Scott Orders Investigation Into Deletion Of Emails
TALLAHASSEE (CBS4) -- Gov. Rick Scott on Friday ordered an investigation into the deletion of emails written by the governor and some members of his transition team.
The emails were written before Scott took office in January but after he was elected. They were lost when the private company handling email for Scott's transition office shut down the accounts. The deletion of the emails could be a possible violation of law.
Christopher Kise, a Tallahassee attorney who worked on Scott's transition team, said that many of the emails - including those written by Scott and senior staff- have been recovered by obtaining them from personal email accounts. But he acknowledged that there is no way to know for sure if all emails have been found.
"I would say we recovered 99 percent of them, virtually everyone," Kise said. "Can I say we have 100 percent? No."
Scott sent a letter to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement requesting that authorities "thoroughly investigate" why the email accounts were closed and whether or not any of the emails can be recovered.
Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, said that by admitting that a record was destroyed "they are basically admitting to a violation of the law."
"This is an unintentional violation, but it's a violation nonetheless," Petersen said.
The deletion of the emails was first reported by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times.
Florida has long had a strong public records law that spells out how long government records have to be retained. Petersen said that the law, however, does distinguish between whether someone has destroyed records on purpose. Someone who does not intend to break the law is subject to a fine up to $500.
Petersen, added, however that "maybe the remedy is for someone to say `It was my responsibility and I screwed up.'"
Scott stopped using email once he became governor. But while he was running for the office - and during the transition - he could be seen using his iPad to check the messages. Emails that are available from the transition period show that the governor asked questions on everything from his upcoming schedule to what kind person he should hire as chief-of-staff and whether his stationery had been ordered.
The Scott administration has had clashes with the news media for months over public records as requests have taken weeks or even months to fill. Scott, in an interview with the Associated Press on Friday, said "you give people as much information as you can" and promised that any public record request not handed over in 60 days should be done without any charge to news organizations. The AP and other organizations still haven't gotten some public records that were requested during the spring.
Kise said he discovered back in April that the company hired to run email accounts under the "scotttransition.com" Web address had shut down all but three of those accounts shortly after Scott was inaugurated. He asked the company involved, Rackspace U.S. Inc., to recover the emails but they told Kise in April that there was no "data left" on those mailboxes.
Rachel Ferry, a spokeswoman for the Texas-based company, said it is routine for the company to clear out data once the account is closed.
"We host hundreds of thousands of Internet domains and millions of email accounts," Ferry said. "When a customer terminates their account with us, we delete all data for security purposes. We do not know to whom these email addresses belong, or the contents therein. When we stop getting paid to host them, we delete all data to make room for a new customer."
The back-and-forth with the company prompted Kise to seek copies of emails from the personal accounts of those worked on the transition team. He disputed Petersen's assertion that the Scott transition team violated the law.
"Recognize that if we have a copy of a record, that record has been preserved," Kise said. "The challenge remains for those records, whether electronic or hard copy, which we have not yet recovered through best efforts."
But it's not clear if all the emails have been recovered. Susie Wiles, who had been Scott's campaign manager and was a legislative liaison during the transition, said she used the transition email address along with her personal account. She said she was planning on trying to see if the transition emails were still on her computer.
"I'm going to do my best to see if they are recoverable," Wiles said.
