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Still closing doors in the public's face

By LUCY MORGAN
Published October 22, 2005

Forty years ago I was living in Crystal River taking care of three children under 6 when a red-haired stranger knocked on my front door.

Frances Devore, area editor at the Ocala Star-Banner, changed my life that day. She wanted to know if I would write stories for her newspaper.

I had written nothing and asked why she would knock on my door.

Well, she said, she was pretty desperate. The newspaper's local correspondent had been killed in a traffic accident and librarian Brownie Searle had told her that I read more books than anyone else in town so she thought I might be able to write.

I wasn't sure I could handle the job, but agreed to try because we desperately needed the extra income and it was a job that would allow me to do much of the work at home.

The Crystal River City Council and the Levy County Commission were among my first assignments. We had no law requiring public meetings, and access to records was rare even though most records were presumed to be open.

When the City Council decided to discuss something touchy, they would either leave the room or turn to the reporters in the room and say, "Now don't write this." It was the easiest way to discuss something like firing the police chief - a frequent topic in small towns.

I had never taken a journalism course, but it didn't seem right to let this go unnoticed, so I wrote about what they were doing. You can imagine how happy that made those city officials.

I've been making public officials happy ever since.

It would be 1968 before Florida had a law on the books that required city and county government to meet in public sessions. We still fight daily to keep meetings open despite the law. Before 1968 we could do nothing but whine when elected officials decided to go behind closed doors.

Public officials still like to do things in secret. Just this week Gov. Jeb Bush insisted on meeting in private with about 20 legislators. His staff insisted in advance that the breakfast meeting in his office at the Capitol on a Tuesday morning was purely social.

The governor was not apologetic and left us with the feeling that we can expect a lot more of this in his remaining year in office.

We have laws that say the governor and legislators have to meet in public, but legislators conveniently wrote the law with a giant loophole. Voters amended the Constitution in 1992 to require that "all prearranged gatherings, between more than two members of the Legislature, or between the governor, the president of the Senate, or the speaker of the House" shall be public when they are there to agree on "formal legislative action that will be taken at a subsequent time."

Floridians overwhelmingly approved the constitutional amendment lawmakers cobbled together to avoid facing a more restrictive amendment that was being pushed by Attorney General Bob Butterworth and others. Until 1990, legislators had cleverly exempted themselves from the public records and open meetings laws they imposed on county and city governments.

The law is obviously not tough enough if the governor and a large segment of the Legislature can gather behind closed doors in the Capitol and discuss your business.

I would suggest the governor and 20 lawmakers have little reason to meet at all if they aren't laying the groundwork for something that will become law.

In advance, the governor's staff insisted it was a social occasion. Afterwards even the governor admitted they had been talking about education.

If they think it's none of your business what they do with the schools of Florida, perhaps it is time for you to tell them otherwise.

Looking back across the 40 years since that spring day in Crystal River, I can tell you that nothing good emerges from these back-door meetings.

The governor and Legislature could have avoided criticism and provided us with a reason to believe they are acting in our best interests by opening a door.

Silly me. I expected more from our governor and Legislature.

[Last modified October 22, 2005, 01:13:18]