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ALISA ULFERTSCritics say Scripps Research Institute will have wide discretion in what it reveals as it spends taxpayers' money.
TALLAHASSEE - Florida taxpayers could have a hard time keeping track of how their money will be spent to bring the world's largest private research center to Florida.
Legislation to spend $369-million in tax money on a Florida branch of the Scripps Research Institute gives the company broad discretion in what it discloses, open government advocates say.
Democrats initially opposed exemptions to the public records law, but wound up supporting them in exchange for millions of dollars in pet projects. The money was later killed, but the exemptions stand.
"It's not as good as what we'd like, but it is a lot better than it was," said House Democratic Leader Doug Wiles, D-St. Augustine.
But open government advocates say the bill is vague and won't give taxpayers many details of how the money is spent.
The bill appears to have been pulled together in a hurry, said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, an open government advocacy group in Tallahassee.
"Instead of waiting until we have something solid that we know needs to be protected, they are issuing a pre-emptive strike," Petersen said.
Because lawmakers don't yet know whether they will be negotiating a contract directly with Scripps or with another company it creates, they tried to cover the waterfront and made the exemption far broader than it needed to be, she said.
"They are using a bazooka for a job that requires a peashooter," Petersen said.
The Legislature created a private company, the Scripps Florida Funding Corp., to oversee the spending. The company's board must meet in public unless it is discussing information about Scripps that lawmakers say could put the institute at a competitive disadvantage. Lawmakers wrote in the bill a declaration that neither Scripps nor its designee is subject to Florida's public records law, unless a court decides otherwise.
The public is barred from seeing "potential trade secrets," "patentable material" or "proprietary information," but Scripps gets to decide what those cover.
That's standard practice for businesses that receive incentives through Enterprise Florida, the public-private partnership that oversees economic development.
But Florida has never had a deal in size or scope like this before, and open government advocates wonder how much information will be available.
Lawmakers "gave quite a bit of latitude to them," said Curt Kiser, former lawmaker and a lobbyist for the Florida Press Association and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors.
"It's not really clear how much of that they're going to claim," he added.
Scripps officials at the Capitol were often unwilling to answer basic questions. Executive vice president Arnold LaGuardia left a Senate committee hearing and declined to answer any questions about the legislative deliberations.
"Excuse me, there's my escort," LaGuardia said and rushed down a hallway.
Lawmakers acknowledged that many of the details in the Scripps deal won't be known until a contract is signed, but they said they have built in enough safeguards.
"The negotiations of the contract, the negotiations of the performance measures, the negotiations of the expectations, that will be public," said Sen. Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, sponsor of the main Scripps bill.
While uncertain as to how broadly the exemption can be interpreted, Kiser said lawmakers will have to review it in five years and decide then whether they want to renew it.
It will take Scripps a while to get up and running, so it won't have too much chance to request the exemption. By the time the five-year review comes up, any other problems with the exemption will be apparent and can be fixed, he said.
"I was cushioned somewhat by that," Kiser said.