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St. Augustine Record Lawmakers first in line to deny public access to their backyard
One of the larger misconceptions about Florida’s Sunshine Law is that it was created for the press. While it’s true that newspaper folks embrace it a little more tightly than average citizens, its purpose was, and still is, to protect the public’s access to governmental dealings that affect it. Today is the fourth annual “Sunshine Sunday” in Florida. It is an effort by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, the First Amendment Foundation and the state’s news outlets to remind our citizens how important the Sunshine Law is in their everyday lives. Florida leads the nation in this regard and has been the example used by other states in their attempts to ensure that the public’s business is done in public. Florida’s Sunshine Law was enacted in 1967 and has served the people well. In 1992 citizens spoke again and enacted a constitutional amendment that integrated many of the protections granted in the original law. Because Florida has been “in the light” for so long, citizens tend to take for granted many of its assurances. Locally, campaign contributions became a key issue in our county and city commission races last November. Citizens were able to track these with a click of a mouse, or a drive to the Supervisor of Elections Office. We believe a number of the races were decided on just this issue. The fact that candidates have to report it, and citizens have the right to see it, is a direct result of public access guarantees. Another misconception about our Sunshine Law is that the main threat to it is county or city commissioners meeting in backrooms, conducting business “in the dark.” There continues to be abuse of the law at every government level, but these are isolated cases and often a result of a lack of understanding of the law, rather than contempt for it. The real threat to the public’s access comes from our own lawmakers in Tallahassee. Today, state statutes include more than 1,000 exemptions to Sunshine Laws. Each year more loopholes are proposed for reasons both good and bad. Not unlike our county’s own comprehensive plan and land use regulations, exemptions (or variances) have resulted in a steady erosion of the intent of both laws and the protections they provide the citizens. Our legislators have not been bashful in their attempts to circumvent access laws. Our favorite example happened in 1998. A law was proposed, ostensibly to ensure that rabies vaccinations were done by licensed veterinarians. The House member who sponsored the bill was himself, a member of that profession. But this bill, as is the case with many, had to be read all the way through to get the full picture. At the end was a clause that exempted from public records the names of the owners of vaccinated pets. The intent of the bill was clearly to stop direct marketers of pet supplies from getting their hands on the lists and marketing to these people - usually at hefty discounts. Incredibly the law passed both houses – justified (this is true, now) because allowing those names to be published would violate the doctor/patient confidentiality rights of the pet (mum’s the word on what the Doberman said). This is admittedly an extreme example of Sunshine Law abuse but on the other hand it is dead serious. If this whimsical logic can pass muster of our lawmakers, what can’t? New laws that threaten the public’s right to know in 2005 include: • SB 306; creates a public record exemption for “any personal or private record produced” by a law enforcement officer to an investigation of complaints against the officer. This includes telephone, financial, bank, credit card and e-mail records belonging to the officer being investigated. • SJR 682; proposes to repeal a constitutional amendment that provided a right of access to adverse medical incident reports (81 percent of Florida’s voters approved the original law). • SB 1442, 1478 and 1596; all express legislative intent to create public records and meeting law exemptions. Thanks in great part to the First Amendment Foundation in cooperation with the state’s media, nearly 300 such attempts have been turned back in the past three years. But many have not. It is difficult to measure the real effect of the Sunshine Law on the lives of the citizens. We can site incidents one by one in which government excess or abuses surfaced because of these laws. But we’ll never know how many simply never happened because of their preemptive effect. The sunshine law is the key that opens the door of government to the people for which it was originally created. That importance can not be overemphasized if we believe that government is too big and too important to be left to politicians.
Reproduced courtesy
of the St. Augustine Record. |
