Tallahassee is the capital of the state of Florida, not the State of Panic. But that difference would have been hard to tell from some of the bills filed during the special session to invoke official secrecy in the name of security against terrorism. Fortunately, none became law. The Senate, however, adopted a rule permitting itself and its committees to meet in secret and to keep the records secret for five-year intervals and quite possibly forever. This was unconstitutional and it was shamefully wrong, all the more so because it was done by voice vote to spare senators from going on record against the wishes of President John McKay.

The House, to its greater credit, did not even consider such a rule and was conspicuously less eager to take up legislation eroding Florida's landmark open-meeting and public records laws. Speaker Tom Feeney and Rep. Dudley Goodlette, the committee chairman responsible for security bills, displayed concern for the public's rights in these matters and sought appropriate advice from first amendment experts within and without the Legislature.

Even so, the House passed a bad bill (which died on the Senate calendar) to keep secret not only the location but the "type and amount" of any pharmaceuticals stockpiled as a defense against terrorism. Under this bill, similar to one approved by a Senate committee, the government could be dangerously unprepared and no one would ever know it until a disaster exposed the truth.

These and other bills more appropriate to a dictatorship than a democracy will probably be back on the agenda whenever the Legislature next meets. More lawmakers need to understand the difference between necessarily protecting the few genuinely sensitive facts, such as the details of a hospital's or nuclear plant's security systems, and unnecessarily covering up for government when it defaults on public safety or abuses civil rights.

There was enormous potential for abuse in one Senate bill allowing the Department of Law Enforcement to impose secrecy on pre-existing public records and in another permitting people to be jailed without charge as material witnesses. In other words, they could be arrested secretly and held secretly. Significantly, the most vocal opposition came from Cuban-American lawmakers whose fear of oppressive tactics has a basis in personal or family experience.

The presence of a police state merely 90 miles from our shores ought to remind all Florida legislators how easy it is for a society to lose its liberties in the guise of protecting them.

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