For use Sunday, March 15, and thereafter

For Butterworth, openness is a way of life

Eds: This is one of six profiles about Florida open government advocates moving in advance for Sunshine Sunday.

By CAROL MARBIN MILLER
The Miami Herald

MIAMI (AP) — It was six months into his tenure as head of Florida’s chronically troubled child welfare agency, and Bob Butterworth was explaining how a 2-year-old foster child had simply vanished only to reappear months later in a landscaped Wisconsin home with a body in the yard.

The June 23, 2007, press conference by the chief of the Department of Children & Families was remarkable. Not because the state had allowed a small child to disappear. Nor even because of the lurid details of the case: the woman’s body buried beneath new plantings, the tortured boy hiding in the closet.

The moment was unusual because Butterworth was even talking at all. He used words like “unconscionable” and “inexcusable” to describe his own agency’s failings. “As details unfold of the tragedy of this, it will be beyond most humans’ comprehension,” he said.

And then, over the next few weeks, he offered details of how Courtney Clark, a Pinellas County toddler, went missing for four months from a state-approved caregiver’s house before police found her.

“Nothing like that had ever happened before,” said Andrea Moore, a frequent DCF critic as head of Florida’s Children First. “It was breathtaking to have a secretary admit there was a problem, take responsibility for it, and then share the information about how he came to that conclusion. It is much easier to fix problems when everyone is working with the same information.”

Longtime observers of Florida government and politics say Butterworth has always worked that way, first as a Broward County prosecutor, and later as head of the Florida Highway Patrol, mayor of Sunrise and state attorney general. He is credited with being the first DCF head in recent memory to open the windows to sunshine.

“The reality for abused children is that secrecy is the greatest enemy, other than abuse,” said Jack Levine, a longtime children’s advocate in Tallahassee.

“Child abuse is one of the horrible crimes where secrecy is essential for it not to be detected,” Levine added. “When the department is required to intervene against abuse, adding secrecy to the portfolio is not a good thing.”

When a child was badly abused after more than 20 abuse reports went unheeded, Butterworth petitioned a Fort Myers judge to open the records, an action he then took repeatedly. Butterworth encouraged his staff to speak with reporters directly, and agency records flowed freely during his administration.

“The employees were shocked, because they thought, You can’t let them know what we did, they’ll destroy us,’” Butterworth said. “But I think it made a big difference in how the agency was treated by the media.”

Unlike some of his predecessors, Butterworth seemed to favor transparency almost instinctively. He says he developed an appreciation for openness while he was a state prosecutor and Broward County sheriff, and his commitment to transparency has not wavered since.

“I’ve always been in positions where I cannot do my job if the public does not know what I’m doing,” Butterworth said. “You have to let people know you are not going to tolerate people being victimized, and if you victimize somebody, we’re going to go out and get you.

“We make arrests every day. But if the public does not know about it, there is no deterrence at all.”

Butterworth said he enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with reporters for most of his 40 years in public service, dating back to his appointment as Broward sheriff in 1978, when one of his first decisions was to hire an award-winning Fort Lauderdale investigative reporter to work for him.

John deGroot, a newsman for 20 years before Butterworth hired him, said Butterworth learned from his father, a Hollywood radio and TV repairman, that reputations were a double-edged sword. “You build your business based on your reputation,” deGroot said. “That was an ethic he inherited from his father.”

Richard Doran worked with Butterworth for about two decades as deputy attorney general and ran the office for a few months when Butterworth resigned to run for the state Senate.

“From the day he took office, he already had a pretty firmly held view about the importance of open government,” Doran said.

Butterworth had named Patricia Gleason, a cabinet affairs specialist, his public records czar. From her perch, Gleason settled disputes between state and local agencies and reporters or members of the public seeking documents. More often than not, she shepherded the release of records.

“I would get calls from unhappy county attorneys because Pat had given them some advice they didn’t like,” Doran said.

Carole B. Shauffer, who as head of the San Francisco-based Youth Law Center litigated fiercely against Butterworth both when he was attorney general and later at DCF said Butterworth’s office was always responsive, transparent and accountable, even as other departments across the country sought to keep their troubles hidden.

“He always said, put the facts out there, good or bad, and take responsibility for what went wrong, rather than trying to confuse issues or spread the blame on to somebody else,” Shauffer said.

“He doesn’t really see advocates as the enemy,” Shauffer added. “He sees them as part of the team.”

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