The Florida Republican Party is releasing its controversial credit card statements to media outlets in exchange for a copying fee of $292.24 and a condition that the bills not be duplicated or published. The media is allowed to report details of the statements.

Here are some details flowing out so far:

• Senate President Jeff Atwater of North Palm Beach charged $44,929 during 2007 and 2008, mostly on rental cars, airfare and meals in Tallahassee and South Florida. (Orlando Sentinel)

• Former Senate President Ken Pruitt of Port St. Lucie charged $21,000. (Orlando Sentinel)

• All told, the roughly three years of statements include $7.3 million in charges on 31 credit cards. (Herald/Times)

Democratic state CFO candidate Loranne Ausley hopes to turn the Republican credit card scandal into a few bucks for her campaign against likely Republican candidate Jeff Atwater.

Ausley doesn’t mention Atwater by name, but it’s pretty clear he’s the target of her fundraiser letter. She says Republicans call for transparency, but also have a “second face…The face they try to hide.” From her letter:

These same so-called leaders have been knee-deep in the cover up of campaign expenditures; expenditures that are governed by state law and supposed to be used for very specific purposes. The excuses for a blatant lack of transparency and accountability run the gamut from “not my job” to “not my card.”

Atwater was one of several Republican leaders who had an American Express card through the Florida Republican Party. Atwater insists he had used the card for party business (unlike former House Speakers Ray Sansom and Marco Rubio, who used the cards for personal expenses), but Atwater won’t release it. We wrote about it here and the Herald/Times captured it on video here.

TALLAHASSEE — Former Republican Party of Florida Chairwoman Carole Jean Jordan said the GOP issued American Express cards to top officials while she was at the helm from January 2003 to January 2007, but “we were very careful. We set up a lot of business procedures….Nobody had carte blanche.”

The party made about $3.1 million in American Express payments during the four years Jordan was chairwoman. During the three years her successor Jim Greer was in charge, the party’s AmEx bills topped $3.8 million. Greer stepped down last month in part because of controversy over his lavish spending.

Jordan, now the tax collector of Indian River County, is in town for a Republican women’s conference. Asked her opinion of the American Express spending under Greer, she paused briefly, then said: “It’s over. We need to move on. I’m very excited to see Speaker/Sen./Chairman (John) Thrasher running the party.”

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