Top Jindal aides use personal e-mail to strategize

Top officials in Gov. Bobby Jindal's (R-LA) administration used personal e-mail accounts to craft a media strategy for imposing hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid cuts — a method of communication that can make it more difficult to track under public records laws despite Jindal's pledge to bring more transparency to state government.

E-mails reviewed by The Associated Press reveal that non-state government email addresses were used dozens of times by state officials to communicate last summer about a public relations offensive for making $523 million in health care cuts. Those documents weren't provided to AP in response to a public records request. The practice folds into a national debate over the use of personal email accounts by government officials to discuss official business.