Gov. Rick Scott and his gubernatorial transition team were cleared Wednesday of any wrongdoing for deleting emails from the weeks leading up to his swearing-in as Florida’s chief executive.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded an investigation requested by Scott last August after media reports disclosed that the deletions may have violated state public records law.

FDLE said its review found the data “was deleted as a result of an oversight…and not as a result of any malicious or criminal intent to destroy public records.”

The Legislature earlier this year passed a measure which clarified the widely held understanding that transition emails by the governor and other statewide officials are public record under Florida law.  Scott supported the legislation.

Scott’s office praised the FDLE findings Wednesday.

“In all, more than 4.5 gigabytes of electronic data representing more than 33,000 pages of transition emails and documents were recovered and turned over to FDLE,” the administration said.  “In addition to securing the email messages of senior staff, the governor also directed the transition team and FDLE to use electronic forensic search methods to recover lost emails and further required every member of the transition team, including volunteers, to turn over all documents related to transition business.

 ”By casting the widest possible net and using cutting-edge technology, the transition team, in cooperation with FDLE investigators, ultimately produced the most comprehensive collection of gubernatorial transition documents in Florida history,” the administration said. 

The FDLE report shows that a former Scott adviser, Susie Wiles, and Amy Brown, an employee of Harris Media, a marketing company used by the governor, were the central figures in closing out the email accounts used by the transition team in January 2011.

FDLE found that Wiles told Brown to shut down the accounts, which were used by 71 transition team members. FDLE was subsequently able to identify 44 transition team members in its investigation and interview 42 of them.

Brown followed the shut-down order — but Wiles said she thought data from the emails would be preserved on a backup server.

Sixteen of the transition team members had retained their scotttransition.com emails and were able to provide them to FDLE, the agency said. But the rest are gone, FDLE said.

Gov. Rick Scott defended his administration’s public records policy to a roomful of newspaper executives at the Florida Press Association and Florida Society of Newspaper Editors annual meeting in St. Petersburg.

Scott has come under fire from the media for charging for more for public records than his predecessor, Charlie Crist, who made a habit of giving away most documents for free. Scott is charging the maximum amount allowed under Florida’s broad Sunshine Law, including costs for his legal staff to scrub the documents of private information.

The number of requests “has skyrocketed” since Scott took office in January, he said.

“Part of my job is to make sure we don’t waste taxpayers money. It costs us money to do it. We pass that cost on. It’s the right thing to do,” Scott said in a brief question-and-answer period.

Scott said he plans to put more records on the internet, but did not elaborate. His office has already put online records his staff has generated – including databases of state employees’ salaries and state workers with pensions worth at least $100,000.

Dozens of demonstrators protesting the governor’s economic agenda shouted “Pink Slip Rick” across the street from the waterfront Renaissance Vinoy Hotel as Scott spoke.

After his remarks, Scott fielded a few questions from reporters.

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The Florida Supreme Court pushed the judicial system closer to the electronic age by issuing guidelines for electronic filing and keeping of court records.

Clerks of courts have until Oct. 1 to implement the electronic record-keeping standards issued by Chief Justice Peggy Quince today.

“Technology provides benefits for both courts and court users,” Quince wrote in her order.

The courts’ goal is to have electronic court files while in the meantime wanting to allow court users to continue to file paper documents because many do not have access to computers.

State prison officials are refusing to hand over videotapes of guard-on-inmate brutality or even tapes of guards taking mail from prisoners unless they are sued.

For years, Department of Corrections staff gave the tapes to the public, the media and lawyers although officials there now say they never should have.

The clamp-down on public records is chilling, civil rights advocates contend.

The shift comes under the leadership of Gov. Charlie Crist, whose first official action after taking office was to create the “Office of Open Government.”

“This whole thing of Charlie Crist saying there’s transparency in government is just BS, at least as far as the Department of Corrections,” said civil rights lawyer Randall Berg, executive director and founder of the Miami-based Florida Justice Institute.

Read the full story here.