For use Sunday, March 15

Editorial: Open government ... Sunshine Week celebrates the public’s right to know

By Staff Reports
Saturday, March 14, 2009

It had such humble beginnings. A state representative from Gadsden County introduced a bill in the Florida Legislature in 1909 requiring that “all state, county and municipal records shall at all times be open for a personal inspection of any citizen of Florida and those in charge of such records shall not refuse this privilege to any citizen.” Violators were to be subject to removal from office or impeachment.

The bill became law without opposition. The rest is history.

On this 100th anniversary, Sunshine Sunday, we could go on and on about Florida’s status as one of the most “sunshiney” states — on and off the beach. We could gush about the importance of the public’s right to know about the public’s business. We could remind everyone that the press enjoys no special access to files and meetings beyond that of everyday citizens — including bloggers — so we all have a stake in letting maximum sunshine in.

Yet, we have loads of fresh examples that test the spirit if not the letter of the law. They bring home the timeliness of this statewide open-government observance that kicks off Sunshine Week. Let’s get to them:

We saw the hiring of Superintendent Dennis Thompson in July 2007 by the Collier County School Board still keeps coming up, most recently in a union challenge to privatization of the janitorial staff. The union argues Thompson came to power illegally and therefore his policies are moot.

We saw Thompson and the School Board appoint two important citizens advisory committees to get more public input and streamline board meetings — then allow one of the committees, on academics, to hold its meetings out of the public-friendly sunshine of television.

We see a Lee County School Board member, branded as an obstructionist for asking questions that annoy his colleagues, charged a copying fee for public documents about school-system business.

We saw the Lee County Sheriff’s Office withhold potential key information in the Tia Poklemba murder case in August when publication of a surveillance photo of a suspect’s car might have elicited tips leading to an arrest. Officials now seek that suspect in Mexico.

We saw the Collier County Sheriff’s Office withhold the identification of a man shot by three officers in November after he pointed a pellet gun at them in a shopping-center parking lot. Turns out, they had a name from an ID card he carried, but officers wanted to check it out first. The news media correctly identified the man for readers in the meantime.

We saw two members of a Collier County environmental advisory committee attend the same state agency meeting, which was unadvertised in advance to the public, on an active local issue. They tried to say that was OK because one left the room when the other spoke on public business at Clam Bay.

We saw two representatives sit on both the town of Ave Maria’s public and private development planning boards — a situation solved by one member being replaced by voters when his term expired.

We saw Florida Gulf Coast University fail to be transparent when selecting a firm for the school’s high-profile, $17 million solar-energy farm. No minutes were taken during committee meetings to narrow the list of bidders and committee members did not keep written records of how they ranked firms.

On Marco Island, we saw the city release its short list of 15 candidates for the position of city manager late on a Friday afternoon, reversing an earlier decision to keep it private and spare applicants “unwanted attention’’ back home.

Across Florida, last but not least, we see public agencies tested for sunshine know-how, to mixed results. The Collier County Sheriff’s Office flunked the latest standardized public records request that tested knowledge of fundamentals. Citizens do not need to tell officials why they want documents and do not have to make the requests in writing.

It’s all so unnecessary — and so easily avoidable by public officials who practice what they preach about having nothing to hide. When the blinds come down, something dark has a way of coming out.

© Naples News

Reproduced courtesy of the Naples News.
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