|
News-Press, Fort Myers Open records vital to democracy Without access to public records, citizens cannot know what their government is doing. Citizens have helped thwart efforts to undermine Florida’s powerful open-government laws. Now they can help expand access to federal records. Today is the fourth “Sunshine Sunday,” kicking off a concerted week-long effort by Florida’s newspapers to make citizens and legislators aware of the value of the state’s open-government laws. Again, we are asking citizens to urge their legislators to reject unwise exemptions to these laws. Florida’s rich heritage of open-government laws requires vigilant protection. The state’s newspapers, including The News-Press, are banding together again this year to thwart the usual clutch of bad bills in the Legislature, designed to serve certain special interests by limiting the public’s right to know what its own government is doing. We’ll update you on that legislation as the session progresses. Your voices do count. Similar efforts in the past three years have resulted in the defeat of almost all attempts to limit access to public records. This year we are also asking your support for laws designed to create better access to federal records, an area where much improvement is needed. The issue is close to home, because The News-Press and the other Gannett Co. newspapers in Florida are suing in federal court for access to records of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its parent, the Department of Homeland Security, related to the distribution of disaster aid in Florida during the 2004 hurricanes. This is a classic public records case, in which access to basic data is crucial to assessing the performance of your government, and letting you, the public, know about that performance. At the federal level, Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, have introduced S 394 in the Senate, and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, has introduced HR 867 in the House. This legislation, “OPEN government act of 2005,” would speed the release of federal public records. It is worthy of your support. Open records and meetings are sometimes misunderstood as news media issues. We certainly could not do our job of informing readers without such laws. A look at the accompanying partial list of 2004 stories in The News-Press that relied on public records makes that clear. But we stand on no special privilege when it comes to gathering information. We rely solely on the public’s right to know, the same right enjoyed — and used—by individuals and groups of all descriptions. Activist individuals and groups often take the lead in using records to examine and publicize issues. The press has no special rights in this matter, only a special obligation to use its resources to keep the public informed. We need your help in keeping our most important tools sharp. Urge our leaders in Tallahassee and Washington to defend and expand the public’s right to open government records and meetings. FOR THE RECORD Here are some — just some — of the stories reported last year in The News-Press that might never have been published without public records — records which frequently had to be fought for: Reporter Jeff Cull reviewed thousands of financial records to show how Lee County government had diverted millions in toll revenues from the Sanibel Causeway to other projects, while allowing the causeway to deteriorate dangerously. The prospective replacement of the causeway has so far caused a doubling of tolls, outraging motorists and harming working people and businesses on Sanibel and Captiva. Public records allowed reporter Lee Melsek to discover that Lee County’s school superintendent was managing contracts for new school construction in a new and arbitrary fashion, in violation of the Sunshine Law. Within three days of the publication of the investigative piece, the superintendent changed the contractor selection process and promised to conduct such business in public in the future. Within weeks, the district’s chief business officer was forced to resign because of ties to the businessman whose company received some of the contracts. Reporters Grant Boxleitner and Mike Hoyem were able to show a pattern of underreporting crime from sheriff’s records obtained through freedom of information requests. They pored over incident logs, then filed FOI requests for the corresponding incident reports. This story may have been among the reasons voters booted Sheriff Rod Shoap out of office in November. When Boxleitner asked to review the disciplinary records of Lee County school bus drivers after a series of mishaps and blunders, The News-Press was billed $17,750 for processing the records. Such prohibitive charges could just as easily be assessed against an individual or parents group seeking information vital to their children’s safety. The district relented under threat of lawsuit from the paper, and Boxleitner was able to generate several revealing stories. Metro columnist Sam Cook touched off a storm of public controversy when he used public records to show that a sheriff’s office employee had sent a racially offensive cartoon to 25 co-workers. The sheriff and the employee issued a public apology. Records obtained through freedom of information requests were critical to a report by Melanie Payne, Steve McQuilkin and Jeff Cull showing that corners had been cut in the construction of the Turner Agri-Civic Center in Arcadia, which collapsed during Hurricane Charley with 1,400 people inside. It was the most significant shelter failure in the state, and an investigation continues.
Reproduced courtesy of News-Press, Ft. Myers. |
