BILL COTTERELL The Tampa Tribune
Published: April 28, 2013
TALLAHASSEE – Florida lawmakers are considering a wide range of public-records exemptions – some technicalities, others clouding the state’s “Government in the Sunshine” traditions – as they head into the final week of their 2013 legislative session.
“They don’t seem to understand, most of them, that every time they create an exemption, they’re creating an exception to the Constitution,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation.
Proponents of the measures, on the other hand, argue in some cases that exempting certain information from public disclosure will protect people from harm and make the state more attractive to job-creating businesses.
The First Amendment Foundation, a lobbying organization for Florida’s news media, has 28 proposed exemptions on its watch list this year. Every year, dozens of public-record bills are filed, most to retain existing exemptions or extend them to areas everyone agrees on, such as the privacy of medical patients or names of children needing government help.
Petersen, an attorney who has worked on transparency issues since 1991, is also pushing a government-access measure this year – the “right to be heard” bill, which has languished in the House since the Senate passed it March 19.
It would guarantee citizens a “reasonable” chance to speak before city and county commissions as well as regulatory agencies.
Two appeals courts have ruled that no written requirement affords this right. A bill by Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, would let public bodies allocate time limits and set agendas but forbid them to muzzle speakers.
Negron, the Senate budget chairman, is also the chamber’s point man pushing Medicaid expansion so his bills make tempting captives in the House, which is opposed to the expansion. The “right to be heard” bill is still kicking, he insisted.
“We’re working on it,” Negron said. “We’re monitoring it closely. I think it’s on second reading, and we’ll just keep working on it.”
In Florida’s effort to attract new businesses and jobs, there is also a late-blooming interest in exempting “trade secrets” from public disclosure.
During debate last week on bills exempting “trade secrets” in oil and gas exploration, Rep. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, argued against requiring the state Department of Environmental Protection to list on its website which chemicals are used by companies that might seek permits.
Those companies won’t do business in Florida, said Brodeur, the House Government Operations Committee chairman, if proprietary methods developed over years are publicly disclosed.
“We have to be sensitive to the fact that if we’re going to give everybody else your secret sauce, you’re not going to want to open up business here,” he said.
Brodeur said DEP could regulate chemicals without revealing them.
Rep. David Richardson, D-Miami Beach, argued that DEP should not be left to decide what chemicals are disclosed, 19,000 requests for “trade secret” exemptions were filed in Texas during an eight month period in 2012.
The First Amendment Foundation gained some ground on one of two bills Petersen lists as the worst of 2013. One would exempt email addresses of voters from public records laws and the other would make private the names of spouses and children of state prosecutors and police officials.
On the first bill, Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Margate, agreed with Petersen to withhold only those voter emails in the hands of county elections supervisors rather than the computer tracks of every voter who contacts a government agency for any reason. This version passed the Senate on Friday.
But with the other measure, Sen. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, said he stands by his bill (SB 376) keeping secret the names of family members of police, correctional officers and some employees of the Departments of Revenue, Health and Children and Families.
“I think it’s the very least we can do for the families of these men and women who are putting their lives on the line to prosecute criminals,” Hays said. “Do you realize how many people are stalking other people? When a state attorney gets a conviction and locks somebody up, that somebody could come out of prison with revenge on their mind.”
Petersen said home addresses and phone numbers of law enforcement officers are already exempt from public records laws. She said there is no problem with concealing identity of minor children but that obscuring even the names of their spouses and adult offspring would prevent the public from knowing if, for instance, a state attorney or sheriff steers a government purchase to a company formed by a spouse.
“I think anonymity in public records is a very slippery slope and I just don’t buy the justification for it,” Petersen said. “Sometimes, a spouse can get a sweetheart deal because they’re married to somebody important.”
Hays countered, “In the scale of importance, that is negligible compared to the safety of a sheriff’s spouse or children. Besides, it’s up to the county commission to know who they’re contracting with.”
Ring’s voter email bill is intended to combat the prospect of vote fraud when absentee ballots are requested via computer and mailed to a citizen. Supporters noted during legislative debate that it would also shield voters from being bombarded with political spam and contribution requests.
But Petersen said it would also have the effect of preventing party activists, or leaders of interest groups, from sending blast emails when an important item is pending on a state or local government agenda.
Petersen said Ring’s initial bill would have forbidden all government agencies – not just elections supervisors – from letting someone copy emails containing a voter’s email address. The content of the message would still be public, but government agencies would have to determine whether the sender and the employee receiving the message were voters and blot out their addresses if so.
“I paid $788.85 for one week’s worth of Brian Burgess’s emails,” said Petersen, referring to Gov. Rick Scott’s former communications director. “If they had to first determine who’s a registered voter and who’s not, then go in and redact those addresses of registered voters, that would double or triple the cost and the time it took to get the messages.”