Pensacola News Journal

You, too, are free to seek public records -- it's the law

Today begins "Sunshine Week" in Florida -- a statewide focus on open government. It is the right of all citizens to attend public meetings, freely access public records and hold their elected representatives accountable for what they do.

Why is such an observance so important? Because the power granted to Florida citizens to monitor their government officials is so absolute, it's written into the state constitution.

We Floridians are guaranteed the right to review letters, reports, e-mails, job reviews and a host of other documents generated by government agencies and the people who work there. That right helps us maintain control over our government -- and our tax dollars -- so that public business cannot be carried out in secret, and so tax money is not spent without accountability.

Citizens are supposed to be able to check the school superintendent's travel records to make sure he isn't spending public money on vacation trips, and to look at city hall or county courthouse maintenance reports to figure out why some potholes get fixed and others keep growing.

All who ask are supposed to be granted access to such records quickly, easily and -- if they so choose -- without disclosing their identities.

But too often, having this power and seeing it carried out are worlds apart.

The latest audit to measure access to public records -- an exercise organized by the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee and carried out by newspapers, including the Pensacola News Journal, and citizen volunteers across the state -- shows that even the strongest open-government laws are rendered meaningless when the record keepers are ignorant of those laws, or choose not to abide by them.

Overall, more than 40 percent of the 220 local and county agencies across the state that were audited violated the state's public records laws. The rate mirrored the results of the first statewide audit in 2004, when 43 percent failed to comply. In many cases, volunteers faced suspicious bureaucrats who said records could be surrendered only in exchange for the name of the volunteer, a sufficient reason or a written request. Other agencies simply refused to provide the documents.

As Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, said: The audit results are further evidence that citizens' access to open records is eroding.

Freedom of the press -- that is, freedom of the public -- is an intangible "something" so many of us take for granted that we fail to understand how other societies around the planet function without it.

The press often is referenced as "the Fourth Estate" — the other three being the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. However, the press is not a rostered player in the "balance of power" lineup. Rather, it's an independent entity that serves as a watchdog over the other three estates — in an effort to keep everybody honest.

The role of the Fourth Estate is an awesome right, and it is for certain a somber responsibility. But it is nothing less than what is granted to every single person who stands in that constitutional group called "We, the People."

While the press might be looked upon as a facilitator of freedom, those we serve are its champions. It's the law.

Reproduced courtesy of the Pensacola News Herald.
Back to top | Return to fsne.org