Papers urge readers to watch government
Associated PressFlorida newspapers conduct audits of local governments and advocate protecting open access laws.
Published March 13, 2006
TALLAHASSEE - Newspapers across the state sent a unified message to their readers on Sunday: Keep the doors to Florida's government open.
Known as Sunshine Sunday, it's the day when Florida's reporters remind residents that transparent government isn't just about lobbyists and politicians. It's about the taxpayers who pay for government business.
To send this message, about 50 newspapers statewide printed editorials, cartoons and columns promoting the issue. They were also frank about some of the state's problems, which came to light during a statewide test by the First Amendment Foundation.
The nonprofit group, which promotes free press and speech, enlisted auditors in every county to make public records requests. They found that 42 percent of the 220 government agencies audited violated the law in some way, several state newspapers reported.
For example, "questionable public records practices related to e-mail correspondence locally included: charging $10 for a blank computer disk to burn records onto in Deltona; quoting a rate of $100 an hour for retrieving e-mail records in Palm Coast; and charging a $13.78 hourly fee for simply viewing subject lines of city e-mails in Daytona Beach," the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.
In Manatee County, an employee from The Herald in Bradenton audited the Sheriff's Office, the school district, the county administrator's office and the mayor's office.
"No one at the Sheriff's Office could tell the auditor where to find the call log or how to obtain it. In the municipalities, the auditor was referred to several people before being directed to a county or city attorney, who helped speed up filling of the requests," the newspaper reported.
But not all the audit results were grim. In Jacksonville, three of four tests performed by the Florida Times-Union were successful.
Florida taxpayers depend on open access laws. For example, parents want to know why their school board is firing a favorite teacher, residents want to object to their city council's wastewater management plan, and home buyers want to be able to search title records for their new properties, said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation.
"You can't have a democracy without open government," Petersen said. "People use open records every day, even if they don't realize it."
Petersen and other advocates continue to monitor efforts to curb open government standards. This year, Petersen has marked at least 34 bills for opposition from the foundation.
This is the fifth year the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors has sponsored Sunshine Sunday.