Florida Public Officials Face Criminal Charges For Dodging Public Records Laws
from the harbinger-or-one-off? dept
Some surprising news out of Florida: actual public officials being held accountable for public records law violations. We're used to hearing about officials finding new and creative ways to dodge public records requests. We're also used to hearing about officials using tried-and-true methods to avoid turning over records, like demanding astronomical fees or abusing exemptions.
In this case, several years of blowing off requests for emails has ended in indictments for two Florida officials.
In a move that should send a chill down the spines of thousands of elected officials in Florida, former Martin County Commissioner Anne Scott, a retired judge originally from Chicago, and current Commissioner Ed Fielding were booked Tuesday night into the county jail after being indicted in a public records scandal that already cost taxpayers upward of $25 million.
The charges aren't much -- a misdemeanor count worth up to a year in jail -- but they're a start. (Another involved government employee -- sitting commissioner Amber Heard -- faces a civil charge and a fine of $500.) Unfortunately, the charges look minuscule compared to the amount taxpayers will have to come up with to settle lawsuits stemming from the actions of these politicians.
Scott, Fielding and Heard, who is in her fourth term on the County Commission, are accused of failing to surrender emails to developers investigating why the commission suddenly started voting against them.
The emails were requested by Lake Point, a mining company on the banks of Lake Okeechobee. The company was out to prove that commissioners were illegally communicating and discussing public business in private and conspiring with members of the public against the company’s interests.
It took several years for the trio to produce their emails. When she was asked to show emails from her private Yahoo account, Heard claimed it had been hacked. In a civil lawsuit, several witnesses testified Heard was lying.
So far, the county has lost one civil lawsuit over the public records and was ordered to pay $500,000 of Lake Point’s legal bill.
That's only the start of the taxpayer pain. Several years of legal costs have already been footed by residents as these government officials argued on behalf of themselves and against the public's interest. The Miami Herald reports a massive payout may be on the horizon. A second lawsuit filed by the mining company alleging breach of contract is about to be settled, with the estimated payout being $25 million.
In the end, it's not a win for the public in terms of dollar amount, but it is at least a sign the government will do something about its own misbehaving employees… provided the collateral damage becomes too big to ignore. It would be nice to see something more proactive but given the number of things governments routinely let slide, we'll chalk this up as a small-w win.
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Filed Under: florida, foia, public officials, public records, transparency
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Re: Hillary Clinton
"Too late, we just deleted all those emails yesterday and wiped the hard drives, so go fuck yourselves!"
So the obvious lesson here is when it comes to refusing a email subpoena and instead destroying the evidence, some politicians go to jail while others get off scott free.
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Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
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Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
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Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
Or do you partisans at least open your eyes to one half of the story?
Government corruption and skullduggery is not just limited to one political party. The sad fact is that despite government document retention laws and regulations, both Republican and Democratic administrations have flagrantly violated both the spirit and sometimes the letter of the law, by devising all kinds of ways to hide government emails from both public scrutiny as well as law enforcement officials.
These unlucky Florida officials being the rare exception, the vast majority of the time they get away with it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
Spare us YOUR partisan attitude.
Yes, Clinton was no different than the previous two Republican Secretaries of State and many other prominent Republicans using their own email servers. The Bush II White House on the other hand wasn't allowed to use private email servers.
AC's "we just deleted all those emails yesterday and wiped the hard drives" claim is pure Republican mythology. Pointing this out isn't being partisan. It's being honest.
To be clear: It wasn't just some Anonymous Coward making the claim - you had President Trump and other Republican White House officials chanting "lock her up" over it.
You never saw any equivalent over Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice's private servers. Or Bush II, Cheney, Rove and the rest at the White House. Or 2016 Republican candidates Jeb!, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal each with their own email scandals. Nor Mitt Romney.
Heck, even after all the Trump team "lock her up" chanting, they immediately started using private email servers for government business too.
YOU are being partisan, with your false equivalencies.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
If you are going to trot out partisan whataboutisms, use claims that aren't total lies. We never saw any fuss over Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice's private email servers because they did not have any.
Rice did not regularly use email. Powell's term predated both the Department of State's policy to use its email servers for all official business, and the existence of reliable email servers in the Department.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
Makes me think, what are they hidding? The truth?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
So Hillary used her own server - which only she and her staff had control over.
Colin Powell used an AOL account. Who knows how many AOL admins and support staff in how many countries had access. Is that supposed to be better? A public server is more secure than a private one?
Rice got classified information in her private account too. The argument for her is that she didn't do it as much.
They were using private (AOL) servers. LESS secure than private servers under their own control. Bush/Cheney/Rove/Jeb!/etc. used private servers too.
It wasn't a fuss because IOKIYAR. "It's OK If You're A Republican."
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hillary Clinton
Citation....?
While you're at it, find a citation that the Bush II White House's off-site private server was any more secure. Or that Colin Powell's or Condoleezza Rice's private accounts were more secure. AOL, Yahoo and the others don't have a great track record - and that's not counting the unknown number of people around the world who get admin access intentionally.
In fact, there's no evidence of this. It's simply what you want to believe.
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mining industry
While many of us may be glad to see corrupt government officials going to jail, the unfortunate reality is that such things generally only happen after someone gets on the wrong side of the power structure and therefore needs to be given a public spanking.
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Re: mining industry
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Re: mining industry
Conspiring with members of the public is probably the new term for unpaid lobbying, aka, bringing the concerns of the electorate to public officials, but that doesn't change the fact that said officials shouldn't be playing games with public records.
Of course, let's see the documents (lol) that show why things went in favor of Lake Point for so long in the first place.
Let's see if anyone but a corporate power ever gets results on this or anything else for that matter.
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Re: Re: mining industry
It's ironic, what particular sorts of cases actually result in politicians and officials "being held accountable".
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microscopic win
...more like a microscopic win.
These politicians were merely indicted not convicted and are unlikely to be even modestly punished. Plus, justice delayed is justice denied.
Other crooked politicians can easily see that the odds of suffering ANY serious consequences for their misdeeds is extremely low. Cops figured this out long ago.
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Re: microscopic win
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Re: Re: microscopic win
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Re: Re: microscopic win
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Re: Re: microscopic win
I would not assume that. Upon conviction, it is a misdemeanor. Jail time is unusual in these cases.
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Ait, what?
Is that French for 'behaving like they are accountable to the electorate, not big business'.
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Yahoo!
In fairness to her, given Yahoo's track record, her account probably has been hacked, along with many many others. Too bad for her the hackers were more interested in extracting data than in erasing it.
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Re: Yahoo!
I know it's not completely foolproof but it works fine for me.
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Re: Yahoo!
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Florida Public Officials
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Re: Florida Public Officials
And you're absolutely sure, based on some vague 3rd? 4th? hand statement, that these actions were undertaken "for the chiiildrens" and not for a competitor of this company?? Like how they protect the public, and not restaraunt owners, when they go after food trucks. That kind of good works?
Maybe. And maybe decades of evidence have failed to trigger an adequate degree of cynicism. Abuse of government power directed at people of whom you disapprove is still abuse of government power.
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