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Key West Citizen
Sunshine Law survives efforts to dim the lights
It happens every year.
Every year there are people who want the Florida Legislature to curtail your right to see government records or attend governmental meetings.
Florida has some of the strongest open-government laws in the country. The best known is the Sunshine Law. And every year, people want to find a place where they can hide from the sunshine.
No, not every exemption to sunshine laws are bad, and needed exemptions do get and have been made. But necessary exemptions are few and far between.
But that doesn't stop people from seeking more.
Two weeks before the current legislative session there were already 50 proposed new exemptions to open government laws in line for consideration. By last week, Barbara Peterson, sunshine watchdog for the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee, said she was tracking 44 Senate bills creating new exemptions, and 24 bills in the house.
"Real stinkers" is how she describes some of them. For instance, one would keep secret information provided by a law enforcement officer related to an investigation into complaints filed against the officer, even after the case is resolved.
Over the last two years, almost 300 open government exemptions were proposed, and most were beaten back by an aroused public and media.
Today, for the third straight year, newspapers across the state are joining together to remind the people of Florida of their precious heritage of open government — and to warn them that keeping it requires constant vigilance. We call it Sunshine Sunday.
Florida's first open government law was adopted in 1909. It gave citizens access to state records. Then, in the early 1970s, the Sunshine Law was passed, making most meetings of public boards, commissions and other agencies of state and local governments open to the public.
In 1990, voters affirmed their interest in open government by approving a constitutional amendment that open meetings laws should apply to the Legislature. Two years after that, they put the legislative, judicial and executive branches of state government under the mandates of open records laws.
Then, in 2002, voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment making it more difficult for legislators to approve new exemptions. It now takes a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and House to create new exemptions to open government laws.
Still, they keep trying.
Newspapers around the state report that local agencies are complying with public records requests only about half the time. And there are other ways to chill your right to open government. For instance, newspapers and citizens face increasing demands to pay high fees when requesting copies of public documents. Special interests with a desire to operate in the dark know that if you can't afford to make a copy of that document, it makes it harder to know what's in it.
And that leads us to a key point: The laws that guarantee open meetings and open records are not just for the media. Yes, we tend to use them more in seeking the records that enable us to report to our readers what their government officials are doing.
But these laws apply to any citizen of Florida. You have just as much right as any reporter to attend a government meeting or ask to see — and copy — government records.
When legislators shut another backroom door, they are slamming it in your face.
Over the years, legislators have created almost 900 exemptions to open government in Florida, and sought many more. Fortunately, because you have the right to know what government is doing, they can't do it in the dark.
Pensacola News Journal