"Alice began to feel very uneasy: to be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew that it might happen any minute ... And then,” thought she, “What would become of me? They’re dreadfully fond of beheading people here; the great wonder is, that there is anyone left alive!”The Herald just recently ran an article on the lack of response or the failure to respond to Public Records Requests by governmental bodies in Florida. It was a general article where they cited numerous cases where experienced reporters went seeking public records throughout government offices in the state and were turned away or blocked by overly zealous officials.
I have had my own experiences with the public records request process.
The reward for the fastest response goes to the Florida Department of Community Affairs when they answered a page long request with a turnaround time of 24 hours or even a bit less. The longest response goes to a City of Miami Planning Department where they never bothered to answer. After more than several months of waiting, I gave up and deleted the email because it became moot after the public hearing which occurred quite some time after the request. (Not that it was intentionally ignored, but it was not answered.)
This brings me to Alice and the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.
Lewis Carroll’s Alice exists not only in fairy tales, but in Miami-Dade County Government as well. The practice is to send a public records request either up or down the chain of command depending on the recipient. It does not make much difference where it goes, because the “Alice” hiding in the soul of every county employee innately knows that a public records request spells trouble for him or her.
I have been watching with some interest, a public records request that seems to have been buried by someone’s “Alice”. It was directed to County’s election officials, our Florida election officials and the State Executive Offices. The request was rather timely for the current election season, and ultimately, for the elections process and petition handling: the very two things the state and county has a record of fumbling. Obliviously, no one was taking chances on embarrassing answers this election year.
If I were a betting man, I would hazard a guess that this particular public records request sent to our County Election official and copied to the state to back in early September (right after the primary) never got a response beyond a form email.
Why should the public have to nag for public records? Why should government employees have to think like Alice in the rabbit hole before answering public records requests? Why should elected officials and department directors get away with ignoring legal inquiries?
One day the public will have enough of chasing Alice through the bureaucratic rabbit hole and assert their legal rights. Then what will government officials do? Go after poor Alice for giving out the facts?
2 comments:
I made a records request of a commissioner. He refused and I went to the county attorney. The attorney told him he had to respond. What I got was the most sanitized record I have ever seen. According to his records he did not do squat; same for his phone records, his e-mails and his office visitor log. He did not speak, e-mail or visit anyone. What a joke. Try to prove the records, or lack thereof, were fudged. A sorry state of affairs.
You could ask for police records.
I worked for an attorney that requested records from a fatal bus accident. He never got squat without having to sue the county.
What that did was put a grandma and her child into limbo without anyone caring for them after a bus ran over the sole bread winner in the family. For over a year while the county police department and then their staff pissed around, these people couldn't collect on insurance or anything else, because that "report" took a longggg investigation.
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