NASHVILLE - Gov. Bill Haslam said Friday that except for the rare "inadvertent slip," he and top staffers use the state's email system and don't try to hide anything from the public.
"All of our business happens on state email except for an inadvertent email where we might happen to use a personal email account," Haslam told reporters. "Like all of you, I'm guessing you all probably have a work email and a personal email. You don't 100 percent of the time get that right."
Haslam was asked about the issue after Nashville television station WTVF reported some official business between top administration officials, including Haslam, was conducted under the private domain name billhaslam.com. The emails included communications with lobbyists and others, WTVF reported.
The domain was created for Haslam's first gubernatorial campaign in 2010. WTVF obtained the emails through an open records request. The state's service revealed emails with the billhaslam.com domain name either originated from the state server or wound up in officials' state email accounts. The station narrowed a broader request to just one day: Aug. 24, 2015.
Eighteen documents were withheld, with the governor's office saying they were "deliberative" in nature, contained confidential economic development information or bore tax information excluded from disclosure under the state's Open Records Act.
In one email listed on the television station's website, a Tennessee Mining Association lobbyist emailed Mark Cate, Haslam's then-chief of staff, about a federal Environmental Protection Agency rule on clean energy and coal.
"Per our meeting last week, please see attached a letter on EPA's 111(d) rule anything more you need from us, please do not hesitate to contact me," it read.
The billhaslam.com domain was created for his first gubernatorial campaign in 2010, the governor said, noting some top staffers communicated through it.
"A lot of those folks first came together through the campaign and that's the email they had for me and for each other," the Republican governor said. "I can tell you this isn't a Hillary Clinton deal where we were using personal email only. There's no state secrets on there. I guarantee you that 99.9 percent of emails happen on the state email except for an inadvertent slip. There's nothing else."
Clinton, a Democratic presidential candidate, is under fire from Republicans for using a private email account for official business while she was U.S. secretary of state. The State Department's inspector general issued a report last week saying Clinton's use of private email was "not an appropriate method" of preserving documents and that it failed to comply with policies created in 2005, before she became secretary of state.
Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open, told WTVF that because the only emails released were those to and from Haslam officials' private accounts that were copied or sent to the state's system, there is no way to know whether that's all the private communications.
"By using a private email account, while those emails may still be subject to the public records act, they are essentially under the radar and nobody knows about them," Fisher told WTVF.
Haslam said, "We remind people all the time that state business has to happen on state email. I'll bet that conversation happens not just in our staff meetings but at Cabinet meetings. There's no there there I promise you."
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow on twitter at AndySher1.