For use Sunday, March 15

Sunshine Sunday editorial

From The Daytona Beach News-Journal

It’s a spring ritual at the Legislature a drizzle of proposed exemptions to the public records law, all of them slippery, most of them unnecessary, some of them downright hysterical (not in the funny sense).

One bill this year would shroud the identity of property owners, their mortgage information and the address of properties on the state’s abandoned or vacant property registry. Another would seal from public scrutiny crime photographs involving dead or injured individuals. Two bills would close records relating to prescription-drug records held by pharmacists and health-care providers. In public safety agencies, one bill would close disciplinary records and investigations involving firefighters, another would exempt the cellular phone numbers of current or former law enforcement officers from public scrutiny, essentially making cell records intractable.

None of the proposals improves government operations or enhance public safety. They provide cover for vested interests within government at the likely expense of the public interest and underscore one of the conclusions of the governor’s Commission on Open Government: Florida should be re-examining every one of its more than 800 exemptions to the public records law, not adding to the tally of secrecy. (The commission’s final report is available here: http://www.flgov.com/og_commission_home ).

It’s unfortunate that with a few exceptions, the overwhelming majority of some 100 bills relating to public records aim for more secrecy, not less. Notable exceptions include several proposals to improve transparency in state and local government spending and to disclose records relating to the abuse and neglect of children (without disclosing names). That’s potential progress, but it’s isolated compared to the opposite trend. One such proposal in particular would gut the open records law.

Sen. Tony Hill and Rep. Mia Jones, both D-Jacksonville, introduced bills in their respective chambers to close all public records relating to the personal, identifying information of current or former employees of public school districts, colleges and universities. Even elected school board members would be covered. The concealed information would include such basics as the name and employment status of the individual and more fiscally pertinent data as health insurance information such as plans, premiums and costs.

Hill’s and Jones’ proposal would amount to the virtual closing of all employee records. Without a name, a place or even status of employment, how would anyone be able to examine the records of public employees? How is anyone to verify, for example, if a school employee isn’t also a convicted felon or a child abuser? The justification for such a broad embrace of secrecy is specious. “Because teachers and administrators in schools, community colleges, and universities are often required to impose disciplinary measures,” Hill’s bill reads, “access to personal identifying information could be used to harass, stalk, intimidate or bring harm” to employees or their dependents “as a means of seeking retribution.”

There’s no evidence that the perils the bill pretends to be addressing have a connection to the reality. Rare, attention-grabbing incidents aside, schools are among the safest places to be for employees and students. If anything, the transparency of employee records improves safety by ensuring a degree of verification that would disappear if Hill’s and Jones’ proposed bill becomes law. In reality, the proposal is in response to an attempt by Joel Chandler, a Polk County resident, to get health insurance information on all employees and their dependents in the state’s 67 school districts. Chandler wasn’t being a nuisance. He was exercising his right to examine records. Government agencies can get smug about people like Chandler, accusing them of seeking records for the sake of seeking them. It’s not a government agency’s role to question the motives behind a request for records, as many agencies unfortunately do. That smugness can turn into bad law.

The motives of record-seekers like Chandler aren’t nearly as suspect as the motives of secrecy seekers like Hill, Jones and other sponsors of dozens of bills seeking open-records exemptions. Instead of thickening the dark book of public record exemptions a manual for legalized cover-ups legislators should be busy implementing the recommendations of the Commission on Open Government. Accountability needs no exemptions.

Reproduced courtesy of The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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