#BecauseFlorida Below is todays Tampa Bay Times reflection on FL politics and our transparent Governor. Someone please tell me how this man was reelected. The State of Transparency 2014 March: Governors staff stops populating the Project Sunburst website, which is supposed to post all email correspondence of the governor and his staff, as many in his communications department leave to work for his re-election campaign. April: Legislators pass and Gov. Rick Scott signs 22 bills carving out a record number of new exemptions to the public records law. Among them is a bill to create a virtual blanket of secrecy surrounding family trust companies. May: Legislature adjourns without approving any recommendations of the legislatively commissioned User Experience Task Force to make the states budget process and related websites more transparent. May: Jim Apthorp, former chief of staff to the late Gov. Reubin Askew files a lawsuit urging the Florida Supreme Court to prohibit using blind trusts in place of full financial disclosure. The court said it must first be decided in district court, and Circuit Judge John Cooper upheld the law in July. Apthorp then asked the appellate court to transfer it to the Florida Supreme Court. May: A Tallahassee trial court allows a courtroom to be closed to let GOP political consultants testify about redistricting documents they claim are trade secrets. The Florida Supreme Court ultimately rejects that argument in late November, long after the trial has concluded. June: Emails obtained by lawyer Steve Andrews show that lobbyists and well-positioned Republicans routinely communicate about public business with the governors staff using text messages via private cellphones. June: Scott releases his 2013 financial disclosure forms but relies on interpretation of the blind trust law to shield assets held by both him and his wife. June: The governor argues in court documents that public records held on private email accounts and private cellphones of former state workers are the responsibility of the employees, not the state, creating a new barrier to access. August: Scott acknowledges for the first time that he uses a private email account but says he uses it primarily to communicate with my family and denies he uses it for public business. We follow the law, he said. August: Scott spokesman John Tupps announces a change in policy regarding text messages, saying in a statement that the governors office now discourages the use of text messaging by employees because text messages are hard to catalog due to the digital nature of the message. September: Scotts office argues in court documents that his calendars and those of his staff are transitory documents that can be changed and altered. The office has completed several public records requests for calendars that include only blank documents. November: Florida Supreme Court orders the release of hundreds of pages of emails and documents deemed trade secrets by GOP political consultants in the redistricting case. The emails show how the Republican consultants conspired to manipulate the process with false witnesses and gerrymandered maps. November: Scott releases hundreds of pages of emails from his private Gmail account relating to state business after what his staff calls a thorough review. He offers no explanation as to why he previously claimed the documents did not exist. December: Child Abuse Death Review Committee produces an annual report but excludes what it once included: detailed analysis of the causes of death and the Department of Children & Families role leading up to the fatalities, or if the deaths were preventable. The reports are no longer archived online.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 01:34:36 +0000
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