The administration of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is once again trying to create broad new exemptions to the state’s famed government transparency law.
This time, DeSantis’ attorneys argued that a transcript of a senior staffer’s phone calls, even though the staffer was conducting government business, was not public record because it was a private phone.
this tampa bay times first reported Lawyers for the DeSantis administration argued in a Leon County judge’s courtroom this week on Thursday that the governor’s office should not be forced to turn over call records from the personal cell phone of DeSantis Chief of Staff James Usmeier.
The Florida Government Accountability Center sued the DeSantis administration in 2022 for information about Immigration Flights to Martha’s Vineyard DeSantis used state resources to organize the event that year. The governor’s office has so far turned over many of the records and revealed that Usmeier and other staffers used personal email addresses and phone numbers rather than state-issued phone records, but for now the office is defying the court to release Usmeier. Meyer’s order for phone records.
“Florida is no longer the Sunshine State when it comes to transparency,” said Michael Barfield, the center’s director of public access. “The public’s right to know is going dark.”
Public records laws are generally interpreted at the federal and state levels (including Florida) to cover records created on private devices and accounts if government business is involved. For example, the Florida Attorney General’s 2023 Edition Sunshine Government Handbook states that “the fact that an email was sent from a private email account using a personal computer does not determine whether the email is a public record; what matters is whether the email was prepared or received in connection with official agent business connect.
The manual also states that “a public official or employee using a private cell phone to conduct public business via text message ‘can create an electronic written public record subject to disclosure’ if the text message is ‘prepared, possessed, used or retained.’ … in within the scope of his or her employment or agency.
But DeSantis’ lawyers argued that Usmeier’s call records were “Level 3 data.” tampa bay times Report:
“If you consider these Level 3 data points to be in some way public records,” DeSantis attorney Christopher Lunny said in an interview with Leon County Circuit Judge Lee Marsh. It must also be captured by the custodian of public records, then this is a full interpretation of the public records.
But Marsh said that under this argument, all government business could be closed to the public.
“We should be saying, ‘Let’s use private, self-owned cell phones to conduct all of our business,'” Marsh said. “Then we wouldn’t need a public records law because there wouldn’t be public records, right?” “
as reason Last year, the DeSantis administration described this in a magazine feature about Florida’s Sunshine Law: The DeSantis administration is not only weakening a once-powerful public records law; It’s taking a sledgehammer. State lawmakers have laid out the governor’s travel record secretthe DeSantis administration also Attempt to invoke executive privilege Relative to other documents, this privilege is not found in Florida’s Sunshine Law and has never been claimed by the former governor.
DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
