Florida’s fortress of secrecy faces new challenges | Steve Bousquet

Ron DeSantis has done more than any other Florida governor to undermine confidence in government and stir suspicion through unprecedented secrecy.

In just a few years, DeSantis has erected a fortress of secrecy in Tallahassee by persistently stonewalling or denying requests for public information, forcing news organizations and members of the public to file costly and time-consuming lawsuits.

And even after all that, the requested information often is still not forthcoming.

In an important case winding its way through state court, the Washington Post is fighting the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) for records the paper first sought last February. After four months of waiting, the Post lost patience and filed a lawsuit, accusing FDLE of unlawfully refusing to comply with Florida public records laws.

“FDLE did not comply with the Post’s public records requests for months, forcing the Post to bring this action to enforce its right of access to public records guaranteed by Chapter 119, Florida Statutes, and Article I, Section 24(a) of the Florida Constitution,” the newspaper argued in a court filing.

The section of the Constitution guaranteeing a right of access to public records, with exceptions, was approved by Florida voters in 1992. If you voted in Florida back then, probably cast a vote for it, as it passed by an astounding 83 percent.

In court, FDLE denies all of the Post’s claims and cites staff turnover, a lack of personnel and a surge in public records requests to justify the endless delays in producing records, which the agency describes in a court filing as a “backlog quandary.”

The statewide law enforcement agency told the court that requests for public records skyrocketed by 13 percent from 2021 to 2022, and requests by news organizations rose by 39 percent.

That reflects an increased reliance on the public records laws to obtain basic information. The Sun Sentinel editorial board is still waiting for public records from FDLE that we requested more than a year ago.

An agency lawyer explained the extraordinary delay in June by citing “a significantly depleted staff, coupled with an enormous volume of public records requests, as well as subpoenas, court orders, and other records production obligations.”

The motto on the Washington Post masthead, “Democracy dies in darkness,” has seldom seemed more relevant than in this case. But “Democracy dies under DeSantis” would be more like it.

The Post sought travel vouchers, email correspondence and other records related to travel by DeSantis and his election night victory party at the Tampa Convention Center in 2022.

At that event, as has been widely reported, the DeSantis campaign had told FDLE to prevent people from bringing guns inside the arena — a stunning act of hypocrisy by a governor who professes to support an “open carry” gun policy.

The Post’s narrowly-tailored request covered a five-week period in 2022. Circuit Judge Angela Dempsey in Tallahassee gave the newspaper a partial victory and ordered FDLE to produce “non-exempt” records by Oct. 13.

FDLE released some documents but refused or blacked out many others, citing a law passed by the Legislature last session that undid decades of transparency in Florida.

The outrageous law, Senate Bill 1616, retroactively exempts from disclosure all records of the governor’s travel, much of it paid  by Florida taxpayers, and even keeps secret the names of visitors to the governor’s office and to the Governor’s Mansion, wiping away a valuable check against insider influence.

Republicans voted in favor of it, and Democrats voted against it. Supporters attempted to justify the exemption by claiming it was needed to protect the safety of DeSantis and his family.

The Post, as Politico reported, has filed a lengthy motion questioning the constitutionality of SB 1616, arguing that the exemption is overbroad and “sweeps from public view every record relating in any way to the expenditure of millions of taxpayer dollars each year.”

Consider the timeline. The Post sought the records in February and March. DeSantis signed SB 1616 in May. The Post filed suit in July.

FDLE cited the exemption as a legal defense in September, creating the obvious perception that DeSantis and state lawmakers hurried to make the exemption retroactive to thwart public records requests by the Post and perhaps others.

The legal battle will resume after the holidays, and the case is before a judge who previously sided with DeSantis on another important public records question.

Dempsey embraced the DeSantis administration’s use of a nebulous right to “executive privilege” in denying a citizen’s request to learn the identities of the “big legal conservative heavyweights,” in DeSantis’ words, who have advised him on filling appointments to the Florida Supreme Court. That decision is on appeal, and the names of the “heavyweights” remain secret.

Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on Twitter @stevebousquet.