ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. -- The Escambia Board of County Commissioners is taking legal action against a former employee accused of sharing private information from one commissioner's cell phone.
District 1 Commissioner Jeff Bergosh raised the issue during an agenda review Thursday, saying Jonathan Owens -- an aide to former commissioner Doug Underhill -- spread private information through a flash drive containing over 60,000 text messages from Bergosh's government-issued cell phone.
Commissioners voted 4-1 in favor of authorizing the county attorney to take action. Meanwhile, the lone commissioner to vote against the motion says an internal investigation should be in order first.
"I'm disgusted this happened," Bergosh said. "But it's being investigated, folks are looking at it."
Bergosh says more than a dozen people have obtained information from emails that he has sent out containing private messages, including personal medical records.
Owens ran against Bergosh in 2020 and lost. He was also an aide to former commissioner Doug Underhill from 2014 to 2022.
A month ago, Owens admitted in a radio interview to being in possession of a thumb drive used to extract text messages from Bergosh's government-issued phone.
"It's a mixture of public and private record," Owens could be heard saying. "A thumb drive showed up in my office and that's all I know."
"This was an employee that while he worked here has admitted he took it, he read it and then disseminated it unredacted," Bergosh...
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