For use Sunday, March 15

Sunshine Sunday bills

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON
Associated Press Writer

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — As Florida newspapers call attention to laws that guarantee access to public records and government meetings, lawmakers are considering dozens of bills to block information now available to citizens.

They cover a wide variety of issues, from closing access to crime scene photographs that show all or part of a dead body to protecting personal information of public employees and their families. The laws would create an exemption to the state Constitution, which guarantees access to government records.

“A lot of them are pretty stinky. Oddly stinky, in that the sponsors may not be aware of the affect of the exemption,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation.

The foundation, an open government watchdog whose board of trustees includes several news industry managers from around Florida, is tracking 115 bills during the 60-day legislative session, and they are opposing 37. There are 52 bills that would create exemptions to the constitution and close access to records.

The opposition and exemption lists could get larger, though, because many of the bills being watched are placeholders that list a subject, but contain no language, so it’s unknown what lawmakers’ intentions are.

The foundation only has six bills on its support list. There are bills (SB 126 and HB 1439) that would give adoptive and foster parents access to Department of Children and Families records of the children under their care. The bills would also allow DCF to release abuse reports if it redacts information that would identify the victims.

There are also four bills that seek to make government more transparent by creating Web accessible databases to track government spending. Two (SB 594 and HB 1421) apply to state government, while another two (HB 971 and SB 1972) apply to all levels of government.

“People in their pink fuzzy slippers and their coffee cup will be able to go into their computer room and look into what their government is doing,” said Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, who is sponsoring the more wide-reaching government transparency bill. “Everybody deserves to know how their money is being spent. Public scrutiny is important to democracy ... I’m for turning on the light and pulling back the curtain.”

The list of bills the foundation considers bad is far longer. Among the top bills on the opposition list are measures that would keep the public from accessing:

• A government database listing abandoned properties and foreclosures (HB 221 and SB 1044)
• Information submitted to the Department of Health or the Agency for Health Care Administration by pharmacists and doctors for use in a prescription drug database (HB 145, HB 585, HB 937, HB 1017, SB 612 and SB 1354)
• The names of teachers and school administrators and personal information about them and their families (HB 409, SB 468 and SB 1260)
• Information about Department of Business and Professional Regulation investigators (HB 699 and SB 1218)
• Crime scene photos and video that show a dead person or a victim’s extreme injuries (HB 277 and SB 636)
• Cell phone records of law enforcement or corrections officers or investigators employed by the Department of Children and Families, Department of Health and Department of Revenue ( HB 817 and SB 1488).

“Most of them have very good intentions, if not all of them,” Petersen said. “It’s very important for legislators to remember that every time they create an exemption, they’re creating an exception to the constitution and I don’t think they understand it.”

The crime scene photo exemption is similar to a high-profile debate after NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt was killed in a 2001 crash during the Daytona 500. A law passed after his death blocked access to autopsy photos, which a newspaper sought so it could do its own investigation into the crash. Senate sponsor Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, said he doesn’t want murder victims to be exploited and he filed the new bill in part after hearing that a convicted rapist made a public records request for images of his victim.

“We don’t want people who have been victims to be victimized again and again and again,” said Dean, a former Citrus County sheriff, who said that he supports allowing a judge to grant access to the images for the right reasons, including newspaper investigations.

The bills that exempt law enforcement and state investigators’ cell phone records are intended to prevent harassment of investigators and crime victims and to protect identities of confidential informants. But Petersen said that state law already lets law enforcement keep information about ongoing investigations and informants out of the public’s hands, and the law would not allow oversight to make sure public employees aren’t abusing cell phone use by making personal calls on work time.

Other bills could have unintended consequences, like those that would protect educators’ personal information. Petersen said the language is so broad that schools wouldn’t be able to reveal their teachers’ and administrators’ names, including elected superintendents. Petersen said the bills were filed as a result of a public records request seeking the names of teachers’ dependents who are on group health insurance plans.

Lawmaker sometimes overreact to isolated or hypothetical situation and the response is like using a bazooka to attack the problem when a fly swatter would suffice, Petersen said.

Petersen said she supports the idea of protecting people’s medical records, but the public should be able to see for themselves if doctors and pharmacists are acting inappropriately. That’s why she opposes bills blocking access to a state prescription drug database.

Still, Senate sponsor David Aronberg, D-Greenacres, said privacy is extremely important in maintaining the database, which he said could save lives by identifying misuse of prescriptions or preventing patients from getting drugs that don’t interact well.

“We won’t have a database unless there’s enough privacy,” Aronberg said. “You can’t make it open season on our personal health records. The initial version of our bill may not be the perfect bill, but we’ll keep working on it to make it perfect.”

Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, said the database on abandoned property and foreclosures is designed for cities to more easily contact owners to make sure properties are being properly maintained, but some people might abuse the information if it were readily available.

“There’s so many other entities looking to capitalize on things like that, from poverty pimps to other people who would go after this information,” Smith said. “You’ve got scam artists everywhere now, doing some of everything.”

His bill language also says the measure would prevent vandalism and thefts at the abandoned properties.

That’s no excuse, said Petersen.

“You can’t stop crime by creating exceptions to our constitutional access to records,” she said. “That’s not going to stop homes from being vandalized.”

Most lawmakers, including Smith, say they’re willing to work with the foundation to improve bills.

“When we haven’t liked a bill, they’ve asked how they might fix a bill, and that’s very encouraging,” Petersen said.

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