Cape Coral Daily Breeze

Internet can be Sunshine boon or bane

The on-line posting of public records has placed easy access at the fingertips of the people who need them.

Parents can find out if a convicted sex offender lives in their neighborhood or along the route their child uses to get to school by logging on to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement Web site, http://www.fdle.state.fl.us.

Countywide arrest records — or the comforting lack there of — of that boy your daughter’s dating can be found on the Lee County Sheriff's Web site, http://www.sheriffleefl.org/ or by clicking a link to the state and paying for a comprehensive public records check. Driving records, that is tickets issued locally, can be found on the Lee County Clerk of Courts site, http://www.leeclerk.org as can a wealth of other information, including lawsuits pending against, or filed by, that contractor you’re considering.

You can compare your home’s assessed value against that of comparable properties to make sure you’re getting a fair shake by checking out the Lee County Property appraiser’s or tax collector’s site, http://www.leepa.org or http://www.leetc.com/home.asp respectively.

Zoning or land use change for your neighborhood? You can find a copy of the proposal before city council — and all the backup documentation — at the city of Cape Coral’s Web site, http://capecoral.net.

There are scores of government sites and the public records posted there can help us keep us informed about what’s going on in our neighborhoods, about local government plans and projects, and other issues that impact our lives.

That’s “Government in the Sunshine” functioning at its best.

Florida’s public records and open meetings statutes, collectively called our “Government-in-the-Sunshine” laws, are among the most stringent in the nation.

Not only are Floridians guaranteed access to most public documents, we also are assured access to nearly all meetings of public boards, committees, commissions and councils. According to the open meetings provisions of Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine statutes, meetings must be properly noticed and open to anyone who wants to attend.

The law specifically prohibits private discussions among two or more members of the same panel on any issue that might possibly come before it for a vote in the future. That means no talks in the hallway, no phone calls, no “private” e-mail exchanges.

This is where the Sunshine tends to get a little cloudy as, bottom line, its enforcement is reliant on the integrity of the public officials who have sworn to uphold the very law that sometimes tends to rain on their private-agenda parade.

The latest challenge to the open meetings statutes is the very same venue that has made records access easier, the Internet. While e-mails on public issues have been deemed public records, blogs under nom de plumes, forums that allow anonymous postings via avatars and community pages featuring comments from “friends” have opened up whole new avenues for exchanging information that was not envisioned when Florida passed its first public records and meeting laws nearly 100 years ago.

We urge our Sunshine-accountable officials to consider the law carefully before joining on-line conversations on issues of public interest. One, sharing opinions on voting issues anonymously is suspicious on its face. Two, you really don’t know who you’re sharing with — and if it’s someone who’s sometimes seated on the same dais, it is a violation of the spirit of the law at best, a violation of its letter at worst.

March 16 is “Sunshine Sunday,” the day newspapers across the state re-affirm their commitment to safeguarding Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine statutes. The Breeze re-affirms its commitment on behalf of the residents of Cape Coral.

We ask our public officials to reaffirm theirs with a continuing effort to make public records readily accessible and a concerted effort to keep public discussions contained within properly noticed and open meetings.

Let the “sunshine” in.

— Breeze editorial

Reproduced courtesy of the Cape Coral Daily Breeze.
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