FSNE - Sunshine Sunday

Nearly two centuries ago, statesman Henry Clay wrote that government is a trust and the officers of the government are trustees. As Clay saw it, both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.

The world has changed a great deal since Henry Clay penned these words. But one thing has remained constant: The people’s right to know is the foundation of our democracy.

Knowledge empowers every citizen with the ability to hold government officials accountable for the decisions they make on the people’s behalf. Only through knowledge can the people ensure that the officials who serve as their trustees are acting in the public interest.

Over the years the Sunshine and Public Records laws have opened the doors to governmental proceedings and records all over Florida. Each day, Floridians from Pensacola to the Keys use these laws to improve their communities. They attend commission meetings, serve on advisory councils and research and report on government programs. Through their efforts, Florida public officials are held accountable to the people they serve.

Some say that our strict Sunshine Laws make government less efficient. But open government provides the means for government officials to be better stewards of the public trust.

The open government laws give all Floridians the opportunity to obtain the information needed to support programs that work and to replace those that do not. In the long run, everyone benefits from the accountability that these laws provide. Knowledge enables public officials and the citizens they serve to learn from the past and prepare for the future.

In 1992, the people of Florida overwhelmingly voted to enshrine open government within our state constitution. In so doing, they acted to protect the right of access for themselves and generations to come. The constitutional amendment complements our Sunshine Laws in helping to safeguard the people's ability to obtain knowledge which they need in order to become actively involved in governmental proceedings at all levels.

As Abraham Lincoln recognized a century and a half ago, the people's will is the guiding force in a true democracy. Florida’s open government laws help to ensure that President Lincoln's extraordinary vision of a government of the people, by the people and for the people will stand the test of time.

(Editor’s Note: Charlie Crist is Florida's 35th Attorney General. Prior to assuming that office in January 2003, he served as Florida's Education Commissioner.)

Guest Editorial

State leaders need to embrace Sunshine

By Barbara A. Petersen

President, First Amendment Foundation

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." — James Madison, 1822

Sunshine Sunday, now in its fourth year, is a campaign sponsored by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors (FSNE) to remind Floridians about the importance of their right to oversee government through application of the state's open government laws.

This year the event has taken on new significance: Sunshine Sunday has become a week-long national campaign with the widespread support and participation of many of the nation's newspapers and broadcast stations.

According to Tom Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press: "A better climate for keeping government as open as possible has to begin with improving public understanding and support for freedom of information."

Florida has the most progressive public access laws in the nation. Under the State Constitution, the records and meetings of government -- state agencies, local governments, school boards, special districts -- are presumed open and accessible to the public, unless there is a specific statutory exemption.

Only the Legislature can create exemptions to our constitutional right of access. Our laws have set the standard for open government in states around the nation and many foreign countries, and undoubtedly will receive particular praise and scrutiny this week.

Yet despite Florida's reputation for openness, we're reminded daily of the struggle to ensure that our government remains open and accountable. Whether it's a story on the evening news about a citizen's battle to obtain copies of public records, a report in the local newspaper on a commission meeting wrongfully closed, or telephone calls from frustrated citizens denied the opportunity to speak at a public meeting, the fight for access is occurring all over the state of Florida and at all levels of government.

So Sunshine Sunday provides us with more than the opportunity to educate the public. It also allows us to shine light on the actions of our elected officials and the attempts by government to shut us, the public, out of the processes of our government.

On past Sunshine Sundays I've generally focused my efforts on our legislators and their attempts to create new exceptions to our constitutional right of access -- the annual parade of horribles. And this year is not so different from years past. There are, to date, more than 30 new exemptions being proposed, many of them truly outrageous and pander to the interests of various corporations and special interest groups.

But this year I'd like to take a different approach. It's time, I think, for us to encourage government officials to step up and truly embrace open government in Florida.

First, let's ask our legislators to enact laws that bring true reform to our public records and open meetings laws, reforms that shift the burden of enforcing the constitutional right of access from the citizens of this state to a government ombudsman, that ensure an equal right of access to records in all formats, that require reasonable and affordable fees for copies of public records, and that punish those government employees who wrongly and intentionally deny access.

Second, we need to demand that state agencies and local government develop non- restrictive public access policies, policies that adhere to the spirit and intent of the law and allow unfettered access to all non-exempt public records and meetings. To that end, the Legislature must ensure that government agencies, particularly local governments, have sufficient resources -- whether personnel or technology or both -- to train all employees in sunshine law requirements so they may provide access to records and meetings quickly and efficiently.

Finally, let's call on Governor Jeb Bush to set the standard for open government in Florida and across the nation by embracing not only Florida's constitutional requirements for open government, but the spirit of the law as well. We shouldn't have to beg or battle for openness, ever.

We're fortunate to have a growing cadre of reform-minded legislators: Dan Gelber, Dudley Goodlette, Arthenia Joyner, Jack Seiler, Anne Gannon and Fred Brummer. And our new legislative leaders, Senate President Tom Lee and House Speaker Allan Bense, have continually shown strong support for open government, as has Attorney General Charlie Crist. Let us all hope that next year, the fifth anniversary of Florida's Sunshine Sunday, we have a growing list of public servants to honor and reforms worth celebrating.

To quote Senate President Tom Lee, it's imperative that our government recognize "that the public's confidence is shaken when" its actions are "cloaked in secrecy."

(Editor’s Note: Barbara A. Petersen is president of the First Amendment Foundation, a private non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Tallahassee. If you'd like more information about the foundation, please check the FAF website at www.floridafaf.org.)

Guest Editorial

Sunshine a bulwark of good government

By State Representatives Dan Gelber and Jack Seiler

The Sunshine Law is a strange being. It was created to open government for citizens to see and hear what goes on inside and has become a battleground every legislative session as we consider the newest batch of exceptions. The media and citizens fight for the public's right to know. Office holders or special interests who find the Sunshine Law too constraining are on the other side.

Hundreds of bills have been introduced to create exemptions to Florida's laws requiring open records and open meetings. Many exceptions addressed small, discreet areas but some would have made large gaping holes in the law. A dozen or so have passed recently, and it is likely the onslaught of proposals will continue. The easy availability of legislative exceptions in the past has made the practice dangerous. Currently, there are more than 1,000 exceptions to the public records laws. At the current pace, Florida's grand tradition of government in the sunshine will suffer death by a thousand paper cuts. Gutting this law would be a serious loss.

It is impossible to inventory all the great misdeeds, abuses and overreaching that were uncovered or prevented by Florida's public records laws over the past 37 years. Misconduct by public officials, contract fraud, election misconduct, health care mistakes, and civil rights violations are among the many.

Our State's Sunshine Law is one of the strong laws that protect ordinary citizens from abuses by their government. It is a bedrock principle that empowers people to understand their government and hold it accountable.

Even with the best of intentions, a bureaucracy can easily run roughshod over the rights of ordinary citizens. With bad intentions, government can do much worse. Shining the light on government actions can only improve government responsiveness.

By requiring government to be equally open to everyone -- whether they are a powerful news network or an ordinary citizen who thinks he has been wronged -- everybody is vested with equal power. The principle of making government totally accessible is the one sure way to achieve honest government.

What better example than what happened a few months ago: the State's Division of Elections tried to avoid producing the list of felons it chose to purge from local voting rolls. Certainly, it would have been easier and clearly less embarrassing if Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary Glenda Hood had kept their felon list secret. After all, it's easier to govern when people are not looking over your shoulder.

But in Florida, because our constitutional sunshine provisions prevailed, we learned of mistakes being made in preparation for the upcoming national election. Unquestionably, the discomfort that followed was a better alternative than allowing our fellow citizens to be disenfranchised and our democratic process tainted.

Another important value of these laws is the balance they provide where one political party commands total power, as in Florida, and the branches of government tend to lose their ability to check and balance one another. The Sunshine Law and the transparency it provides literally forces accountability that is otherwise diminished or lost. No matter which political party is on top, absolute power becomes a danger to the democratic process unless it too must answer to an informed citizenry.

The Sunshine Law, with all the inconveniences it causes, is an absolute bulwark of our system. Our hope for this legislative session and those that follow is that we, on both sides of the aisle, will do more than merely reject those "exceptions" deemed unnecessary.

Rather than merely playing defense year after year to try to stop bad ideas that diminish its letter and spirit, we should examine ways to strengthen Florida's Sunshine Law. For example, we should consider rescinding unwise exemptions to the law that the legislature passed in prior years. We should also give the public records laws more teeth, by demanding more timely responses by government to requests for public records.

Unquestionably, government could run smoother if citizens and the press did not have a right to access information as guaranteed by the Sunshine Law, but it would not run better.

Openness makes for clarity and fairness. A participatory democracy can only truly invest power in its citizens if it gives them those tools that truly empower.

No tool is more powerful than knowledge.

(Editor’s Note: State Representative Dan Gelber is a Democrat from Miami Beach. State Representative Jack Seiler is a Democrat from Pompano Beach.)

Reproduced courtesy of the Okeechobee News.
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