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“Are there things we don’t want you to know? Yes,” Brian Burgess, Rick Scott’s communication director (or misdirector in many cases) tells the Times/Herald’s Tallahassee Bureau. “There are things we don’t want to broadcast to our opponents.”
Florida’s Sunshine Laws are supposed to foster an open and transparent government, but time and time again, Scott’s administration has seemingly tried to skirt such laws, and an investigation by the Times/Herald reveals that few members of the administration use their public email addresses and prefer to communicate through their own private email accounts.
“I rarely check and almost never respond to work email because of the open records law,” Mary Anne Carter, one of Scott’s top lieutenants who is paid $150,000 a year, replied to an email sent to her from the office of Sen. Bill Nelson.
That seems to be the general practice of the Scott campaign, though it might not be legal.
The Code of Personal Responsibility in the Governor’s Office discourages the staff from using personal e-mail for state business “unless such use is necessary upon a reasonable evaluation of the circumstances at hand.”
If personal e-mail is used, the code encourages the employee to forward public records to a state account or retain the messages according to Department of State policy.
Few of the governor’s top staffers have forwarded private e-mails to their public accounts, according to hundreds of e-mails the Times/Herald has inspected.
But what is the administration trying to hide? And who exactly does Burgess view as Scott’s opponents? The anemic Democratic Party of Florida? The media? The people of Florida?
[St. Pete Times: Top adviser avoids creating public records as she shapes Gov. Rick Scott’s policy, e-mails show]
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