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Well, the veto was fast

Gov. Bush's veto of a bill that would have required prompt response to requests for public records tends to indicate the need for it.

The public records laws and the games bureaucrats play with them are two substantially different things, and no one knows that better than Gov. Jeb Bush. For the governor to suggest that state emergencies might go unheeded if agencies have to "promptly" turn over records is self-serving sophistry.

The bill he vetoed Tuesday was a direct legislative response to his own games of delay and denial. While he feigns concern over agencies forced to "set aside their primary missions to comply with a new, but undefined, time standard for responding to public records requests," the truth is that many of the current delays have nothing to do with overworked bureaucrats. They are politically motivated.

In November, Bush's office four times denied the existence of a secret plan to restructure school vouchers, until the Palm Beach Post finally caught up with a bureaucrat who acknowledged the deception. His Department of Education is legendary for its stall tactics, sometimes taking months to produce records that are at someone's fingertips. Two lawmakers recently were forced to file a lawsuit to get access to records that ultimately revealed FCAT test graders were not properly qualified.

"What ends up happening most frequently," says First Amendment Foundation president Barbara Petersen, "is that you make a public records request, and they ignore you. You make a second request, and they ignore you. You make a third request, and maybe they will begin to respond. This happens all over the state."

Sometimes the delays are necessary, given the size of a request or the need to redact certain personal information. But entirely too often the delays are by design, merely to frustrate those who want answers or to push the release of unfavorable information to another news cycle, beyond a key public meeting or after an election.

The bill, which passed the Legislature by a collective margin of 155-1, merely established some lines of accountability for government records. Most importantly, it said officials "must respond to requests to inspect or copy records promptly and in good faith." That the governor would find such a standard to be too daunting is clear evidence of its need.

[Last modified June 22, 2006, 06:02:27]