June 17, 2016 – The News Service of Florida
by Jim Saunders
The Citrus County Commission will have to pay the attorney’s fees of an online news-site publisher who sought records related to an investigation into the conduct of a county commissioner, an appeals court ruled Friday. A three-judge panel of the 5th District Court of Appeal overturned a circuit judge’s ruling and said the county should pay the legal fees of Robert A. Schweickert Jr., publisher of the GroundHog News. The dispute stemmed from a June 2014 complaint by County Administrator Brad Thorpe that County Commissioner Scott Adams had acted in ways that “resulted in a hostile work environment and forced many senior staff members to resign from their positions,” according to Friday’s ruling. The County Commission hired an attorney to investigate the allegations. In September 2014, Schweickert filed two public-records requests seeking documents that were part of the investigation. The attorney said the records were exempt from disclosure under the public-records law, spurring Schweickert in October 2014 to file a lawsuit. Late that month, the attorney provided a copy of her report to Schweickert. A circuit judge subsequently dismissed the case as moot. But the appeals court ruled Friday that the public-records exemption originally claimed in the dispute did not apply and that the “delay in providing the requested public records was unlawful.” The eight-page decision by judges James Edwards, F. Rand Wallis and Brian Lambert sent the case back to circuit court with instructions to award attorney’s fees to Schweickert. [READ MORE]