Florida—providing transparency by redefining transparency:

Florida Gov’s Email Transparency Initiative Favored Friendly Comments

Back in May, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) announced a bold initiative: his and other non-exempt executive staff emails would be made available to the public in an online database. A few months later, though, the effort has been less transparent window and more rose-colored glasses.

According to The Tampa Bay Times, the emails made public until now were not the ones in Scott’s official state account. Instead, the emails put online “were from a different account used almost exclusively by conservative supporters.” The email address that until now fed the online database, RLS@eog.myflorida.com, appears as Scott’s email on Florida Tea Party websites.

As a result, the database contained a very high percentage of emails favorable to Scott’s administration. And the Times reports that the impression given by those emails has had an impact:

Reporters — acting at the urging of Scott — have regularly relied on the Sunburst database rather than filing a public records request for official emails. Several reporters have used those emails to gauge public sentiment on a host of issues, and the informal reviews have skewed results in favor of the governor.

And from the Tampa Bay Times.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott said he was championing transparency in May when he gave the public access to his emails by posting them online for anyone to see.

But what he failed to say at his May 3 news conference launching “Project Sunburst” was that the emails he made public were not the emails in his official state account. The emails the public actually read online were from a different account used almost exclusively by conservative supporters.

On Monday, after the Times/Herald questioned what appeared to be an unrealistically high percentage of favorable emails on the public database, the Scott administration issued a statement acknowledging the two separate email accounts. It also announced that it would phase out RLS@eog.myflorida.com. That email — which was not on the official state website — appears on many tea party websites across the state, under the heading “Governor Rick Scott’s email.”