FSNE - Sunshine Sunday

You go to a local car lot, where the salesman takes your checkbook, goes into the back and comes out with a set of keys. You got the blue one, he says. We gave you a great deal on the financing. Just trust me.

You stop by the grocery store and hand an employee your credit card. She starts loading bags of groceries into your car. Did you get the food you needed? You’re going to love it, she tells you. Just trust me.

You stop by the video store on the way home. All the boxes are simply labeled “DVD.” You pick one and the sales clerk takes your money. This one’s great, she says. Just trust me.

Wait a minute, you say. There’s no way you’d put up with that — and hearing the phrase just trust me only makes you more wary.

The same holds true for government. Fifty years ago, Florida’s system was enough to make anyone suspicious. At a recent meeting of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, former Gov. Reubin Askew reminisced about a time when the state was essentially run by a league of good ol’ boys who made all their decisions — and their deals — in actual smoke-filled rooms. Many local governments were just as secretive.

Askew was governor when that changed. The passage of Florida’s public meeting and open-records laws made the state a national leader in accountability. The right to inspect public records and attend meetings is written into the state Constitution, with statutory and case law backing it up.

Floridians can go to school board budget meetings to see how tax dollars are spent — or wasted. They can review planning documents to get more information on developments down the street. They can even pull the personnel file of a state agency head and decide for themselves whether he’s worth his $150,000 salary.

That right isn’t absolute. There are some documents that obviously must remain private — like court files showing the new address of a domestic-violence victim, or city utility records that list customer bank account numbers. But these exceptions are supposed to be written in a way that only protects information that needs to be protected, and explains exactly why it should be hidden.

Unfortunately, there are special interests out there who will argue that they deserve “privacy,” even when it’s not warranted. That’s why so many bills are pending this session that would hide records and close meetings from public view. Some are justified. Many aren’t.

Consider a bill that would create an exemption for any “personal” records collected in the course of a misconduct investigation of a law-enforcement officer. This bill, which has already been approved unanimously by committees in the House and Senate, would gut Floridians’ ability to be sure bad cops are kept off the streets. It’s hard to see the rationale, yet it is among more than a hundred exemptions being considered this year.

Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, says she sees an even more alarming trend — bills that aren’t officially classed as exemptions, but still hide information from the public. Among these is a ludicrous bill that forbids police to keep electronic records of guns sold through pawn shops. These records have helped put violent criminals behind bars, but under this bill (a version of which passed the House Friday) they’d have to be destroyed.

Lawmakers have also grown quite fond of exempting personal information (including photographs) of public employees. There’s a case to be made for concealing the address of a police officer or judge, but why hide the taxpayer-paid cell-phone number of an assistant city attorney, as one bill would do?

Taken separately, many of these exemptions make little difference to the average Florida resident. But over time, they’re blocking out great segments of the public record and replacing them with the words “Just trust us.” It’s a deal Floridians can’t afford to take. And they should let their lawmakers know.