Legislators graded on open records
WEST PALM BEACH — Half of Florida’s legislators failed or nearly failed in a review of their support for public records and meetings given by Florida newspapers and an open-government group after this year’s legislative sessions.
In a “scorecard” produced by the Florida Society of News Editors and based on information provided by Florida’s First Amendment Foundation — which tracked a priority list of public records exemptions — the 160 legislators totaled three Fs, 77 Ds, 71 Cs, and 9 Bs.
Each year, FSNE completes a project devoted to Sunshine Week, a nationwide initiative to educate the public about the importance of transparent government. This year, FSNE members created a scoring system to grade legislators on their introduction of bills and their final votes.
“As an advocate for open government, the grades of course, are disappointing,” said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, a nonprofit supported mostly by newspapers and broadcasters.
Several lawmakers contacted about their grades questioned the concept of fairly and accurately scoring how they addressed and decided on open records bills.
“It’s a little simplistic to think you can reduce this to a mathematical formula. It’s a little more complicated,” said Rep. Rick Roth, R-Wellington, who has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Emory University,
Florida’s Legislature created the Government in the Sunshine Law in the late 1960s, and in 1992, established a “constitutional right of access.” Because of Florida’s Government in the Sunshine Law, the state’s, records and meetings are more accessible than in most states. But the Legislature has, year in and year out, instituted, or considered instituting, numerous exemptions. The body, on average, imposes up to a dozen a year.
Petersen said the recent session accounted for “a near record number of new exemptions created, but we see few bills that actually would improve access to either meetings or records.”
The three legislative Fs — actually F-minuses — were assigned to Rep. Bob Rommel, R-Naples; Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Naples Republican; and Kimberly Daniels, D-Jacksonville.
Just six Democrats and three Republicans earned a score of Bminus or better. And 17 Democrats and 63 Republicans drew grades of D-plus or worse.
Scores in the House were much more likely to be lower than those in the Senate. Some of that may be because of HB 111, which drew nearly two dozen sponsors and co-sponsors in the House. The bill, which hides information about witnesses to murders, was signed by Scott in May.
Fred Piccolo, a spokesman for House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Lutz — who scored a Dplus — called inclusion of HB 111, the witness-identity bill, in the scorecard “just plain silly.”