Keep government open and accountable in Florida: Where We Stand

Published by the Orlando Sentinel

February 6, 2017

Former President Ronald Reagan used to quote a Russian adage to describe his approach to the Soviet Union: Trust, but verify.

The same approach makes sense for Floridians when dealing with state and local government agencies. And one of the sharpest tools available to citizens for verification is the state’s open-records law; it guarantees them access to most records of government agencies, so they can see for themselves just how those agencies are spending their tax dollars. Voters elevated this access to a constitutional right in 1992.

But for the second year in a row a state legislator, Sarasota Republican Greg Steube, has introduced a bill that would gut the open-records law. Legislators had the good sense to kill the bill last year when Steube was a House member. He’s a senator now, holding the powerful role of chairman of his chamber’s Judiciary Committee, but his promotion hasn’t made his bill any better.

Currently, government agencies in Florida that violate the open-records law must reimburse the attorney’s fees of citizens who take them to court to enforce the law. It’s the only real enforcement mechanism in the law to deter agencies from flouting it.

Steube’s bill is supposed to be aimed at individuals or groups that flood government agencies with frivolous public-records requests to trigger technical violations of the law for which the agencies can be sued and ordered to pay legal fees. When local governments fall victim to these scams, their taxpayers end up holding the bag.

These cases are infuriating. They’re also infrequent. The vast majority of public-records requests are legitimate.

And the bill’s cure – allowing a judge to decide whether the agency that violated the law will have to pay the legal fees – is worse than the disease. Most citizens who can’t be assured that they’ll recover their costs won’t risk taking to court a government agency that illegally withholds information.

Agencies that don’t have to fear lawsuits that would require them to pay legal fees – the only serious consequences they face under current law – will feel less pressure to conduct the public’s business openly. Waste and corruption are more likely in agencies that operate in secret.

When Steube introduced his bill in last year’s legislative session, Florida’s leading open-government advocates, the First Amendment Foundation, worked with another legislator and the Florida League of Cities to hammer out a more-acceptable compromise; it passed the Senate before stalling in the House. But this year’s version of Steube’s bill doesn’t incorporate any of those hard-won improvements.

A Senate committee, chaired by Ocala Republican Dennis Baxley, was scheduled to take up Steube’s bill on Tuesday. Committee members who believe in open government will stop this bad bill before it advances any farther in the legislative process.

As we have argued before, the best way to discourage lawsuits over public records without letting agencies off the hook is to add another mechanism for resolving disputes. Other states have appointed an ombudsman to step in when an agency turns down a citizen’s request. The ombudsman has the authority to act as a mediator between the agency and the citizen, and issue an opinion if need be on whether the agency needs to comply with the request. This system could eliminate many if not most lawsuits.

Do you blindly trust state and local government agencies in Florida to spend your tax dollars wisely? If not, join us in urging state lawmakers to reject Steube’s bill, and uphold — not upend — the public’s right to know. [READ MORE]

Keep government open and accountable in Florida: Where We Stand

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