Gov. Jerry Brown’s office discloses emails from his personal account

Gov. Jerry Brown’s office released more than 100 pages of correspondence from the governor’s personal email account to staff on Friday, following increased scrutiny over politicians’ using private accounts to conduct state business.

The messages consist mainly of news stories sent to Brown by staffers and a couple of concise subject line-only missives from the governor himself.

“Governor Brown occasionally uses a personal email account for informal communication with staff,” wrote Daniel Powell Calabretta, Brown’s deputy legal affairs secretary, responding to a request for the records.

The disclosure includes copies of emails from the last 90 days but does not include emails between Brown and outside parties, or emails that are “part of any deliberative process of governmental decision-makers,” which Calabretta said would not be subject to the state’s Public Records Act.

The release of the emails was first reported by the Sacramento Bee.

Much attention has been directed recently to politicians’ use of personal email accounts to conduct government business, following revelations last month that Hillary Rodham Clinton used a private account while serving as U.S. secretary of State, raising transparency concerns.

An Associated Press review found that California’s top elected officials, including Brown and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, acknowledged using personal email accounts for official business.

Media stories make up the bulk of Brown’s disclosed emails, with aides forwarding the governor articles on the state’s major issues of the day, including the University of California tuition standoff, the ceremonial groundbreaking for the bullet train and analysis of Brown’s budget plan.

Brown’s own writings are minimal, and the few e-mails he did send are only a sentence or a few words long. One typical dispatch, sent at 10:16 p.m. to a staffer, is written only in the subject line: “You up??”

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