Gov. Rick Scott now says staff will follow public records law – Miami Herald
Good stuff.
After a year of arguing in court that the state is not required to turn over public records generated on private accounts, Gov. Rick Scott has decided to turn a new leaf as he transitions into a second term.
Beginning Tuesday, the day the governor was sworn into office after being re-elected, his office will require former employees who use their private email accounts or private cellphones for public business to turn over the records when they leave, Scott’s office announced in an email.
The policy is already embedded into law as statute 119.021(4)(a). But, until now, the governor’s legal counsel has argued in court that the statute doesn’t apply to Scott’s administration because, they said, the custodian of the records is the employee, not the state.
It was a new legal argument, unprecedented in Florida law, and exposed the governor to violating the state’s open records act and a pending lawsuit.
http://floridafaf.org/gov-rick-scott-now-says-staff-will-follow-public-records-law-miami-herald/
