Pensacola News Journal

Crist basking in ‘Sunshine’

New governor working to expand access to Florida’s public records

Jim Ash

News Journal capital bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- Only a few months after he was elected attorney general in 2002, Charlie Crist faced a political crisis.

Legislative leaders wanted to ignore part of a constitutional mandate that requires a two-thirds vote to seal public records.

Crist issued an opinion that sided with open government, even though it jeopardized his department’s budget and key bills.

“That’s when I knew he was really, really sincere about the public’s right to open government,” said Pat Gleason, a Crist aide and one of the leading experts on Florida’s “Government in the Sunshine” laws, considered the most far-reaching in the nation.

Two months after taking over a new office, Gov. Charlie Crist continues to impress First Amendment advocates, and even astonish some journalists, with an open-government crusade he considers crucial to his mandate.

Last week, Crist and his social services chief, Bob Butterworth, sent attorneys into a Southwest Florida courtroom to side with the Fort Myers News-Press in its demand for the paper trail of a child-abuse investigation.

The law requires a judge’s order to release some documents, and rather than fight the request, the department asked the judge for permission to release the records.

It was a sea change for an agency that traditionally cited public-records exemptions to keep its files from public view.

“I was incredibly surprised,” said News-Press Managing Editor Maribel Perez Wadsworth. “We have gone to court before on these issues, and their position has always been to keep these records confidential.”

The case involved Charalletta and Manuel Hernandez, a Fort Myers couple accused of abusing and neglecting their six children and singling out a 10-year-old girl for systematic abuse.

The children have been removed from the home and the couple is in a Lee County jail awaiting trial.

Neighbors insisted the department botched its investigation.

Butterworth said he’s not willing to admit any mistakes in the Hernandez case, but he pledged the department will no longer be known for shielding records the public has a right to see.

“There are a lot of things by statute that we can’t let go, but the media understands this,” Butterworth said. “The stuff that was being requested was very appropriate.”

Butterworth thinks it’s the first time the department has ever joined with a newspaper in a public-records case.

“I personally don’t know if it’s true, but I was told this was the first time,” Butterworth said. “I can promise you it won’t be the last.”

Crist made marching orders about open government clear from the moment he took office. In his inaugural address in January, Crist announced he would create an “Office of Open Government.”

The next day, he signed an executive order making it so.

The change is dramatic, said Adria Harper, executive director of the First Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit group that, among other things, tracks the flood of bills lawmakers file every year to close more public records.

“The previous administration wasn’t very access-friendly,” Harper said. “I think there is now an awareness that there had to be some changes.”

When former Gov. Jeb Bush took office, media organizations threatened to sue to get financial and other records from Bush’s transition office. A compromise eventually was reached that avoided court.

Other reporters fought Bush for months for a list of the schools that were receiving taxpayer dollars through a school voucher program. Some of the schools turned out to be little more than storefront operations with no students.

Crist’s Office of Open Government is not just window dressing, Harper said.

It already has a Web site and has compiled a list of vital contacts at each state agency responsible for collecting public-record requests and releasing documents.

“A lot of times, people were shuffled around because there was no contact person. They didn’t know who the custodian of the public records is or the custodian wasn’t there.”

Two years ago, the foundation awarded then-Attorney General Crist its highest honor: The Pete Weitzel/Friends of the First Amendment Award. The award is named after the former Miami Herald editor and foundation founder.

JoAnn Carrin, director of the Office of Open Government, said the office already has received about a dozen requests for state documents from the public. Crist’s press office handles more-voluminous requests from the media.

“People seem actually grateful that there is someone here to guide them when they’re looking for records,” Carrin said. “Our job is to get the records out.”

Reproduced courtesy of the Pensacola News Journal.
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