Gov. Andrew Cuomo is continuing to face scrutiny over an automatic email deletion policy for state workers. Hit by criticism that he's no friend of transparency, the governor says he is now pursuing a new unified policy on email deletion at all state agencies and offices. NY1’s Zack Fink filed the following report.

During his first four years in office, Gov. Andrew Cuomo often found himself on the receiving end of negative news stories about excessive secrecy within the administration.

Whether it was vague language about his public schedules or sometimes misleading information about upcoming events, the governor often tightly controlled what information became public.

Now Cuomo is in the crosshairs over a controversial email deletion policy.

"I thought the simple answer would be just change the policy, which was what our attorney general did. Obviously when the Freedom of Information laws were written in 1977, we didn't have emails. So the email problem needs to get addressed,” said Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell of Manhattan.

The policy of deleting e-mails automatically after 90 days across all state agencies was implemented by Cuomo. It was already a policy within the governor's office that was put in place by one of Cuomo's predecessors, Eliot Spitzer.

Last week, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said he was suspending the deletion policy within his own office. Cuomo is vowing to adopt a new statewide policy.

"As I said we want to unify policy, senate, assembly, governor, AG, comptroller ideally. It would make no sense to have one policy for the executive chamber, a different one for the agencies, right?" said Cuomo.

Legislation has been introduced to change the e-mail policy. Insiders say the Cuomo team was unhappy about attempts to force the governor's hand.

"The problem here has to do with the deletion of emails after 90 days. The assembly doesn't do that,” said O’Donnell.

The governor also claims he doesn't use email much because he is more old fashioned and prefers the phone.

"But I am not a big email guy, no,” said Cuomo.

But according to these 2009 emails obtained by NY1, Cuomo, then state attorney general, wasn't always averse to using email to communicate. It appears to be something he adopted after becoming governor. Emails are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Although Cuomo has vowed to call one of his signature summits to address the email policy he has yet to do so. The legislation is currently being considered in both houses.