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Editorial cartoon by Wayne Stayskal
It's Essential That Lawmakers Strictly Adhere To Sunshine Law
In the November election, Florida voters registered their overwhelming support for open government by approving a constitutional amendment that makes it more difficult for legislators to create exemptions to the state's Government-in-the-Sunshine Law.
But even with a constitutional revision that requires a two-thirds vote by each house of the Legislature to make exceptions to the law, nearly 50 bills have been filed for consideration this session that have First Amendment implications. A few represent a true threat to open government.
That's why, for the second year in a row on this "Sunshine Sunday,” many of Florida's newspapers (and this year broadcasters) are striving to remind citizens of this state's tradition of open government. Ours is a state celebrated nationally for its commitment to open meetings and the protection of public records.
Yet at the end of the first week of the session, Senate President Jim King closed the gallery for a private meeting with Tim Moore, chief of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Moore has already spent $1.5 million on a secret antiterrorist database, and he wants another $1.6 million to enhance its capabilities. Recognition Of Security Concerns Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Senate tightened its rules to allow for closed-door discussions of terrorism-related issues, this despite the Sunshine Law's recognition of the need for privacy for security purposes or to protect witnesses.
But while we can understand the Senate's desire to keep information out of the hands of terrorists, it is difficult to understand how a discussion of cost analyses or cost estimates would compromise safety. So we cannot be sure just what the senators heard or said during their meeting with Moore.
We do know, however, that access to public records and meetings since Sept. 11, 2001, has given the public valuable insight into governmental actions, where and how to strengthen state and national security systems, and emergency and public health response programs. Beyond terror-related exclusions and meeting bans, the wish lists of lawmakers and lobbyists who would deny access to information remain plentiful.
One proposal would end access to records about mistakes made by pharmacists, which, while protecting pharmacists, would deny the public any way of knowing how aggressively the state investigates those mistakes. A similar proposal would re-enact exemptions that deny to the public notice of adverse incidents made by hospitals to the Agency for Health Care Administration. This hospital/doctor protection plan was bad public policy when originally enacted and remains so today.
Another unnecessary bill would make confidential the cellular telephone number, pager number, e-mail address or other means of identifying a member of law enforcement. Yet this type of information is often given out by individual police officers and is even included on businesses cards.
And another bill, similar to one defeated last year, would cloak the records of public utility companies from consumers. The real point of the legislation — ostensibly intended to protect a utility's customers from identity thieves, abusive spouses or sexual predators — is to protect the utilities from unwanted competition.
Certainly laws requiring open meetings and records sometimes result in uncomfortable situations where candor is tested, but the people of Florida — the very people who empower state and local governments — are more wary of secrecy.
Lawmakers tend to forget that the open records policy is not meant for the media. The demand to be kept informed about the workings of government is the people's policy.
Lawmakers Seek Shade From Sunshine Law
BY CASSIO FURTADO
of The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA — Today is Sunshine Sunday.
It was created a year ago to extol the Florida Sunshine Law, perhaps the nation's most progressive public disclosure law in compelling public agencies and officials to reveal their mistakes.
Thanks to the law, errant Tampa judges resigned, and missing children in the custody of the Department of Children and Families were found. This week, a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office major who made more than $6,000 in personal calls using his department-issued cellular phone was forced to retire.
“Public officials work for the taxpayers — so we have the right to know what they are doing,” said author Carl Hiaasen, a Miami Herald columnist who appears in a statewide public service announcement defending the Sunshine Law.
Florida's Public Records Law was enacted in 1909 and is one of the oldest in the country. In 1992, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing people access to records from all three branches of government — the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.
But every year, the Florida Legislature is the stage for a hidden battle between those who think the Sunshine Law is good enough and those who think it is too generous.
Last year, lawmakers proposed a record 125 exemptions to public records and meetings. Most of them used the war on terrorism as justification to exempt records from the public eye.
Most failed, and none of the 23 bills passed was highly restrictive.
But the threat to Florida's national reputation for openness last year became such a hot issue that about two dozen newspapers ran editorials against the measures March 10, which they dubbed Sunshine Sunday.
This year, lawmakers are proposing another 35 exemptions to a list that has some 800, mostly related to personal information such as Social Security numbers and residential telephone numbers and addresses.
Some of the bills proposed this session would prevent the public from seeing:
Reports about mistakes pharmacists make until 10 days after it is determined there was a mistake.
Reports doctors are required to file with the State Department of Health when they make mistakes.
Cellular phone and pager numbers, e-mail addresses and associated billing records for law enforcement personnel.
“We still have a strong public records law, but each year, the Legislature introduces a surprising number of new exemptions and passes a number of them,” said Sandra Chance, director of The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida.
“Every time an exemption is approved, we lose some ability — to maintain an oversight of government,” she said.
If not for the disclosure of Hillsborough County Sheriff's Maj. Rene “Rocky” Rodriguez's misuse of his department-issued cellphone, Rodriguez might not have been forced to retire.
Rodriguez made more than 1,000 personal calls during a two-year period, many to his girlfriend. The calls cost the sheriff's office $6,007 in excess minutes and long-distance fees, a Tribune investigation found.
Most Floridians don't realize the power of the Sunshine Law or how much broader it is than federal freedom of information laws.
Although federal laws give the government discretion to decide what's exempt from disclosure, Florida officials are forced to make public everything the Legislature doesn't rule exempt from disclosure.
Floridians may track convicted sexual predators, check on malpractice lawsuits against doctors and look up property ownership and academic ratings of schools.
Floridians “use all sorts of records, all the time,” says Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit group supported by Florida newspapers.
Hiaasen said it's unfortunate the Sept. 11 attacks have been used as an excuse to try to keep records out of the public eye but added that if the public reacted strongly against such attempts, legislators would back off.
Sept. 11, Hiaasen said, “has been the excuse not only in Florida, but nationally” not to disclose records.
Petersen said she hopes most of the 35 proposed exemptions will fail this year.
“We have a really long tradition of open government in Florida,” Petersen said. “Every time they change [the Sunshine Law], they need to stop and think, ‘How does this affect us?’”
Or as Hiaasen put it: “The purpose of these ads is to let folks know that their laws aren't safe.”