NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s e-mail box has not been storing “sent” items, an issue raised in a report by a technology group hired by the city as it faced a public records lawsuit over Nagin’s messages. The city ended its contract with the Louisiana Technology Council earlier this month, when city technology chief M. Harrison Boyd said the group used flawed methods and reached unfounded conclusions. The council has stood behind its findings — work it called “an initial success” in the report. When asked about the issue of sent e-mails, Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said the city “cannot comment on preliminary findings that have proven to be inaccurate.” She also referred to comments made by Boyd and the city attorney, who on Monday threatened a lawsuit if the council didn’t turn over data gleaned from city servers. The finding about a lack of “sent” messages was included in a July 6 report by the council and which the city made public Monday. Technology council President Mark Lewis said his group planned to turn over 18,000 items recovered as part of its work. He said those items include notes, calendar items and e-mails, though Lewis could not say how many e-mails. He said the council recovered a Nagin e-mail box it believed had been intentionally deleted and was in the process of trying to “disseminate” its contents when its contract with the city was terminated. The city hired the council to help determine whether more e-mails could be found as part of a lawsuit. New Orleans station WWL-TV requested Nagin’s e-mails from July 2008 to December 2008. The city discovered about 150 e-mails and blamed a faulty server for not being able to produce more. Nagin, as part of the lawsuit, was said to receive 50 to 100 e-mails a day and send up to five a day. At a news conference July 1, a technology expert working with the council, Christopher Reade, said potentially years’ worth of Nagin’s e-mails had been deleted and that he believed it took a “technically competent human action” to do that. that notion.