Gov. Bush's decision to put the drug company on a preferred list for Medicaid patients' prescriptions skirted public scrutiny and competitive bidding.

There are several things not right about Gov. Jeb Bush's new deal with Pfizer Inc., by which the pharmaceutical giant gets on a preferred drug list for Florida's Medicaid patients in exchange for providing free drugs and free disease management advice to some of them.

It was negotiated in secret -- state officials prefer the euphemism "in confidence" -- before the Legislature acted to make such arrangements legal.

It comes with another new law exempting the details of all such arrangements from public scrutiny under Florida's public records law. This means, in effect, that the public will just have to take Bush's word that it is as good a deal for the state as for Pfizer. And if other drug companies scramble to get similar bid-free contracts, the public will have to take the governor's word about them, too.

Worst of all, perhaps, are the circumstances under which it was hatched. Key documents obtained by Times staff writer Alisa Ulferts -- from officials who took a month to release them, during which time the deal was all but finished -- show that Pfizer's president, Hank McKinell, first broached the idea to Bush at a Republican Governors Association conference last November at the Saddlebrook Resort in Pasco County. It was not a public forum, and there was no notice to the public, press or Pfizer's competitors. Such special "access" -- the politician's preferred euphemism for influence -- is a familiar consequence of corporate sponsorship of such events. Records show Pfizer has given at least $40,000 to the Republican Governors Association.

The governor's office doesn't seem to care how poorly that looks. Katie Baur, Bush's spokeswoman, rationalized that since the governor is often approached by people who want to discuss state business, the GOP conference "would be a perfect opportunity for an individual who wants to do business with the state to approach the governor." That a subsequent meeting with Pfizer officials in his office escaped mention on his public schedule was, she said, merely inadvertent.

There are many ways, probably including some yet to be discovered, to make government work more efficiently and economically in the public interest. But as costly experience taught Florida years ago, one way that's almost invariably wrong is to circumvent public competitive bidding. That's what the Pfizer deal does, and it does it in such a way as to encourage more of the same.

The public records exemption aggravates that mistake. In enacting it, the Legislature betrayed the public's trust.

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