The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s open record office has denied a Right-to-Know request from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for the emails of Acting Education Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq even though it granted a similar request for former higher education adviser Ron Tomalis.

Larry McComsey, agency open records officer, wrote in a letter Thursday that the request was denied “as insufficiently specific.”

The denial, which is being appealed by the Post-Gazette, comes despite the fact that Ms. Dumaresq, in an Aug. 25 interview, told a Post-Gazette reporter that 700 emails were gathered in response to the Right-to-Know request.

In seeking Mr. Tomalis’ emails, the Post-Gazette filed a Right-to-Know request June 3 asking for all of his emails as they related to his job performance during his first year as special adviser to the governor for higher education. Mr. Tomalis became special adviser in June 2013 after leaving his position as state education secretary. He kept his cabinet-level salary of $139,542 in the adviser position.

In response, the department open records office released five emails authored by Mr. Tomalis and 10 that were either addressed to Mr. Tomalis or copied to him and other department officials. It withheld two other emails, calling them pre-decisional and exempt from Right-to-Know disclosure.

When a July 27 Post-Gazette story reported the small number of emails and other scant evidence provided of the work that Mr. Tomalis performed as adviser, questions were raised about why there were so few emails. Ms. Dumaresq defended him by saying that department employees purged their emails nightly — a comment that drew criticism from open records advocates and some legislators.

The Post-Gazette filed its request on Aug. 4 asking for “all of the emails of Acting Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq as they pertain to the performing of her duties as Acting Secretary since she was appointed” in August 2014.

Ms. Dumaresq made the comments about the 700 emails that had been gathered in response to the Right-to-Know request when she was explaining a conversation she had with state Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon County, chairman of the Senate Education Committee. She said Mr. Folmer was concerned about the appearance of wholesale mail deletions at the education department and she pointed to the 700 emails as evidence that she was not destroying emails.

First Published: September 11, 2014, 3:43 p.m.