FSNE - Sunshine Sunday

Whenever I start to take Florida's Government in the Sunshine Law and public records laws for granted, spring arrives, the Legislature meets and I'm reminded again that these laws always have natural enemies.

Florida's open government laws are among the strongest in the nation. They can be summarized in about 100 words: Whenever public boards meet on public business, they have to do it in the open, let people know ahead of time what they're doing, and record what they did. Because every speck of magnetism on tape, byte of data on disk, or scrap of paper produced at public expense belongs to the folks who paid for it, government must let anyone see or have a copy of any record without having to hear a reason. There are many exceptions, but not as many as you think. Each one must be narrow and have specific, compelling reasons behind it.

The Government in the Sunshine Manual put out by the state Attorney General each year is about the size of the second Harry Potter novel, so this is a simplification. Still, it's a simplification that tells you 90 percent of what you need to know.

This is not the case in most states. In most places, it's pretty easy to scan the front rows of the meeting room and announce this would be an excellent time to go into an executive session.

Because so many people in Florida are newcomers, a lot of our officeholders are from other places, too. Whenever new city managers, administrators, board appointees or first-time elected officials arrive, it's a pretty good bet that the Sunshine Law and public records are news to them.

There are usually three stages in their attitude toward the law.

The first stage is cynicism. They understand there is such a thing as public records. They've heard people say the Sunshine Law requires this or that, but they assume there must be easy work-arounds. Things probably work just as they did back home. Policy debates can still be held in a restaurant somewhere and the discussion at the meeting put on just for show afterward. They assume e-mails are confidential and you can make deals that will never see the light of day.

The next stage is denial. The law can't say the things those people say it does. Everyone knows you can't let the messiness of debate spill out in the open. Government can't work like that. That's not the way we did it back home! Why is that guy from the State Attorney's Office leaving messages?

If you think I'm exaggerating, remember that when The News-Journal and 29 other Florida papers tested public records law compliance last month, only 57 percent of agencies passed.

The last stage is acceptance. My gosh, we really can't huddle before the game. People really can see everything I wrote on city stationery. The city attorney wasn't just pulling my leg. No wonder Florida government gets so weird.

Those are the usual three stages. Sometimes there's another stage that comes before acceptance. The Tallahassee Stage. That's the stage where officials and people doing business with government try to get the Legislature to write new exemptions to law.

These exceptions are limited by a 2002 state constitutional amendment but there are still about 60 bills in the Legislature already that would make new exemptions to public records laws. Most of them are likely to fail. But each year their number suggests a lot of officials have not yet achieved the acceptance stage. How so many of them get to the Legislature is beyond me.

Op-ed column by Mark Lane, Daytona Beach News-Journal