Links to |
The St. Augustine Record
Perspective column by Margo C. Pope
Perspective column by Jim Baltzelle
Any questions, please call Jim Baltzelle, editor, The St. Augustine Record, 904 819-3517
Perspective column by Margo C. Pope
It’s up to us to keep the sun shining
The first time Florida’s Sunshine Law truly worked for me, I was a cub reporter in Jacksonville.
I had been sent to a regular meeting of the Jacksonville Electric Authority. I was told ahead of time not to expect much but that we had to have someone there to keep the board “honest.” The beat reporter was on another story that day.
The meeting ended quickly, and there was some talk in the audience as I left the room that the board was headed to a meeting with Mayor Hans Tanzler.
As I headed there, my heart was pounding. They can’t do that. They haven’t told anyone. This violates the Sunshine Law. There wasn’t time to call the office.
I was transformed back in thought to Professor H.G. “Buddy” Davis Jr.’s classroom in the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Just a couple of years earlier, he had walked my class in public opinion through the history of Florida’s Sunshine Law. He told the story of how he and Professor Hugh Cunningham had pushed the law after a meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists at the UF J-school in the late 1950s. They had convinced then-state Rep. Emory “Red” Cross to file a sunshine law bill in 1959. He renewed his crusade as a state senator in 1961, ’63, ’65 and ’67. Meanwhile, Davis was writing editorials for The Gainesville Sun. He and Cunningham were boosting the proposed law’s profile with everyone they met.
Cross was being laughed at by his colleagues but he never gave up. Finally it became law and for more than 35 years, it’s been our law. The Sunshine Law requires any meeting of two or more members of a governing board, elected or appointed, to be held in the public and announced ahead of time.
So, here I was — a general assignment reporter for The Florida Times-Union — about to test that law. Susan Shemwell, a reporter of equal experience on the Jacksonville Journal, was alerted to this meeting by a source. We ended up outside the mayor’s office and approached the door of the conference room which was slightly ajar. We thought we heard someone say that there were two reporters outside. So we pushed open the door. Seated all over the room were people in the Tanzler administration and members of the JEA board, the entire board. The topic was oil. It was the early 1970s, and the discussion was about future oil prices.
It was suggested by one of Tanzler’s aides, retired naval officer John Waters, that if we waited outside, they would tell us what happened afterward. Instead, we sat on the floor and that made some people uncomfortable enough to want us to take their chairs. We stayed put. Veteran reporter Frank Young showed up while it was under way. He passed the word back to the office that the “meeting” was being covered.
I came back and explained what happened to my then-City Editor Don Calfee. He told me that the public didn’t care about that part. They just wanted to know that the newspaper was doing its job reporting the news.
If you had been at the Jacksonville City Hall that day, you, too, could have come to that unannounced meeting. The law is about access for all, not just access for the news media.
Everyone who has worked with the Sunshine and Public Records laws probably has a story similar to mine.
Today being Sunshine Sunday is a day for all of us to celebrate Florida’s open access to government and to renew our commitment to protect it. This is the second year for Sunshine Sunday sponsored by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, in conjunction with media around the state and the First Amendment Foundation.
There are more than three dozen challenges to Florida’s access laws in this session of the Florida Legislature. Not all will get passed. Some may get killed in committees. Last year, there were more than 100 bills introduced to close access and most were killed in legislative committees.
Every day, the Sunshine and Public Records laws work for you and me. You can go to a meeting of the Board of County Commissioners and not have to say why you are there or even tell anyone your name. You can get a copy of the rezoning application of your neighbor without asking his or her permission. You can compare the test scores of the county’s public schools on your own.
All this access can never be taken for granted. Any effort by the Legislature to close it should be met with questions and challenges from you as well as the media.
After all, we are the decision makers when it comes to who sits in those cushy chairs, who spends our money, and who makes our laws. It’s up to us to keep the sun shining on Florida government.
Perspective column by Jim Baltzelle
Florida’s open government laws remain some of the most open in the United States. And, believe it or not, most public and appointed government officials try very hard to follow them to the letter.
Such good faith efforts generally go unreported in local newspapers, of course, because following the law lacks the essence of news appeal.
Violators make for better news.
Working in North Florida newsrooms since 1987, I have become familiar with the nuances of, and exemptions to, the state’s public records and Government-in-the-Sunshine laws. I have sat through numerous legal consultations, spent tens of thousands of dollars in the process and witnessed all manner of government behavior.
Occasionally, that behavior has been designed to control public access, twist the law or otherwise trick the public – the essence of good copy.
Here are a few classic examples:
-- In Marion County in the early 1990s, a county commission chairman with broadcast experience, Norm Perry, wanted to install a toggle switch on microphones in the commission meeting room. He was well-intentioned and acted mainly out of frustration because a few citizens tended to go overboard in their public comments. Perry’s idea didn’t fly, of course, though it made a good story for the Ocala Star-Banner. (Perry, now retired and enjoying life, went on to become the subject of a 1994 Dave Barry column because he shot a hole in nine dress shirts while preparing for a visit to South Florida. He told me Wednesday that he is on the commission agenda next week because he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to move genealogical records away from the main public library, which is in the works.)
-- In the mid-1990s at the Palatka Daily News, I once gave a copy of the Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual to a new housing authority executive director, George Arias, who had suffered through some rough press in San Antonio, Texas. Tough times continued in Florida after the paper reported on Arias’ use of a housing authority credit card in strip clubs and Las Vegas, among other abuses. The stories were made possible by access to state records and public boards. Arias later pleaded guilty and went to federal prison.
-- In Jacksonville in 1999, one of the current candidates for mayor, Ginger Soud, was then City Council president. Soud led council members in trying to “satisfy” public notice requirements about meetings with fellow council members by posting memos on a City Hall bulletin board, where few people ever saw them. Under the Sunshine law, council members were required to give citizens “reasonable notice” and access to such meetings. Anyway, the practice stopped after enough stories ran in Florida Times-Union, where I worked at the time. (By the way, Soud also made the papers for seeking to limit and control public comment on zoning matters.)
-- Also in Jacksonville, I was involved in a project where we requested years of arrest reports involving crack cocaine. The records were computerized and we were willing to pay “reasonable costs,” which ended up being under $1,000 for labor and copying. The initial estimate was more than $30,000, which would have sent most people away, which was probably the point.
-- In St. Johns County in the last two years, officials at the State Attorney’s Office have told us at The St. Augustine Record that they don’t have time to pursue Sunshine Law complaints due to staffing levels and more pressing and serious criminal cases. One such comment came at a time when the massive Nocatee housing development was before the County Commission and questions were flying about who had met privately with whom. Reacting to apparent inaction, the paper reviewed 18 months of county e-mail and found that county commissioners had not engaged in covert cyber-communication to circumvent the sunshine, which brings me back to my original premise.
Most government officials do their best to follow the rules, even though they might not like the rules one bit. Those who don’t want to follow the rules, well-intentioned or not, often find themselves in the newspaper. Some of those stories are unforgettable.
Jim Baltzelle is the editor of the St. Augustine Record.
SUNDAY EDITORIAL: The St. Augustine Record, March 16, 2003
Keep the sun shining on government
The St. Johns County School Board searched nationwide for a schools superintendent. A citizen’s committee narrowed the field to 10 applicants. The School Board narrowed it further to five this week. Along the way, news stories and application highlights appeared in The St. Augustine Record, mainly because of Florida’s open government laws.
In some states, the selection process could have been closed to public inspection.
Over at St. Augustine Beach, the quest to replace a retiring police chief continues. An advisory panel sifted through applications and began interviewing candidates this week. Earlier, the panel hesitated to outline interview questions ahead of time. Any such outline would be open to review by candidates or the press. And panel members worried about the spontaneity of the interview process. Their fears were discussed openly at a public meeting, according to state law.
Both job searches involve some of the highest standards in the nation for open government. Today, the St. Augustine Record joins newspapers from across Florida in publishing editorials for the second consecutive year on “Sunshine Sunday,” a day to celebrate the state’s open government and public records laws. The simple fact is that not all states provide such access to their citizens.
Last month in Ohio, for example, a newspaper hit a snag in its quest to view the process of selecting a new schools superintendent for the Cincinnati Board of Education. According to a federal judge, The Cincinnati Enquirer lacked “a historical basis for access of resumes returned to candidates or for forcing a school board to create records.” The judge also said that the paper had not “demonstrated that public access plays a positive role in the recruitment process that outweighs the obvious negative effects.”
Public access doesn’t play a positive role? In Florida, public business is usually conducted in the public, for better or worse. The presumption is that lack of public access would be detrimental to democracy, which outweighs any perceived “negative effects” on recruitment efforts.
So much for the Ohio federal court.
In Florida, newspapers historically don’t have to sue to view the applicant pool for a school district’s top job. Dating back to 1909, Florida has one of the oldest open government laws in the country. With its 1968 Government-in-the-Sunshine Law, Florida became a world leader in open government.
In essence, Section 286.011 of the Florida Statutes (the Sunshine Law) requires that all meetings of state or local government be open, unless someone can cite a legal exemption.
That means if the beach panel is going to recommend a police chief to the City Commission, members of the public can monitor the steps along the way. The Sunshine Law covers just about any gathering of two or more members of the same public board, whether elected or appointed, where discussion occurs regarding a matter the board could act on in the future. From boardrooms with microphones to online chats with instant messaging, Florida law is very clear about how to conduct the public’s business.
Again, not all states follow the same rules. Some states don’t even address the possibility of governing through e-mails or cyberspace quorums.
But Florida law does. And it is just as clear on what government records are open to public inspection. Section 119.07 states: “Every person who has custody of a public record shall permit the record to be inspected and examined by any person desiring to do so.” Public records are “all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photographs, films, sound recordings, data processing software, or other material, regardless of the physical form, characteristics, or means of transmission, made or received pursuant to law or ordinance or in connection with the transaction of official business by any agency.”
That covers a lot of ground. The Florida Legislature is under increasing pressure to pass so-called privacy reforms, which as a whole chip away at the foundation of open government. This pressure will escalate as tensions heighten worldwide. Instead of reacting with political quick fixes, Florida lawmakers must take pains to protect the public’s right to know. After all, this is the Sunshine State. Let’s keep it that way.
posted 3-13 5 p.m.