Reading emails sent between county officials is a favorite pastime for some residents. In January, users of the county’s webmail public access system accessed it via the county’s home page, www.scgov.net, 1,421 times, plus an undetermined number of times by those who went directly to webmail.scgov.net.

These public emails often include messages from constituents, forwarded by commissioners to one another. Sending email is an easy way for residents to share views with commissioners regarding issues they are passionate about.

So it was no surprise when residents of the Sun Haven community in Sarasota reacted angrily when they noticed some of the emails they sent to commissioners regarding a proposal to route Siesta Key sewer lines through their neighborhood had been removed from the site, a resident said. They believed emails were removed by county commissioners Nora Patterson and Jon Thaxton, whom they spoke to individually about the issue.

“In my opinion, it is simply censorship of our concerns,” Sun Haven resident Glen McParland wrote in an email. “It was a selective and purposeful removal of emails that objected to the commissioners and stood against what ‘they’ wanted to do to our neighborhood.”

Both commissioners denied removing the emails, which, in any case, were backed up on a county server.

“Somebody figured out that they had the ability to remove messages, and started removing them,” said Glenn Zimmerman, county chief information officer. “In actuality, they are not deleting it. All they are doing is deleting it from public view.”

All messages coming into and leaving the county email system are archived permanently, in compliance with state open records laws. Staff didn’t count the number of emails that went missing.

Staff did not perform a time-consuming investigation because removing them caused some inconvenience but broke no laws. Instead, they restored all the files and quickly created a new site that is “read only.”

No one but county Enterprise Information Technology Department staff can remove messages from the new site, which can be accessed by going to the county’s home page and clicking on the Public Information link in the left-hand column. The new email site will be online indefinitely and requires no user name or password.

“What’s nice about this is there is no ‘Remove’ functionality to it,” Zimmerman said. “The public can only view them.”

The new email site has the same look and feel as the county’s new financial transparency website, as part of an overall redesign that will be launched gradually. Staff will be asking the public to provide feedback, Interim Communications Director Crystal Pruitt said.

Meanwhile, no one has removed messages from the old site since the original complaints. The old site, which was established nine years ago by former County Administrator Jim Ley, will continue to display 60 days of email — among commissioners and between commissioners and County Administrator Randall Reid, through March 31. The required user name is “publicaccess” and the password is “public.”

Email: escott@sun-herald.com