So many angry teachers called House Speaker Larry Cretul’s office late last week his staff had to add four additional telephone lines and four workers to field the complaints, Cretul spokeswoman Jill Chamberlin said.

The Speaker’s office received more than 5,500 phone calls on Thursday and Friday about SB 6, the measure approved by the Senate last week that would revamp teacher salaries and job security by basing educators’ pay on how well their students perform on standardized tests.

Most of the calls objected to the proposal, Chamberlin said.

“It’s hard to generalize, but many people did not seem to know what the bill does (they thought it would reduce current teacher pay—it won’t) (they thought it would affect current teacher retirement and benefits—it won’t, etc.) and many thought we were taking a poll (which we were not.) It is certainly possible that some people didn’t get through or got voice mail—considering the volume,” Chamberlin said in an e-mail.

A criminal investigation of former Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom, recently indicted on charges of falsifying the state budget, has turned up e-mails related to the scandal that supposedly did not exist when The Palm Beach Post requested the documents from the legislature.¹

The Post asked Sansom’s office Dec. 10 to turn over the previous 20 days of e-mails that the Destin Republican had either sent and received. The request was made to gauge public reaction to news that Sansom may have received a six-figure job from Northwest Florida State College in exchange for funneling millions of state dollars to the school.

The Post also sought messages between Sansom and then-college President James “Bob” Richburg about the scandal.

The House responded with documents that showed Sansom neither sent nor received a single e-mail for 11 days.

But that is not true, prosecutors’ files show. Documents found by Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs reveal several e-mails from that time, including a conversation among Sansom, Sansom’s communication director and Richburg, who was fired for his involvement in the controversy.²

“We need to be concerned about this,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, when told about the discovered e-mails. “I’m almost speechless when I see what the legislature is doing and how they’re doing it.”³

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1. The Palm Beach Post, 04/18/09: Ex-House speaker’s indictment blasts secret budget deals
2. Click here for the e-mails included in Meggs’ case file, but not in a public records request made to the House.
3. Petersen was chairwoman of Gov. Charlie Crist’s Commission on Open Records Reform. The panel issued a report in January that determined the legislature has rules for itself that may be inconsistent with state public records laws.