The Shade of Ignorance

Remarkable laws exist so ‘We The People’ can detect and avoid abuse from our government officials. Unfortunately, too many media and political action groups have abdicated their watchdog roles, keeping themselves and the public in the shade of ignorance.

Florida’s 1967 Sunshine Law was a remarkable accomplishment, influencing the rest of the states and even the Federal government to follow our lead. Basically it requires government officials to open their meetings to the public and maintain open records. There is no common law or First Amendment guarantee of such rights—our Founding Fathers met in secret. It takes legislation like Florida’s to give us citizens the right to monitor how our politicians are deciding our fates.

While Florida wrote a law in 1905 giving citizens the right to attend “formal assemblages” of city and county officials, it was narrowly construed, and officials could easily circumvent it to make the real decisions behind closed doors. But a meeting of a journalistic fraternity in the 1950’s influenced a state senator to keep putting forward, every year for ten years, what became our current Sunshine Law. Finally, federally-required reapportionment got rid of the “Pork Chop Gang” of rural lawmakers who’d dominated the legislature. New lawmakers from urban areas and a new governor, Claude Kirk, provided the right environment for the senator’s “Sunshine Bill” to finally become law. Future Governor Reuben Askew and the media’s push for the measure were also critical in convincing legislators to pass it.

It costs us taxpayers incalculable sums to keep meetings accessible and recorded, and then store the records to produce on demand. Most of my investigations rely on such records. I have discovered candidate’s unpaid taxes, unfiled licenses, disbarments, legal prosecutions and convictions, bankruptcies, foreclosures, embarrassing legal depositions, untrue statements at commission meetings, damning emails, and financial irregularities from such public records in a dozen agencies paid for by my tax dollars.

The shame of it is that so few of us do so in the Keys: by my count, four. Many of the laws drafted to protect us are complaint-driven, that is, the state will not act until a citizen points out a problem. For example, the Ethics Commission collects thousands of financial disclosure forms, but does not check them out at all. As I wrote last week, former Lieutenant Governor Jennifer Carroll reported consecutively the following amounts, in millions: ¼, 23, 202, 2, and ½.

But under state law, the Commission on Ethics has no power to initiate an investigation of financial disclosure forms for irregularities, and no one questioned Carroll’s filings. A former executive director of the Commission sadly admitted, “All we could do was look at what they called facial compliance: Was it filed under oath and did they sign it? That’s it. They’re responsible for what they report on there, and we didn’t have any authority to audit those forms as they come in. There’s still no authority for that. … It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way things have been.”

In my current investigation of the the Ethics Commission, I’ve quickly found that they find a violation in only 5.5% of the complaints they receive. Conversely, when an official is fined for filing a late disclosure form, 89% of the waiver requests are approved because they claim “unusual circumstances.”

So it is up to our media, private citizens, and, I would hope, any organizations soliciting contributions to help them “educate the public.” Hometown PAC’s large banner proclaims, “An informed electorate promotes good government.” But they make no effort to access themselves, much less evaluate and present, any of the information the Sunshine Law collects to help us evaluate our candidates. The daily paper prints the names of contributors, but that’s it. It’s easy to understand a name and a dollar amount; but harder to understand what an “asset,” liability,” and “net worth” are so the financial disclosure forms seem to be too much for them.

Disclosure is not all about politics. The requirement to publish foreclosures has helped me save two friends’ homes, so let me end this column on a happy note. In one case I was shocked to see the name of a single mom in my then-church listed as losing her residence. It turned out hurricane Wilma had not only destroyed her successful business, but the damages to her home could not be repaired because the banks were so delinquent in approving contractors’ checks (remember the many insurance and bank horrors of Wilma? Worse than the storm itself).

She was broken down and too depressed to deal with her bank. It took me four months fending off a hostile foreclosure to modify her loan successfully. This took more persistence and caused me more 3 A.M. wake-up moments than anything I’ve done with politics. At times I knew I was close, but might lose her house by a hair. A huge relief! Another case, again a woman overcome by too many demands, needed only a single letter to the foreclosure lawyer, as I found their documentary errors.

Last year, I was shocked to see Clayton Lopez’ late mom’s house listed. I emailed him to offer to help, but fortunately he said the notice was in error, as the bank had simply screwed up valid paperwork, and they’d resolved it. Whew! I’d really hate to have failed with the Commissioner. And I do fail.

A certain county commissioner may be both re-elected and untouched by the state ethics commission. Both of these results are statistically very likely, and would hurt. But it’s not my duty to win, it’s to try my best. And Thursday I left for Hana on Maui, back in three weeks. My beloved Tinkerbell AKA Cynthia Edwards is completely recovered from her heart-attack near-death experience in August. As long as she is alive and loves me, you gotta believe, everything else is tinsel and farts.

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