Palm Beach Post

Crist parts the clouds

Florida’s nationally renowned open-government tradition has had no stronger threat in recent years than pressure from Tallahassee. Only public awareness heightened by Sunshine Sunday, today’s annual observance by Florida newspapers, has prevented further gutting of Government-in-the-Sunshine Laws.

So it was the best news in years when Gov. Crist, by executive order on his first day in office, created the Office of Open Government (OOG) within his own office. It was even better news when he convinced Pat Gleason to become the special counsel for the office, and JoAnn Carrin its director. The two rival Gov. Crist, 2005 winner of the Friend of the First Amendment Award, in their support of open government, and they are experts on the state’s open-records and open-meetings laws.

The governor’s new office hit the ground running. The executive order called on each state agency to designate a contact person for enforcing compliance on public records. The OOG identified more than 70 primary and backup contacts at more than 30 agencies who can be reached regarding problems. Already, said Ms. Carrin, agency reps are calling to make sure that they are doing the right thing.

Those agencies and contacts are listed on the Web site (www.flgov.com/og_home) that went online last week. There’s also information about the online training course developed with the Florida Institute on Government housed at Florida State University. The OOG negotiated free slots for agency managers to take the course, which is guaranteed to be sound legally. Such partnerships can only be good for the institute and the state.

Another major sign of change Ms. Carrin cited is the Department of Families and Children joining The Fort Myers News-Press in petitioning to make public the records in a child abuse case. Those records would have been redacted but would allow the newspaper to report, and the public to follow, the history of the case. Agencies in the past would have stonewalled, citing confidentiality of an ongoing investigation.

Gov. Crist said Friday that the way to stem the recent flood of legislative exemptions to the open-records laws is to “sign less of them.” He deserves credit for setting all this openness in motion even before getting to the serious matter of property insurance rates. With public distrust of government rampant all the way to Washington, it should not go without notice, during this Sunshine Week, that the governor intends to hold Florida “to higher standards of ethical conduct than ever before.”

Reproduced courtesy of the Palm Beach Post.
Back to top | Return to fsne.org