For use Sunday, March 14

Sunshine History

By Bill Cotterell

Tallahassee Democrat

TALLAHASSEE -- Capitol lore abounds with tales of closed-door meetings and hushed-up deals, most of them recalled fondly over drinks after hours by legislators who insist such skullduggery could never happen today.

There's the legend of Silver Beach, a non-existent township used as a secret stash of budget money to dispense as the budget came together. The 1987 services tax was hatched at a lobbyist's townhouse over pizza and bear by go-betweens from the Legislature and governor's office -- because they couldn't make compromises in the "sunshine" state government claims to relish. There was the time four reporters forced their own arrests by refusing to leave an "executive session" in the Senate.

Term limits have taken away the members, but a few careerists remember how the powerful could "walk a bill out of committee," buttonholing members on the House or Senate floor or in hallways to get proxy promises that obviated the need for an actual sit-down meeting. When the Legislature used to meet into the wee hours on the final days of a session, presiding officers and rules committee chieftains kept "invisible calendars" -- known only to insiders -- of which bills or amendments would be brought up for votes.

MORE OPEN NOW

Now, computers and public pressure born of scandals like the recent resignation of former House Speaker Ray Sansom of Destin have created an arms race to proclaim ever more openness in government. Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, has touted his transparencyflorida.gov Web site, where anyone can point and click their way through state budgets.

"The only way to restore trust in government is to almost go overboard with transparency," Haridopolos said in an interview. "Every budget is on an Excel spreadsheet anyway, so why not put it all online? If some people get their hands caught in the cookie jar, so be it. But if they have a good idea, it will survive the light of day."

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink last year launched her own site, "Florida's Checkbook," where taxpayers can look at fund balances, state tax collections and contracts. When House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, and his leadership team unveiled a plan in the first week of this year's session for streamlining government, the first points dealt with public disclosure of all budget details.

EARLY '70s BRING CHANGE

Lobbyist Ken Plante, who served in the Senate from 1967-78, credits the late Attorney General Bob Shevin for insisting on absolute openness. Gov. Reubin Askew, who served the same 1971-79 term as Shevin, won approval of a "Sunshine Amendment" requiring financial disclosure by public officials, among other reforms, after a spate of scandals in the early to mid-1970s.

Plante recalled that Sen. Emory "Red" Cross of Alachua County got the first real public-meeting bill passed, although it permitted public officials to get together privately and debate ideas, deciding how each would vote before an official meeting.

"I think the mayor and two council members from Alachua met in the mayor's living room and just voted everything out," Plante recalled. "I remember Emory Cross on the Senate floor, saying, 'I don't care what they do when they're meeting out there behind the chamber, at their offices or at dinner, but when they take official action it will be in a public meeting and all members will be notified.'"

Such charades would be illegal today. But former Sen. John Vogt, who represented Brevard County from 1972-88, said there was no way to pass the services tax on the floor of the Legislature.

"The stigma that's been applied to it is 'pizza and beer.' Well, you have to have something to eat, there was beer and soft drinks but nobody got intoxicated," said Vogt, who was Senate president at the time. "It just provided an easy way to find out where everybody was coming from. Sometimes people won't tell you in a public meeting where they stand."

REPORTERS IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Martin Dyckman, who covered the Capitol for the St. Petersburg Times and wrote editorials from 1967 until his retirement in 2006, said a little social secrecy can be good for government. Having to publish notice of all meetings and admit the public "adds to the present gridlock," he said, but the alternative can be worse.

"Back in the old days, I don't think it hurt for the governor to be able to sit down with the Senate president and speaker to get to know each other," he said. "But it led to abuse because they not only got to know each other, they decided what they were going to do."

Even while Cross was producing his sunshine bill in 1967, Dyckman said, that was the year that four reporters were ejected from the Senate press gallery during a bogus executive session. Such closed sessions were permitted at the time for frank discussion of gubernatorial appointments and removal of public officers.

"What I remember most about 1967 was the four reporters who got thrown out of the Senate press gallery when they refused to leave for what the Senate called an 'executive appointments' session," he said. "The reporters knew damned well that they were going to be talking about the reapportionment crisis that year, not executive appointments and suspensions."

TECHNOLOGY ENTERS

But even with modern technology and public expectations of openness, politicians will always find ways to operate in the shade. Former House Speaker T.K. Wetherell, a former appropriations chairman, slipped pot of beach-renourishment money into a budget for "Silver Beach" and, when members came to him for favors, he would swear them to secrecy and reduce that line item to give them what they needed -- and put them in his debt politically.

That's a long way, though, from Sansom's $6 million Destin airport deal, which resulted in a pending criminal indictment. As appropriations chairman, he steered millions to Northwest Florida State College, which hired him in a $110,000 job when he became speaker.

Haridopolos said some members will always try for budget "turkeys." But he said his new plan "is just Transparency 1.0," and there's no reason access to public records can't be broadened to iPhones, Blackberries and other such devices.

"There is so much distrust in government that I think it's well worth our money to put everything online so even the conspiracy theorists can see for themselves what we're doing," he said.

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