Gainesville Sun

Is right to know imperiled?

By LLOYD DUNKELBERGER

Gainesville Sun Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE - Although Florida has a new governor who has promised to make open government a hallmark of his administration, that hasn’t stopped state lawmakers from filing dozens of bills this spring to close public meetings or records to public access.

As lawmakers finished the first week of their nine-week session, there were 37 House and Senate bills that could potentially provide a retreat from the state’s Sunshine laws, open-government advocates said. Another 15 Senate bills could impact public meetings and records, although the exact topics of the bills have yet to be specified.

“It’s already a little bit daunting,’’ said Adria Harper, director of the First Amendment Foundation, an open government advocacy group.

Among the bills lawmakers have filed is a broad measure to exempt any personal identification information in a government agency’s records from public review. Another measure would close executive search committees for public hospitals. Others would provide broader secrecy provisions for economic development agencies and for discussions about lawsuits involving governments.

But the difference this year is that all those bills, if they pass the Legislature, will also have to win the approval of Gov. Charlie Crist, who on his first day as the state’s chief executive created the Office of Open Government. It’s a position he reiterated in his State of the State speech last week when he described the open-government office as a way of “installing a window into the workings’’ of the state government.

“It’s the people’s government,’’ Crist said in an interview. “The greatest opportunity for them to see how their government is functioning for them is by it being open. To me it’s just common sense.’’

Crist said his respect for the state’s open-government tradition deepened while he was attorney general working with Pat Gleason, one of the state’s leading legal authorities on the Sunshine laws. Gleason is now running Crist’s Office of Open Government.

He said he also respected the efforts of former Gov. Reubin Askew, who when rebuffed by the Legislature won approval from the voters for a far-reaching financial disclosure amendment in the state Constitution that required lawmakers and other state officials to reveal their finances.

Crist said he sees his open-government office as providing several roles, including making sure agencies under his control comply with the Sunshine laws. But he also said he hopes it sends “a message.’’

“That it is the people’s government and they should have an opportunity to witness what their government is doing because it’s supposed to be working for them in an ethical, honest, well-motivated way,’’ he said.

Some lawmakers, who have been critical of the Legislature’s willingness to cloak more records and meetings in secrecy, say Crist’s presence will make a difference.

“I was delighted,’’ said Rep. Jack Seiler, D-Pompano Beach, about Crist’s creation of an open-government office. “It’s a night and day difference in the executive branch.’’

In evaluating public records and meetings bills, Crist said he will set a high standard. But he also said he would be receptive to some bills that sought to close records or meetings if it could be shown they were related to security issues.

“We live in a new world,’’ Crist said. “Things changed after 9-11.’’

And Crist hasn’t always agreed with open-government advocates. As attorney general, he supported an effort to cloak some autopsy records after the fatal crash of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, although advocates contended it could make it harder for the public to determine the validity of a medical examiner’s findings.

For some lawmakers the issue of government openness isn’t always a black-and-white matter. They say there can be valid reasons for seeking to limit public scrutiny of some government activities and records, including economic competition and privacy rights.

For instance, Rep. Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, and Sen. Steve Oelrich, R-Cross Creek, have filed legislation that would keep the names of candidates or nominees for executive positions at a public hospital secret. Their argument is that public hospitals are at a “competitive disadvantage’’ with private hospitals, which don’t have to disclose their executive searches.

Additionally, they said requiring public hospital job candidates to publicly disclose their interest means some highly qualified candidates are hesitant to apply to a Florida hospital “out of concern that their current employment may be adversely affected or even jeopardized.’’

Harper, the First Amendment advocate, said such secrecy should not be tolerated for institutions that rely on public funding.

“What happened to public oversight,’’ she said in her review of the bill. “This is the proverbial slippery slope. What’s next? School board superintendents? University presidents?’’

Another motivating force for lawmakers looking to close off public access to records is privacy concerns.

In fact, one of House Speaker Marco Rubio’s “100 ideas’’ for the session specifically cites the need to protect Floridians from identity theft. The goal is to make “any unauthorized possession of another’s personal identity information a felony.’’

That has led to legislation filed by Rep. William Proctor, R-St. Augustine, that would exempt all personal identification information held by government agencies from public review.

While conceding his bill is broadly written at this point and is likely to be narrowed as the session progresses, Proctor said he was motivated by the desire to protect an individual’s personal information from being exploited either through identity theft or for commercial purposes.

He said to him the bill is aimed at exploring the concept of who owns the personal information even if it is collected by a government agency.

Harper said the bill is so broad it could keep the public from reviewing a wide swath of government records, including personnel files for government workers.

Seiler said he has some concerns about bills like Proctor’s. But he said he is less worried this year about their eventual passage, knowing they will also face scrutiny from the governor.

“At the end of the day, if they get through the House, they’re going to get vetoed by the governor,’’ he said.

Reproduced courtesy of the Gainesville Sun.
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