May 13, 2004
Byrd aide destroys public records
Johnnie Byrd’s Chief of staff, a lawyer who ought to know better, has apparently been deleting public record emails from her computers for quite some time.
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's top aide deleted hundreds of e-mails in the last two days of the legislative session, a practice questioned by a leading open records advocate and the next speaker of the House.Posted by Norwood at May 13, 2004 07:22 AMChief of staff P.K. Jameson, a lawyer and the most powerful staff member in the House, said she routinely deletes e-mails, sometimes from her computer at home, because she does not consider them public record.
"I don't keep my e-mails ever because I get such a large volume of them every day during the session," Jameson said Wednesday. "The kind of stuff that was in there was a lot of "please hear this bill' kind of stuff, and after session, those are of no value."
The deletions became known when the St. Petersburg Times requested all e-mails received by Jameson and Byrd on the session's final two days, April 29 and 30, when the House did most of its most important work, passing or defeating dozens of major bills.
Some lawmakers were so desperate to get their bills on the calendar they fired off e-mails to the speaker's office. Hundreds of Floridians sent e-mails on many issues.
More than 1,000 e-mails were retrieved from Byrd's computer, but Jameson had none. She deleted all of them by May 1, the day after the session ended.
"It's unbelievable," said Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation. "I think it's a violation of law."
The probable next House speaker, Republican Allan Bense of Panama City, also questioned the practice. "If it was intentional, I have some real problems with it," Bense said.
