[T]he Shumlin administration released a “representative sample” of three months’ worth of emails from former staff on Friday. Those emails were provided to the press at no cost.
Scott Coriell, the spokesman for Gov. Peter Shumlin, told several news outlets on Tuesday that if they wanted all of the remaining emails, the price tag would be $20,000. He urged news outlets to narrow their requests to lower the cost.
Several of the former staffers were employed by the governor’s office for two years, and 21 months worth of emails would need to be reviewed by lawyers for information that could be considered privileged under the Public Records Act.
Coriell says it took the governor’s office 200 hours and a full week to vet the 5,500 pages of emails that were released on Friday. In order to release the remaining emails, the administration would need to hire temporary staff. The estimate is based on the volume of material.
The Shumlin administration previously released a smaller batch of emails by Alex MacLean, a former campaign manager and deputy chief of staff for Shumlin, from her last day of work.
The governor’s office sought to delete the emails of five former staffers on April 1 and April 8, just days before the SEC filed charges in a massive fraud case at Jay Peak Resort. One of the employees, MacLean left the governor’s office to work for Bill Stenger, CEO of the resort, in January 2013. MacLean managed strategic communications, investor relations and the Renaissance Project (now known as the hole in the ground in Newport) through September 2014 when she left Jay Peak to take a job with KSE Partners, a Montpelier lobbying firm.
When the state technology department asked Tanya Marshall, the state archivist about the request, she said it violated compliance rules. Jim Condos, the secretary of state, told the Department of Information and Innovation that the emails must not be deleted.
The administration has described the emails as “transitory,” meaning they were throw-away communications like “see you soon,” and as “routine,” or nonessential to archive.
Coriell says Shumlin is the first governor to send emails of any kind to the state archive. Already, he says, official documents including press releases, speeches and certain communications with staff have been preserved for posterity.
The Times Argus, the Burlington Free Press, VTDigger, VPR and WCAX have all sought former staff emails.
