All residents can again read city's business

South Pasadena decides not to pick and choose documents put in the public reading file.

By AMY WIMMER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2000

SOUTH PASADENA -- It took just two new faces on the South Pasadena City Commission to sway the vote on a barely 2-month-old policy.

Commissioners in South Pasadena stripped themselves last week of the authority to withhold some documents from the city's public reading file. The commission voted 3-2 to throw out the controversial policy, which drew criticism because it essentially allowed commissioners to choose what information was easily accessible to the public.

"That was one of the things that I said, if I'm re-elected, I wanted to revisit," said Commissioner Dick Holmes, who voted against the policy when it was created in February and said he asked for the issue to be placed on the agenda at last week's meeting. Holmes was re-elected to the panel in March.

"The great deal of sentiment seems to be that you don't censor a file, even if it's still a public record. It just doesn't hold water in South Pasadena with our tradition."

Under the old policy, all correspondence received at City Hall was public record, as mandated by Florida law. But commissioners could opt not to place certain documents in the public reading file, which commissioners and city staff use to keep up with day-to-day business in South Pasadena. The public and press can also peruse the file.

With some information withheld from the file, the public and press had to specifically request letters not placed in the reading file -- and asking for them required knowing that they existed.

Mayor Fred Held, who pushed the original policy of allowing commissioners to withhold some information from the file, points out that several other cities do not have reading files at all.

"Talking about First Amendment rights, they are much more restrictive than we are," Held said.

Holmes had the backing of the two new commissioners -- Joan Runyon, who was elected in March, and Ted Pugh, the temporary replacement for Al Edmiston, who died in February. A special election to fill the remainder of Edmiston's term will be held in May.

Holmes and Edmiston opposed the original policy in February. Supporting the policy were Held and Commissioners Chris Burgess and Joe Catalfamo.

Held and Burgess voted against Holmes' efforts to repeal the policy last week, and Catalfamo lost his March bid for re-election.

"I do not believe that any communications should be withheld from that file, no matter how disagreeable, obscene, obnoxious or even dishonest or incorrect as they may be," Pugh told the commissioners, reading from a prepared statement. "I believe that it is best to keep everything out in the sunshine and that, in the long run, full exposure will eventually expose the authors of inappropriate correspondence to the scrutiny of wiser heads and an understanding public."

In Held's efforts in February to persuade other commissioners to favor keeping some materials out of the reading file, Held referred specifically to a letter from South Pasadena resident Dan Calabria, a persistent thorn in Held's side.

Among his many letters to the commission and City Attorney Linda Hallas was a Feb. 7 letter addressed to all commissioners. In it, Calabria poses the question: "When . . . can we expect Fred Held to start telling the truth?"

The answer was depicted with an illustration of five pigs flying across the paper.

Held argued that such correspondence is irrelevant to city business and should not be available for everyone's viewing.

"Five flying pigs in the air doesn't mean anything to the city staff," Held said.

Under the policy approved last week, all correspondence received by the city -- excluding advertisements, magazines, invoices or material addressed to an individual and marked personal and confidential -- must be included in the file. The resolution states that "the public have expressed a lack of trust in the judgment of the commission members and feel that the reading file is being censored."

Holmes said the policy now relies on public officials' ability to be thick-skinned.

"You overlook that," Holmes said. "When you run for office, you should have the hide of a rhinoceros."

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