Email Queries Raise Questions on County's Treatment of Public Records Requests

BRADENTON – Public record emails obtained by TBT raise questions concerning Manatee County Government and its good faith effort to comply with Florida’s public records laws. In an email addressed to County Administrator Scott Hopes–cc’d to all county commissioners and the manager of commission records, Debbie Scaccianoce–Manatee County Clerk and Comptroller Angel Colonneso responded to apparent requests by the county's administration and/or individual commissioners for her office to "sit on public records requests."

Based on communication in her email and subsequent responses, it appears there may be some intention by the county to lean upon state statute language providing for a "reasonable" length of time for fulfillment of public records requests, as justification for a delayed response that can in turn delay reporting on politically-sensitive topics.

On March 7, TBT received a tip that Development Services Planning Manager Lisa Wenzel had submitted her resignation via email addressed to her department’s director, multiple parties within the county’s administration, and county commissioners. While TBT was not aware of all the parties included as recipients of Wenzel’s resignation email, it seemed reasonable to assume–considering an ongoing IG investigation into allegations of wrong-doing within the former Department of Building and Development Services–that the county clerk's office may have also been a recipient.

At approximately 11:30 a.m. on the morning of the 7th, TBT submitted two public records requests for a copy of the resignation email. One request was directed to the Clerk of Court, and one shortly following to the county administration management of public records.

Shortly past noon, the Manatee County Clerk and Comptroller had provided the requested copy of the email, but by nearly 4 p.m. that afternoon, the county administration’s records office had still not fulfilled the request. Having obtained the requested public record through the clerk’s office, the outstanding request with county records was canceled by TBT.

In recent months,TBT has had more success with obtaining public records when the requests are submitted through the county clerk’s office as opposed to the county administration. Due to increasing suspicion that record request fulfillment was being intentionally "slow-rolled" on behalf of the county, TBT recently submitted a request for any communications that may have occurred between relevant department heads of the county clerk's office, and county officials within commission administration and records management.

Records obtained through that request showed that on March 9, after TBT's reporting on the resignation was published earlier the same morning, Scaccianoce, the county records manager, emailed the counsel of the clerk’s office requesting confirmation whether TBT obtained the record through a request with the clerk’s office. Wenzel’s resignation email detailed her stated cause for resignation and contained an account of what she referred to as a "volatile and hostile" work environment. You can read our reporting on the resignation here,County Planning Manager Submits Resignation.

On the morning of March 10, County Comptroller Colonneso sent a strongly worded email to the county administrator, the board, and the manager of records, detailing how the clerk’s staff are instructed to respond to records requests directed to its office. County Administrator Hopes responded to the email, and Colonneso’s reply to Hopes appears to allude to some prior communication with Commissioner Vanessa Baugh about the matter.

Click HERE to view a larger image of this public record email.

Click HERE to view a larger image of this public record email.

Because Colonesso’s email was originally addressed to Administrator Hopes with additional cc’d parties, when Hopes replied to her email, it was sent as a "reply to all." Likewise, Colonesso’s response to Hopes was also sent as a "reply to all," meaning all parties addressed in Colonesso's original email received a copy of the follow-up correspondence.

However, public records show there were separate email communications taking place between Baugh and Colonesso in response to Colonesso's email. These communications were not sent to all parties originally addressed. They were emails back and forth between Colonneso and Commissioner Baugh only.

Click HERE to view a larger image of this public record email.

Additional back and forth from Baugh appeared to insinuate that it was Baugh’s perspective, the clerk’s office having adhered to public records laws and responding to record requests in a "reasonable time" for the type of record requested, was motivated by something more than the clerk's office merely following state laws.

Click HERE to view a larger image of this public record email.

In early December of 2021, TBT began an effort to request and inspect public records as part of our reporting in late January titled, County Administrator Receives Salary Increase. The initial request for records sent to the county records clerks was submitted on December 8, 2021. The first partial fulfillment was not provided by county records until December 15. The initial request was for "full and complete" copies of all files contained in Administrator Hopes’ and Deputy County Administrator Robert Reinshuttle’s personnel files.

While the initial response to our request appeared to provide the complete contents of Mr. Reinshuttle’s file, obtaining all the records believed to be in Hope’s personnel file proved more challenging. The complete fulfillment of our original request was not provided until January 6, 2022. Coincidentally, one of the files believed to have been missing in the fulfillment from county records was readily obtained through a request with the clerk’s office payroll department, which provided the file to TBTin less than 24 hours.

Admittedly, that time of year is hectic. Mid-December into January, holidays, and the potential for some staff to be enjoying vacation time, and some staff having retired or left their positions with the county–ultimately, the delay and difficulty in obtaining records requested from the county was chalked up by our publication at the time to bad timing.

TBT’s reporting on the county administrator and employee salary increases spanned several weeks including follow-up reporting. By mid to late January, some public records requested through the county that would take 10-plus days to fulfill were able to be obtained from the county clerk’s office payroll or finance department the same day, or within 24 hours.

In mid-January, TBT submitted separate records requests through county records related to work on our reporting,Did a Tampa-based Political Consultant Secretly Participate in the Redistricting of Manatee County?At the time, TBT was following up on a tip received by a concerned citizen who had submitted a record request of their own and who felt some of the records they obtained might be of interest to our publication. Records the citizen had acquired included emails between a commissioner and the county administrator related to redistricting.TBT followed the lead by submitting a similar request with the county but with a broader date range.

However, in this instance, despite TBT’s request for records being specific on the subject matter of the emails being requested–including using the exact subject line from of citizen provided emails as a requested search criterion– a handful provided to us by the citizen were not included in the county’s fulfillment of the duplicate request submitted by TBT. In a follow-up email to county records, TBT explained that we were in possession of emails that would have fallen into the parameters of our request, but did not receive copies with their fulfillment of the request.

We received a reply from county records manager Scaccianoce stating she would review how the query was run in the email archive to make sure the correct emails were provided to us.

The following day, Scaccianoce emailed writing in part, "I have reviewed all the requests we received regarding redistricting. Including yours, there was 3 totalÉ The other two requests differed from yours and the dates did not overlap."

"Attached are additional emails we were able to locate responsive to your request," Scaccianoce wrote, attaching the emails TBT had already received from the citizen. Presumably, the county records had identified those emails as ones that had already been requested by another party.

Another anomaly appeared concerning records requested and received from the county records management related to internal redistricting communications. In the zip file the county originally provided to the citizen requester, a file folder was included titled, "in question." It is unclear how email communications gathered in response to a public records request could be "in question," but the inclusion of a file folder by that name raises some question as to whether or not requested public records, and email public records, are being screened and filtered before being provided to the requester.

In TBT’s most recent request for records from the clerk’s office–in which we requested any email correspondence between the county and the clerk relating to public records requests–emails obtained appear to show there may have been an intentional effort to delay or "filter" what public records are provided to TBT.

Days prior to our submission for records with the clerk, TBT had also submitted a separate request through county records. While the two separate requests were not identical in nature, parameter dates overlapped between them. The request submitted to county records was for "all emails to and from" a specific county commissioner for the date range of "3/9/22 through 3/12/22."

Interestingly, despite the dates coinciding with the email records provided by the clerk’s office related to our request for communications about public records between county officials–and despite Colonneso’s email dated March 10 being cc’d to all commissioners–no record of that email appeared among the 152 pages of emails for the commissioner provided to us by county records.

Likewise, neither was Hopes’ response to Colonneso’s email, nor her return reply to him, though both were sent addressed as "reply to all," which would have included a copy being sent to each of the commissioners.

Known as our "government in the sunshine" policy, Florida has broad public record laws that require government agencies to make such records available upon request. Chapter 119 of the Florida Statutes reads, in part:

"It is the policy of this state that all state, county, and municipal records are open for personal inspection and copying by any person. Providing access to public records is a duty of each agency ... Every person who has custody of a public record shall permit the record to be inspected and copied by any person desiring to do so, at any reasonable time, under reasonable conditions, and under supervision by the custodian of the public records."

Dawn Kitterman is a staff reporter for The Bradenton Times. She covers local government and entertainment news. She can be reached at dawn.kitterman@thebradentontimes.com.