Florida inspector general clears county official of email misuse

Contributed by Charles Nguyen (Donnerstag, 30 Dezember 2010) | Category : Email litigation and compliance

Following a two-month ethics investigation, Florida inspector general Sheryl Steckler recently cleared Palm Beach County commissioner Jess Santamaria of misusing state-owned email accounts. The complaint, along with others, was presented by Santamaria's opponent in the most recent election.

Challenger Andy Schaller contended that Santamaria misused email, had county staff conduct political business and discarded pocket calendars before they were entered into public record. Steckler cleared Santamaria on all accounts, except for discarding the calendars, though she said the commissioner did so unknowingly.

Santamaria was critical of Schaller's complaint in a written response on December 21.

"It has caused substantial amounts of taxpayer money to be spent on the work of your investigation, and for the efforts of the Ethics Commission and other County expenses," he wrote.

Steckler recommended that county employees review proper email use protocol and called for the county attorney's office to conduct annual public records and retention, including email archiving, training for public employees.

Public records and email archiving policies can be challenging subjects for local governments to handle. Buffalo Grove, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, is currently waiting to vote on a new email retention policy that would allow town employees to delete messages.