This newspaper has uncovered scores of scandals through the years — everything from corruption at the expressway authority to criminal activity at Joel Greenberg’s trainwreck of a tax office.
We were able to expose these sordid activities for one reason: We had access to public records.
Ron DeSantis is trying to change that.
Right now, his legal team is in court trying to give his staff the right to hide public records from the public. All they would have to do is use their personal cellphones or computers to send messages and documents.
If you don’t understand how preposterously dangerous that would be, imagine telling Joel Greenberg that, as long as he or his staffers used their personal cellphones to arrange shady payouts, taxpayers couldn’t get the full story.
Fortunately, the court system has so far rejected DeSantis’ secret-keeping scheme involving records his staff created while plotting to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.
Much about this deal stunk. Most significantly, DeSantis was spending Florida tax dollars on a PR stunt that didn’t even involve Florida. The Sunshine State, after all, is chock full of undocumented workers. But since the governor’s agriculture company donors have pleaded to let them keep working here, DeSantis decided to move migrants out of Texas instead.
Then there was the cronyism. To fly the migrants, DeSantis operatives hired a politically connected firm and grossly overpaid for the service — $12,800 per passenger when the Sentinel found that other charter companies offered planes for a third of that cost and that commercial airlines flew for less than $600 a person.
And now his staff is arguing that they don’t have to turn over records about how they arranged all this because his chief of staff used his personal phone to conduct some of this public business.
The argument is laughable. It doesn’t matter if the governor’s staff wrote down orders on a used Kleenex. That nasty Kleenex would still be a public record.
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The Tampa Bay Times reported that the judge who has already ordered the governor’s staff to turn over those records seemed incredulous that the state’s lawyers were arguing otherwise.
Judge J. Lee Marsh said the DeSantis administration was trying to pull “an end around Florida’s public record laws,” noting that the obvious next step would be for politicians to simply direct their staff to use personal cellphones to conduct all public business.
“Then we don’t need public records laws,” Marsh observed, “because there’ll be no public records, right?”
He’s right, of course. It’s not complicated.
Sometimes, when Team DeSantis loses in court — and they lose a lot, with taxpayers paying attorneys as much as $675 an hour — they whine about liberal judges.
The reality, however, is that many of the judges who ruled against DeSantis have been hard-core conservatives. Some appointed by Donald Trump. Others appointed by DeSantis himself.
Your tax dollars pay lawyers $675 an hour to defend unconstitutional laws | Commentary
In this case, Judge Marsh is a former Navy officer who worked for Pam Bondi before being appointed to the bench by Rick Scott. Most importantly, he apparently believes in the rule of law.
The plaintiff in this case is the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a group of open-government advocates that sued the state for access to public records about the migrant flights.
The center’s trustees and advisory board members include Pulitzer Prize winning author Gilbert King, former Jeb Bush chief of staff Sally Bradshaw and former Florida Supreme Court communications director Craig Waters. These are people who fight for something DeSantis has consistently tried to thwart — the release of public information.
Newspapers like the Sentinel have repeatedly sued the DeSantis administration for public records and have repeatedly won with taxpayers covering the tab for legal fights that never should have been required.
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So now DeSantis is trying to redefine the law altogether to make fewer records public.
“The danger is that this erosion of transparency undermines the fundamental principles of democracy,” said Michael Barfield, the center’s director of public access.
I know the governor has plenty of fans. What I don’t understand is why any of them would defend a politician trying to hide public records from them.
True conservatives believe in transparency. And the rule of law.
To deflect from all that, last week — when the judge was chastising the DeSantis administration for their efforts to hide public records — the governor’s Twitter team was fuming about everything from transgender students to wind turbines. Anything to distract.
Surely some sheep will comply. But I believe most Floridians still believe their government should be transparent. They want to know what politicians and their staffers are doing with their money and how they are making their laws.
Judge Marsh is expected to issue a follow-up ruling soon, perhaps again ordering the DeSantis staffers to cough up the public records. But nothing is concrete yet. An appeals court is also involved.
If anyone out there is actually rooting for the government to keep secrets from its own citizens, I submit there’s something wrong with them.
“When government actions and decisions are shrouded in secrecy, it becomes difficult for the public to hold officials accountable,” Barfield said. “Why is our government hiding information from the public?”
That’s a good question — with no good answers.
smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com
