An ugly trend has taken hold in Florida. It\u2019s rooted in the misguided conviction that politicians and bureaucrats have the right to conduct public business and spend public money in private.<\/p>\n
Requests for public records that for decades were routine are now met with silence, demands for outrageous fees,<\/a> or face months-long delays.<\/p>\n This may seem like an abrupt departure from Florida\u2019s historic embrace of government in the sunshine. But in reality, the light has been slowly dimming for a long time, aided by one-party control of state government.<\/p>\n It has reached the point where requests may go unanswered, particularly when the documents sought would paint an unflattering picture or expose the sources of bad ideas. They take many forms: emails, text messages, internal memos and whistleblower reports.<\/p>\n A lawmaker steps forward<\/p>\n To his credit, a state legislator is determined to fix<\/a> this festering problem.<\/p>\n Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade of Pensacola learned how hard it can be to unearth basic information about how the state spends your money. He sought documents<\/a> surrounding $10 million diverted from a Medicaid settlement and then \u201cdonated\u201d to a charity, Hope Florida \u2014 a nonprofit backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019 wife, Casey. The money then went on to two political committees in need of money to defeat a constitutional amendment on recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n \u201cIt starts at the top,\u201d Andrade said. \u201cWe see a governor act like the rules don\u2019t matter and transparency is not something to be concerned about.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrade realized that the secrecy around the Hope Florida mess was not an isolated incident.\u00a0He sponsored legislation, HB 437<\/a>, that for the first time in decades would strengthen Florida\u2019s once-vaunted open-records law.<\/p>\n Empowering Florida citizens<\/p>\n It would impose time limits and penalties for government officials who thumb their noses at the law because they do not fear consequences. And while this law would surely assist the Sun Sentinel\u2019s newsgathering, its biggest beneficiaries would be individual Floridians seeking the truth.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of it,\u201d said Barbara Petersen of the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability, a watchdog group that has sued for access to records. \u201cIt will really help people who can\u2019t afford to hire attorneys.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrade\u2019s bill would require governments to respond by three working days to a records request either by providing the records, denying them based on a lawful exemption or providing an estimate of the time and cost to produce them.<\/p>\n It would also limit how much governments can charge for gathering, reviewing and duplicating government records. Any request taking less than 30 minutes would be free. Electronic records that have already been paid for by one requester would be free to anyone else who wants them.<\/p>\n No more lame excuses<\/p>\n The bill also prevents an agency from citing a backlog of records requests to justify delays, and fees can be waived for defined public purposes, such as research and newsgathering.<\/p>\n Government agencies that don\u2019t comply would face penalties, including a requirement to pay the legal fees for anyone forced to sue for access. And officials who don\u2019t comply with public records laws could face criminal charges.<\/p>\n These provisions seem as if they should be law already. They certainly would have come in handy when any newspaper in the state is investigating waste, fraud, abuse or political corruption.<\/p>\n Passing this legislation won\u2019t be easy. That\u2019s why local officials should speak up and make it clear that they have no problem with a law meant to protect the Floridians that they should be serving.<\/p>\n On its own, this bill won\u2019t banish secrecy. Andrade points to another problem: Across Florida, elected state attorneys have all but dropped criminal prosecutions of Sunshine law violations.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a start. It\u2019s a broad beam of sunshine to help penetrate the increasingly murky atmosphere surrounding state government. We hope a lot more champions of public integrity will step forward to fight for and pass this long-overdue law.<\/p>\n The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ugly trend has taken hold in Florida. It\u2019s rooted in the misguided conviction that politicians and bureaucrats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2853,28,30,29,114,482,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-63436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-editorials","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-latest-headlines","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63436","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=63436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}