Welcome to Florida. Where Sunshine needs lobbyists and lawyers, and the state motto could just as well be “nothing to see here.” Where elected officials shamelessly reject attempts to let the people who voted for them know what they are up to. Where government bureaucrats seem increasingly inclined to simply ignore the law, particularly in the agencies overseen by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

When Florida first started observing an annual “Sunshine Week,” it was billed as a celebration of the state’s 1967 Government in the Sunshine law that codified open meetings and access to public records. Today, it’s more like the award-show reels of the year’s casualties. This year, there are a few bright spots — albeit in legislation that faces a high bar to become law. Meanwhile, a flock of brand-new exemptions to the state’s open-records laws are clustered at the gates of the state Legislature, fueled by support that’s often bipartisan and likely to pass.

Unless champions step forward. The good news: It’s not too late.

House Speaker Daniel Perez and Senate President Ben Albritton have positioned themselves as empowered advocates for principled government. If they are willing to stand up for government in the sunshine, they have a good chance of turning this dark tide. Floridians should reach out to both leaders, along with their own representatives, to ask for their support of the public’s right to know.

A lost legacy

Once upon a time, this state enjoyed a reputation for open government that was second to none. Florida’s leaders took pride in the fact that almost every document produced by a governmental agency was available to its residents, even in the days when that meant records kept on reams and reams of paper and meetings that could only be viewed in person.

Those who violated these laws had reason to fear serious consequences, including prosecution and the penalty of watching secretive deals unwound in the light of public condemnation. Meanwhile, any attempt to pass exemptions to public information met with fierce, often fatal opposition — and new laws that passed the Legislature often died quickly in court challenges.

With the advent of the internet, video streaming and easy, self-service access to government documents online, it should be easier than ever before to access the information that belongs to the public by right. In some cases, that’s true — politicians, as it turns out, love to see themselves on video. The websites for the state Legislature provide ready access to session documents and, on the House side, considerable data on the vast lobbying apparatus that seeks to wield influence. And Florida’s court system continues to shine as a beacon of openness, in large part thanks to the longstanding collaboration between state court leaders, judges’ to-the-letter interpretation of state law and local elected clerks of court, who work hard to make court documents ever more accessible.

But the forces of darkness are formidable, and for decades, they played the long game. A tweak here, a nip there — gradually, more and more documents were officially obscured through exemption bills that officially blacked out records. Year after year, lawmakers hide public records. They make it easier for public officials to do business behind closed doors. Worst of all, local and state government agencies have shown an increasing tendency to fend off public-records requests with barriers like unjustified fees or a simple cold shoulder, letting records requests lie dormant for weeks or months with no response.

Over the past few years, the Orlando Sentinel has had to send attorneys to fight for information on several fronts: We fought for records regarding the oversight of publicly funded vouchers that divert hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into unregulated private schools. It took months to uncover information about a shadowy new department that DeSantis set up to provide guidance for ultra-conservative local politicians who were turning school board meetings across Florida into three-ring circuses with endless discussions of drag queens and book bans. The Sentinel even needed attorneys to get public records from local police departments about questionable incidents involving officers.

If one of the state’s biggest newspapers had to fight for these records, what chance do ordinary citizens stand?

Reclaiming the light

That’s why state lawmakers who care about good government should embrace a proposed bill (SB 1434, by Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg) that would put teeth back into the state’s defanged Sunshine-compliance laws by setting strict timelines for governmental agencies to acknowledge public-records requests. It limits fees for agencies that slow-walk demands for records, and even levies fines when delays become egregious. It doesn’t go far enough — certainly, not back to the days when state employees took records demands seriously.

But it would be a pivot. And lawmakers have their own recent snub to fuel their ire: The decision to conceal, for nearly two years, a state report that detailed how property-insurance companies bled billions of dollars from their own ledgers and then screamed that they were on the verge of economic collapse. That fake narrative helped convince lawmakers to provide additional taxpayer support, while weakening consumer protection laws to the point where half of all hurricane-related claims following a series of killer storms were denied.

Right now, Rouson is the only name attached to SB 1434, which was drafted with the assistance of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation and the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability. Perez and Albritton should make it a priority.

There’s one more way they can immediately claim the mantle of champion. Back when DeSantis’ presidential ambitions burned bright, he demanded legislation that made it impossible for Floridians to track where he went (even when he was supposedly traveling on public business) or who he met with. Rolling that sweeping, completely unjustifiable shroud of darkness — and then daring DeSantis to veto it — would be a power move on behalf of Florida’s citizenry, making it harder for DeSantis to cut secretive deals in the last few years of his lame-duck administration.

There are a few more bright spots. One bill (HB 671/SB 798) would make it easier to track requests and pay any costs of sourcing and copying records via electronic means, making it easier to hold agencies accountable when they stall or “lose” payments. Another (HB 1321/SB 1726) would strip some of the secrecy from state-university-president searches, letting the public take part in the process of hiring some of the state’s highest-paid employees.

There’s one more crucial way that Albritton and Perez could step up as champions of public access: Say “no” to most (if not all) of the 130 new exemptions that have been filed this session. Many of them are small, but some are doozies. We’ll cover them in another editorial, but for now, “just say no” is the guidance the president and speaker can offer — and the least Floridians should expect.

_____

©2025 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.