Details about this story

• Source: St. Petersburg Times
• Date: February 25, 2006
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Garrett Therolf , Matthew Waite
• Topics: Local Government , Internet
• Data Types: Local Data
• Description/Excerpt: Ted Schrader tracks stocks on tbo.com. Fellow Pasco County Commissioner Steve Simon favors eBay and golf-related sites like hirekogolf.com. Commissioner Pat Mulieri fiddles with her AOL email account. The three commissioners regularly visited those Web sites and many others the past three years, which is totally unremarkable except for one fact: they did so during meetings of the Pasco County Commission while ostensibly focused on public business. Personal use of county computers, meanwhile, has gotten rank and file county employees fired. The Times obtained the Internet records of all five commissioners from the same software DeSimone uses. The Times focused mainly on the commissioners' Internet use during public meetings. This revealed the secret lives of commissioners on the dais.
• Methodology: See explainer