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.
Whoever made this record request better realize if Mr. Pepe is personally going over a bunch of everyday, innocent, email and texts go o rather than having his assistant press the”send Key on the computer than Mr. Pepe and his city commissioners have something to hide and certainly can’t be trusted. How does the person making the request know whether Pepe might decide on his own to just totally make a dentrimental email disappear and not provide it as part of the record request? In my opinion Pepe would do anything to protect his job and in order to do that he has to protect the commissioners, even though it might be illegal, i.e. not turning over ALL the documentation requested. Secondly, following SM cesspool politics one should realize that the Mayor and the rest of the commission as well as the city attorney have unpublished email addresses that they must use so they are not privy to a public record.
If I were the person making the request, the best assurance you have is to “view” the documentation( No charge for that) looking over the shoulder of Pepe, and that pick what you want copies of and THEN make a record request for Pepe’s hard drive to make sure everything is kosher, that is, before the city spends their money on Hillary’s company to bleach bit the hard drive.
On another note, Grant stated.” 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.” That alone is extremely alarming to me and should be to others. If Mayor Stoddard would stoop that low, without cause, how could FIU employ him to teach young adults? How does one know if he doesn’t pull these nasty shenanigans with young adults in his classroom that perhaps Mayor Stoddard doesn’t like or would do anything to bully the student? It is a scary thought but as we all know leopards don’t change their spots, and if I had a student in his classroom, I would be alarmed watching Mayor Stoddard in action over the last 8 years, and if anyone knows Mr. Rosenberg at FIU, perhaps you should voice your concerns.
Being that the City Attorney is employed by the city’s government, he/she is held to the same degree of public servant as the Commission body. The need for a $1200 fee to redact public information is absurd and may potentially result in an ethics violation. Accountability, good ethics and morals has been too long missing here in the City of South Miami. I see it as a game of “Poker”,the resident should definitely call his bluff and raise the question of a possible ethics violation to the Ethics Commission.
Maybe the City is using the same company Hillary Clinton used!!!
There was no reason to include Governor Rick Scott in this article. Grant Miller should have mentioned his idol, Barack Hussein Obama, instead.
This is a public records request.See the state statute. Here is one interesting bit: (d) If the nature or volume of public records requested to be inspected or copied pursuant to this subsection is such as to require extensive use of information technology resources or extensive clerical or supervisory assistance by personnel of the agency involved, or both, the agency may charge, in addition to the actual cost of duplication, a special service charge, which shall be reasonable and shall be based on the cost incurred for such extensive use of information technology resources or the labor cost of the personnel providing the service that is actually incurred by the agency or attributable to the agency for the clerical and supervisory assistance required, or both.
What is reasonable about a $1,200 deposit?
Perhaps Governor Scott and the South Miami City Attorney are merely following the lead and example Mrs. Clinton set with her 33,000 missing emails?
Bravo !!
Many residents recall the fact that SM City Attorney, Thomas Pepe was not hired due to his expertise in Municipal law, nor for his expertise in land use or any other field for he had none. He was hired simply based on his personal relationships to the politicians on the SM Commission. This practice is known as, cronyism which is commonly practiced in Banana Republics. Sadly, the lack of fiduciary duty, lack of ethics and lack of leadership by the Commission has and will continue to cost South Miami taxpayers dearly.