Florida has a long tradition that documents created by government employees and elected officials don’t belong to the employee or the official; they belong to the people. It is not just a great ideal, it’s part of our state constitution.
But like many high ideals, it isn’t aways observed religiously. Like any other article of faith, it often is buffeted and tempered by exceptions and exclusions. Florida Gov. Rick Scott is notorious for withholding documents that might make him look bad.
Here in South Miami, the city attorney has stepped into Rick Scott’s shoes.
A recent public record request was made to the city attorney that sought all emails and texts sent and received between the city attorney and each member of the city commission, including Mayor Phil Stoddard, since Jan. 1 of this year.
The request seems simple enough. Each member of the commission and the city attorney have city email boxes. You would think it would be easy enough to turn those digital mailboxes over and shake them, gather up the emails, and send them off.
But nothing is ever simple in the City of Pleasant Living.
The city attorney could have assigned the job to a clerk. Instead, he decided to do this task himself. He is not just shaking his own email box, he is going through all of them one-by-one.
Maybe he is nostalgic for how things used to be and wants to relive those golden moments. Maybe he is a glutton for punishment. Maybe he doesn’t trust a clerk to do the job for $7 an hour when he can bill it out for $200 per.
The city attorney responded to the records request saying that he would need a deposit of $1,200 to cover his time in reading through and redacting the emails.
What kind of things are normally redacted from emails? Social Security numbers are one thing. It seems unlikely that the city attorney and commissioners would be swapping SSNs like identity thieves.
Another thing that is normally excluded is information of a law enforcement nature. But neither the city attorney, the mayor, nor the commissioners are deputy lawmen. They might think they are, but they are not.
One thing that is not covered is attorney-client communications. The city attorney doesn’t represent the commissioners or the mayor individually. He represents the city. There is no attorney-client privilege for the members of the commission and the city attorney to hide behind.
Whatever the city attorney, the mayor, and commissioners talk about is a public record.
So what is behind the need for $1,200 for a fistful of emails? Spite perhaps. One document recently released shows that just after turning off the microphone on the person who complained about Stoddard to the Ethics Commission, Stoddard asked the city attorney to file a complaint with the Florida Bar against him.
Maybe the documents the city attorney is holding back show evidence of ethical wrongdoing by the mayor or a commissioner. Maybe they show nothing of the sort. But we won’t know until those documents see the light of day.
The real issue is that the documents belong to the people and the city attorney is wrong to try to discourage people seeking documents by quoting a “go away” price.
The city attorney needs to be reminded of the fact that, although he was appointed by the commission, he works for the people of South Miami. It’s time he started acting like it.
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