Adam Putnam, Florida Agriculture Commissioner and candidate to replace term-limited sunshine state Governor Rick Scott, has found himself in some controversy after the Tampa Bay Times released a bombshell report claiming that an office of Inspector General Investigation was made into the Department of Agriculture, and it was revealed that they did not use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, from February 2016 to March 2017. What the NICS system does is assure that the applicant for a concealed carry permit does not have a record in another state.

Specifically, the Tampa Bay Times reported that “From July 2016 through June 2017, which covers most of the period when the system wasn’t accessed, 268,000 applications were approved and 6,470 were denied for reasons like an incomplete application or the state discovered they were ineligible, according to the state Agriculture Department’s annual concealed weapons permit report.”

Commissioner Putnam is now responding to the allegation by detailing that “Upon discovery of this former employee’s negligence in not conducting the further review required on 365 applications, we immediately completed full background checks on those 365 applications, which resulted in 291 revocations.”

He assured that “a criminal background investigation was completed on every single application.”

The investigation uncovered that an employee was negligent. Lisa Wilde was not able to log in to the federal checking system, so she opted to not use it.

Putnam commented on Wilde, saying that “The former employee was both deceitful and negligent, and we immediately launched an investigation and implemented safeguards to ensure this never happens again.”