Democrats need to use what little power they have left to defend open government
As the minority party in Florida, Democrats don’t have much power these days.
They do, however, still have the ability to stop Republicans from creating new exemptions to the state’s cherished Sunshine Law, which gives the public access to the documents and meetings it needs to hold government officials accountable.
Florida’s Constitution recognizes the essential quality that information plays in good government, so it requires a two-thirds majority of each house for exemptions to become law. That means Democrats have the numbers — barely — to do the right thing and stop the worst of those bills in their tracks.
The trouble is, few Democrats are vocal champions of open government, like Orlando Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith has become.
Far too many Democrats, like Kissimmee Rep. Kristen Arrington, are as much a part of the problem of increasing government secrecy as Republicans are.
On Thursday, three of the seven Democrats on the House Education & Employment Committee — including Arrington — voted yes on a bill that would make searches for university and college presidents secret.
On March 11, half of the six Democrats on the House Post-Secondary Education & Lifelong Learning Subcommittee voted for it (including, again, Arrington).
Last week, two Democrats joined Republicans on the House Government Operations Subcommittee to vote in favor of the most noxious exemption to come along in years: Making the addresses and phone numbers of state lawmakers and Cabinet members a state secret.
Miami-Dade County Democrat Kevin Chambliss, who once opposed the idea but now supports the bill, said the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol changed his mind. (And here we thought you weren’t supposed to let the terrorists win.)
Fortunately, Democrats hearing the same bill in the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee refused to go along with this attack on information.
One other anti-open government bill worth mentioning — the latest in a series of bills to exempt personal information like addresses and phone numbers for state and local bureaucrats — would extend that to current and former county attorneys.
The House sponsor? None other than Kristen Arrington. The Senate sponsor? Orlando Democrat Linda Stewart.
If Democrats are to be the bulwark against state secrecy, they need to do a lot better than sponsoring more state secrets. In fact, they need every senator and representative to become advocates for information.
In the Senate, the two-thirds threshold for passing a Sunshine exemption is 27 votes — Republicans hold 24 seats.
In the House, two-thirds is 80 votes — Republicans hold 78 seats.
That gives Democrats the chance to wield influence over bad exemptions, if not kill them outright.
For example, Democrats who worry about safety could insist on amending the bill to cover the location of schools and day care centers attended by lawmakers’ kids. That’s a reasonable exemption. Even carving out an exemption for lawmakers’ adult children and their families might make some sense, considering they didn’t choose to run for public office.
If Democrats don’t at least press for compromise, you can bet this bill will become a Pandora’s box that’ll have county commissions, city councils, school boards and every other elected body clamoring for similar secrecy because of a perceived threat. A day will come when Floridians won’t know where any of their elected officials live or how to reach them by phone.
Democrats appear to be — so far — standing against another rotten exemption that would make voter registration information secret from everyone except elected officials, candidates, political parties and political committees. In other words, the state’s entire political establishment would have access to that information, but you wouldn’t.
Sunshine Law exemptions are one of the few categories of votes in the Legislature that require a supermajority.
Another is the Legislature’s ability to put constitutional amendments on the ballot, which requires a three-fifths vote in each house. Last fall’s elections gave Republicans enough votes to act without the support of Democrats. The Republican margin in the Senate is now just one vote, thanks to a disputed state Senate election in South Florida where a phony NPA candidate helped the GOP candidate to a 12-vote win.
That means there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop a proposed amendment that would roll back the minimum wage voters approved in November, or another proposal that would raise the bar for voter approval of amendments from the current 60% to two-thirds, the highest such requirement in the nation.
Another bill would ask voters to abolish the state’s Constitution Revision Commission, which meets every 20 years to propose amendments, further tightening the Legislature’s grip on proposing alternations to the Florida Constitution.
Until Democrats restore a better balance in the Legislature, that ship has sailed.
But while the party has lost the ability to stop bad constitutional amendments, it can still protect the public’s right to know.
If Democrats aren’t willing to at least fight that good fight, we’re not sure what purpose the party still serves in Florida.
Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com.