The Florida Department of Law Enforcement found no evidence of wrongdoing in the exchange of BlackBerry messages between utility regulators or their staff and utility officials.

FDLE issued the three-page report today, long after Leon County State Attorney Willie Meggs also found no laws had been broken.

The report was released as the Public Service Commission held a workshop to discuss a 17-year-old statewide grand jury report recommending changes to how information between the PSC and the utilities is exchanged to clear up the perception that there isn’t enough distance between the regulators and the utilities they regulate.

The PSC has operated under a cloud of suspicion since late this summer at the beginning of hearings on Florida Power & Light Co.’s proposed $1.2 billion rate hike.

On the opening day of the hearing, it was revealed that the agency’s lobbyist Ryder Rudd had attended a Kentucky Derby party at the Palm Beach Gardens home of FPL VP Ed Tancer. Rudd later quit.

Two commissioners suspended their aides for swapping BlackBerry messages with an FPL lawyer and another fired hers for giving his secret BlackBerry identification number (PIN) to an FPL lawyer.

Public Service Commissioner Nancy Argenziano dismissed a business-backed group’s demand for an investigation into her BlackBerry messages with her former aide as ridiculous and an attempt to intimidate her.

“It’s highly suspicious and rather stinky at this point,” Argenziano said.

Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop today asked for a PSC inspector general investigation into thousands of messages exchanged between Argenziano and Larry Williams, a former aide whom Argenziano fired for giving his secret BlackBerry personal identification number to a Florida Power & Light Co. attorney.

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State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera joined the call for an internal investigation into BlackBerry messages sent by utility regulators.

Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, serves on the Public Service Commission Nominating Council that selects who gets to serve on the regulatory panel. The governor makes the final picks.

“The PIN messages sent and received by Commissioner Nancy Argenziano and released by the PSC, coupled with their discussion of private emails so far unreleased and sent to non-public accounts in an attempt to evade public scrutiny, raise serious questions about Commissioner Argenziano’s impartiality and her ability to give a fair hearing to those appearing before her,” Lopez-Cantera wrote in a statement distributed to the media.

Earlier today, Associated Industries of Florida President Barney Bishop demanded the PSC’s inspector general check out Commissioner Nancy Argenziano’s BlackBerry PIN messages.

Bishop said Argenziano may have broken rules restricting communications between the regulators and the utilities and may have acted in a manner unbecoming a commissioner, a violation of her oath of office.

It’s no surprise that Lopez-Cantera has jumped on the Argeziano attack wagon.
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What’s a high-tech public servant to do when tweets, PINs or texts clash with Florida’ broad public records laws?

Get schooled.

That’s what Attorney General Bill McCollum’s is aiming for with a new task force designed to aid elected officials and their staff navigate in the Sunshine in a world where old-fashioned telephone calls are nearly obsolete.

McCollum, whose office is in charge of ensuring that elected officials comply with the state’s open records laws, created the task force last month in the wake of reports that Public Service Commission staff were using the BlackBerry PIN codes to swap secret messages with workers at the utilities the PSC oversees.

McCollum’s Sunshine Technology Team, headed by the attorney general’s top lieutenant Joe Jacquot, will be briefed at its first meeting Wednesday afternoon by Research in Motion, the Canadian computer company that makes the BlackBerry operating system.

The tech team includes a handful of state agencies’ open government liaisons as well as open records advocates such as Sharyn Smith, a former assistant attorney general who litigated landmark public records and open meetings cases for former Attorney General Robert Shevin.

The first set of BlackBerry PIN messages collected as public records by Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office shows, well, not much other than the technology exists to retain and distribute the messages.

Of the first 20 messages since McCollum’s announcement last week, all are benign, like this one sent to McCollum’s Legislative Affairs Director Kimberly Case the same day as the press conference asking, “Why did the AG do that today?” with a subject, “PINs.” Case replied a few minutes later, “Call me.”

McCollum is the first state official to retain PIN messages that pass through his office’s computer server, similar to the way e-mail messages are recorded. PIN messages are electronic exchanges between BlackBerrys, similar to the way a text is sent between phone numbers or an e-mail is sent between e-mail addresses.

Gov. Charlie Crist initially said he would also start retaining those messages in his office, but decided instead to turn off the PIN and text function on his office BlackBerrys and encourage staffers to send e-mails, which are easier for public records officials to handle. More than a dozen state departments have followed Crist’s lead.

McCollum’s office said the 20 PIN messages obtained by The Palm Beach Post was the first time it has handed over PINs as part of a public records request.

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Gov. Charlie Crist’s office has shut down the ability of its staff to text, PIN or instant message, spokeswoman Erin Isaac said.

At the urging of the governor’s office, several agencies have followed suit.

On Tuesday, Crist appeared eager to follow actions taken by state Attorney General Bill McCollum to start recording instant messages and PINs (messages sent between Blackberry devices, as opposed to messages sent between e-mails addresses or phone numbers).

But it appears Crist’s office has instead decided to adjust its servers so no PINs or IMs can be sent and take the additional step of contacting its mobile phone service provider to shut down text message capabilities.

More here.

This story appeared Wednesday on page 1A of the Sept. 16 Palm Beach Post.

A unique, eight-character code buried inside every BlackBerry device is at the center of the latest intersection of technology and politics in Florida.

State lawmakers hand these codes, known as a personal identification numbers, or PINs, to lobbyists so they can exchange messages during hearings. Gov. Charlie Crist’s staff regularly trades PIN messages to stay in touch.

“It’s a faster form of communication,” Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said of the messages that for years have fallen outside of the state’s public records laws.

Hasner has traded PIN messages from the House floor with lobbyists. He said the messages are usually brief and meaningless: “Need to talk” or “Where can I find you?”

“The idea that things are intentionally being done in secret is overblown,” said Hasner, a devoted BlackBerry user who has an old, worn-out model mounted in his Capitol office. “But I think the issue is worthy of further conversation and potentially addressing it with new policies.”

On Tuesday – just days after Florida Power & Light Co.’s $1.3 billion rate hearing was nearly derailed when state regulators discovered their staff exchanging PIN messages with FPL officials – Attorney General Bill McCollum said the state should seal the cracks in its open government laws.

More here.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum today said messages sent between Blackberry devices, known as PINs, are indeed public records and that the state is capable of retaining the documents.

For years, PIN messages — regularly used among lobbyists, lawmakers and governor’s office officials — have fallen into a loophole in state Sunshine Laws because state officials have maintained the messages could not be recorded by government e-mail servers. (Press release here.)

McCollum, who is running for governor in 2010, said today that’s not true. He said PINs and other instant messages can be capture by, essentially, flipping a switch on a server. He said his agency would start keeping those records starting today and urged Gov. Charlie Crist, his fellow Cabinet members, state agencies and the legislature to do the same.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Crist said later in an interview with The Palm Beach Post. “We’ll follow suit.”

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The Public Service Commission tomorrow will discuss a proposal to require all communications between the regulatory panel and the utilities it oversees in writing.

The discussion comes amid a firestorm of criticism about commissioners’ aides swapping secret Blackberry codes with a Florida Power & Light Co. attorney that would allow them to communicate without creating a public record, even during hearings.

Commissioner Nancy Argenziano fired her aide for giving his Blackberry personal identification number – PIN – to FPL lawyer Natalie Smith and two other commissioners, including Chairman Matthew Carter, suspended theirs with pay for doing the same thing.

Commissioner Katrina McMurrian, who is not involved in the secret message melee, late Friday issued a proposal “to restore the public trust” as controversies involving the agency continue to make daily headlines.

Discussion of her proposal was added late this evening to the panel’s internal affairs agenda slated for tomorrow.

McMurrian is the target of a different conflict-of-interest criticism. An intervenor in FPL’s proposed $1.3 billion base rate hike case asked that she be disqualified from voting because she had hobnobbed with FPL executives during a conference in New York earlier this year.