State: Senate approves secrecy measures

TALLAHASSEE -- On an unrecorded voice vote, the state Senate Thursday gave broad new powers to Senate President John McKay to close meetings on security and terrorism "at his sole discretion."

The Senate altered a second rule change that would have sealed votes taken in secret meetings for up to five years. The rule was changed to seal "all records, research, information, remarks and staff" work for 30 days. After that, those materials would become public unless the time were extended by the Senate president.

"What we're trying to do is always make this as narrow as we could, but not make it so narrow that it was meaningless," said Senate Rules Chairman Tom Lee, R-Brandon, an architect of the new rules. "We were always trying to narrow the president's authority to the absolute minimum."

Lee said the revised language was worked out in private conversations Thursday with four other senators and the Senate counsel, Steve Kahn. Lee also said the new rule language is more open than the earlier version of the proposal. Records that would have been considered secret unless released by the Senate president would now be considered public unless the 30-day secrecy period were extended.

If McKay invokes the secrecy provision after 30 days, the rule says that the records "shall automatically become available for public inspection and copying five years after the date of the closed meeting."

Open-government "sunshine" advocates are still angry and say "records" could easily be construed to include votes, which are kept on vote sheets.

"All records are still exempt, and that could easily be interpreted to include vote records," said Barbara Petersen of the First Amendment Foundation. "It has the same infirmities as the original. It still allows for no oversight and no accountability."

In a voice vote, supporters shout "aye" or "nay," and the presiding officer -- in this case, McKay -- rules which side won. No record exists of how individual senators voted, but reporters polled senators one by one as they left the chamber Thursday afternoon.

Pinellas County senators Jack Latvala, Jim Sebesta and Don Sullivan said they joined Lee in voting for the secrecy rules. But Latvala at first seemed caught off guard by the question. "It was a voice vote, wasn't it?" he said.

Democratic Sen. Les Miller of Tampa and Republican Ginny Brown-Waite of Brooksville could not be reached. But Brown-Waite voted for the original rules in committee on Wednesday.

Lee said that rules changes, which are procedural and not part of the state laws, are traditionally adopted on a voice vote, a point that Senate Democratic leader Tom Rossin, D-West Palm Beach, did not dispute.

"As long as I've been here, we've always done it that way," Rossin said.

Florida's Constitution requires most meetings and records of government bodies to be conducted in public, but the Legislature made sure it carved out an exception for itself. In two open-government constitutional amendments, in 1990 and 1992, voters made each house of the Legislature "the sole judge" of its open-meeting provisions.

The first evidence of a public backlash against the secrecy rule came quickly to lawmakers' e-mail systems.

Sebesta and Sullivan said they were flooded with e-mails from Floridians who opposed the secret-meeting provision. Some of the letter writers were people concerned that the Legislature, in secret, could weaken the rights of gun owners.

In one e-mail, John Rowell of Merritt Island urged Sebesta to oppose rules "that let your government plan to steal your rights in secret." There was no answer at a home listed under Rowell's name Thursday evening.

McKay, a Bradenton Republican who has pressed for tighter security in the state Capitol, took credit for the rules changes. "My request is well thought out," McKay said. "Hopefully, we never have to invoke it, but I think we want to have that ability."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk