A St. Petersburg resident has sued the city over how it handles public records after he saidhis own request for records went unanswered for over a year.<\/p>\n
Bradlee McCoy filed a four-page lawsuit Monday in Pinellas County Circuit Court over the city\u2019s \u201clack of response.\u201d In it, he cited one example: a request he made in August 2024 related to bonuses paid to 17 employees<\/a> following the brokering of a stadium deal between the city, Pinellas County and the Tampa Bay Rays. The bonuses were later found to have violated state law<\/a> and employees had to pay them back. Months later, that stadium deal fell apart.<\/p>\n A screenshot included in the suit shows McCoy requested an update on the status of his inquiry Saturday. He saidthat on Monday, the same day he filed the lawsuit, he received a record of the employees\u2019 salaries but didn\u2019t get other records he requested.<\/p>\n McCoy, who is representing himself in the suit, said he has made more than 200 requests over the past two years and has noticed inconsistencies and noncompliance with public records. He said he will continue to file lawsuits until there is a resolution.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re reaching a pivotal point with the next Trop deal. We have so much going on with the city right now,\u201d he said. \u201cThe problems haven\u2019t improved, they\u2019ve gotten worse.\u201d<\/p>\n St. Petersburg spokesperson Samantha Bequer said the city does not comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n McCoy has spoken publicly at City Council meetings about what he perceives as a lack of transparency. In July 2024, McCoy filed an ethics complaint<\/a> against his council member, Deborah Figgs-Sanders. That complaint was dismissed by the state ethics board<\/a> two months later.<\/p>\n City Council member Lisset Hanewicz recently took issue with the city\u2019s public records process. She submitted requests for records relating to the city\u2019s handling of the Science Center project and found that it took multiple attempts over a few weeks to receive all records, which included emails and Microsoft Teams messages between city employees.<\/p>\n Last month, Hanewicz asked for a discussion about the city\u2019s procedures for complying with records requests. That discussion is tentatively scheduled for January.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to ensure that whenever the public asks for documents, they receive their records in a timely and accurate fashion,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to make sure what I went through, no one else should have to go through. If there are ways to improve the system, then that should be improved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A St. Petersburg resident has sued the city over how it handles public records after he saidhis own…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[25311,596,13811,202,204,203,199,201,200,3815],"class_list":{"0":"post-36767","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-city-employees","9":"tag-pinellas-county","10":"tag-public-records","11":"tag-st-pete","12":"tag-st-pete-headlines","13":"tag-st-pete-news","14":"tag-st-petersburg","15":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","16":"tag-st-petersburg-news","17":"tag-tampa-bay-rays"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}