The Lakeland Ledger

Put Florida’s Sun to Good Use

Florida is fondly known as the Sunshine State. The nickname came into use for an obvious reason: day after day of bright, comforting sun.

For those who care about good government, Florida’s sun is famously used in another name: Government in the Sunshine.

The public’s business is conducted in the open. Meetings of elected officials, for instance, are held under the light of the sun for all to see.

The sun also shines on the public’s records. The papers of county commissioners, the documents filed in courthouses and the minutes of governmental board meetings glow in the open air of public access.

Florida’s new governor has even created a fervor around the idea of the government’s business being the people’s business.

As a result, Gov. Charlie Crist established the Office of Open Government. He also instituted a Plain Language Initiative so that executive-branch records can not only be seen but understood by regular folk.

Despite all the goodwill these sunshine policies have established for Florida around the nation, and between local agencies and the public, a problem remains.

Several lawmakers in Tallahassee have renewed a dim annual effort to dull down the state’s beacon of bright government:

• HB 467 would mask from the public the name of any candidate under consideration for CEO of a public hospital by a hospital search committee. The premise of this bill, sponsored by Rep. Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, is that the public has no right to know who is being sought to head up its own hospitals.

• HB 1117 “prohibits willfully possessing sensitive personal information of another without that person’s consent.” Simply knowing the personal information of another would amount to a third-degree felony under this bill sponsored by Rep. John Legg, R-Port Richey.

• HB 1213 would expand this personal-information silliness by establishing that personal identification information “should always remain private, even when collected legally.” What kind of record cannot reveal to whom it pertains in sufficient detail to identify that person? The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Ellyn Bogdanaoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, has left this “when is a record not a record?” question unanswered.

Let’s steer straight these legislative princes of darkness who have been unable to see their way along the path of public duty.

If we don’t, before we know it, Florida will be known as the Sunshade State.

Reproduced courtesy of the Ledger.
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