On Feb. 4, a Broward school district construction committee met to select a contractor for a $71 million renovation at Hollywood Hills High School. Absent from the meeting was School Board member Beverly Gallagher -- but she made sure she didn't miss much.

From Washington, D.C., Gallagher exchanged 49 text messages that day with Linda Ferrara, a former Cooper City commissioner and Gallagher ally who sat on the selection committee, according to phone records supplied by the school district.

Gallagher also exchanged 15 text messages that day with Bill Ellis, vice president of James B. Pirtle Construction -- the company that won the Hollywood Hills contract.

Those messages could become a crucial part of the criminal case against Gallagher, who was arrested last month in an FBI sting for allegedly taking kickbacks in exchange for favors for contractors seeking work from the school district.

Among the favors: Helping one company get hired by Pirtle as a subcontractor on the Hollywood Hills job, according to a criminal complaint.

What exactly the text messages say, however, is not publicly known. The school district does not keep copies of the text messages sent and received by the board or the staff. The school district retains monthly bills containing logs of who sent and received the messages, but the district does not receive records showing the content of the messages from its service provider.

School district attorney Ed Marko said the law is unclear about whether government agencies are required to collect and save text messages under the public records law. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum has formed a committee to examine text messaging and other new electronic communications methods and their implications for the public-records law.

It's unclear if the FBI independently collected Gallagher's text messages. An agency spokeswoman did not return phone messages.

Between Nov. 12 and Feb. 4, the day of the Hollywood Hills contract award, Gallagher exchanged a total of 98 text messages and five phone calls with Ellis, a potential violation of the School Board's ``cone of silence'' rules barring vendors from lobbying School Board members about outstanding contract offers.

Companies that violate this rule can be disqualified from the bidding process. (The Hollywood Hills project was later canceled by the school district because of budget cuts.)

Neither Ellis nor Ferrara returned messages seeking comment about the text messages.

Between September 2008 and February 2009, Gallagher also exchanged 43 text messages and phone calls with Pirtle Construction's lobbyist at the time, Neil Sterling, the records show. Sources say Sterling is also part of the corruption probe.

Gallagher also exchanged text messages routinely with an undercover FBI agent using the name Pat Foster. The agent said he represented a glass company and a construction firm seeking work from the district. According to the criminal complaint, Gallagher received $12,500 in kickbacks for helping the agent's faux-clients.

The criminal complaint says the investigation of Gallagher began in earnest in November 2007, when Gallagher told Foster at a social gathering that they could ``make a lot of money together,'' the complaint says.

But e-mail records show that the undercover agent had established a rapport with Gallagher more than a year earlier, in the summer of 2006.

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