoritative whether it was extracted from the official schedules or paraphrased from a blog post. So when you evaluate any records platform, including ours, ask the questions this story answers:
A vendor who reads the schedules closely enough to get one corrected has, at minimum, read the schedules. That is the bar. It should not be a differentiator, but in this market it is.
Every retention rule in Dekree comes from the official DTMB General Retention Schedules for Michigan local government: 2,149 active record series across all 31 current schedules, extracted from the official published documents with every item checked against the source. Retention periods and statutory authority are quoted as the schedule prints them, never paraphrased and never reconstructed from memory.
Dekree checks the official DTMB schedule index every week. When the state revises a schedule, we re-pull the document from the source, retire the superseded series, and seed the new ones. Retired series are never deleted, so a record already assigned to one keeps resolving and disposal logs stay intact. The state genuinely does revise these documents: on March 31, 2026, General Schedule #24 lost 40 of its 63 items to the newer General Schedule #35.
Item 209 of General Schedule #29 (Township Treasurers), covering Bond Files, was defective in the tabular PDF published on michigan.gov: the description ended mid-sentence at the bottom of page 9 and the retention column was missing the disposition. The signed 2009 original shows the complete item: retain until final maturity of the bond plus 11 years, then destroy, citing MCL 600.5807(7). Dekree reported the defect to DTMB Records Management Services on July 12, 2026, and the state confirmed the published file was fixed the next day.
No. Dekree quotes the schedules as the state prints them. Where a source document prints something unusual, the item is preserved exactly and flagged for review rather than quietly corrected. When a defect is genuine, the fix goes through the state: we report it to DTMB, the state corrects the official document, and Dekree re-pulls from the corrected source. The state remains the authority; Dekree is the verification layer that reads it closely.
This article is educational information for Michigan public bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: legislature.mi.gov.