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A Times Editorial
Lawmakers seeking to circumvent Florida's open-government laws are proposing even more troubling exemptions than usual this session.
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2002
One House bill would put cropduster information out of public reach. Another would exempt reports about serious physician mistakes from public records law. The annual assault on government in the sunshine in Tallahassee has begun. This year, a bumper crop of more than 90 bills have been filed to close government meetings or records.
Some bills make sense, and would fit within the requirement that any exemptions to public records law must be justified as a matter of public necessity. For example, one proposal would prevent government agencies from disclosing Social Security numbers as a way of curtailing identity theft -- a problem that costs our nation $2.5-billion annually. The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Fred Brummer, R-Apopka, would bar the release of Social Security numbers and limit the number of government agencies that collect them. Access to the numbers would still be permissible for a legitimate business purpose, such as employment verification.
The Social Security number is the only unique identifier we have and, as such, it has become the key to unlocking all sorts of personal records, from credit history to medical records. Easy access to Social Security numbers is a significant cause of the growing epidemic of identity theft. Obviously, the state should not be complicit in this. Floridians are forced to give up their Social Security numbers to government agencies for a variety of purposes, from filing for a homestead exemption to employment in a state job. In doing so, they should have confidence that the numbers are held for government purposes only and not made generally available.
Other bills have been introduced to help a friend or an industry shield themselves from public scrutiny.
One of the worst in this category is HB 445, a bill that would exempt records on public utility use by individual customers. It was introduced by Rep. Mike Hogan, R-Jacksonville, because a member of his church was humiliated when the local newspaper listed the names of the top water consumers in the area. Here the public interest to know about water hogs and their profligacy during a drought clearly outweighs any privacy interest by the user.
Cropduster privacy has also been a major concern for legislators. Promoted as an antiterrorism measure, HB 731 would exempt all records dealing with cropduster planes and pilots in order to -- and this is the actual stated purpose -- prevent terrorists from stealing a pilot's identity and using his plane for an attack. But much of the information on cropdusters being put out of reach is nonetheless readily available in advertisements in the Yellow Pages. The aircraft's FAA registration number, which the bill makes confidential for security reasons, is painted on the plane itself. This was pointed out by Rep. Brummer during the debate on the bill before the House State Administration Committee. While Brummer tried to move his colleagues with an eloquent speech about the value of public access to government records, the committee passed the bill anyway.
Every year shell bills for public records exemptions are filed to allow legislators to add more proposed exemptions as the session moves along. At last count, 18 are sitting in committees, waiting to be filled in. Barbara Peterson, president of the First Amendment Foundation, a group that lobbies on behalf of open government, calls these shell bills "stealth bombs," because you never know when they are going to go off.
Florida has one of the strongest open records laws in the country, but every year the Legislature looks for ways to chip away at the public's access to government information. Every year it's a battle to keep Florida's government in the sunshine.