ST. PETERSBURG -- City Council Chairman Jeff Danner can't access his e-mail.

Danner, who was recently elected council chairman, discovered he couldn't log onto his city e-mail account last week when he was moving from his district office to the chairman's office.

"I went to log on and it wouldn't let me log on," he said. "My entire identity was deleted."

When asked whether that meant all public records on the city's computer system had been deleted, Danner said staff were analyzing the problem.

Muslim Gadiwalla, director of the city's information and communications services department, said today that an unknown number of Danner's e-mails seemed to be missing from the city's computer server. Then, several hours later, Gadiwalla said he had misspoke and that the e-mails were in the city's backup files.

In the meantime, Danner said he is doing his work the old fashioned way.

"I pick up the phone," he said.

-Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer