The attack on your right to know by the Florida Legislature continues.
The Florida House — including our District 10 Representative Chuck Brannan — passed a bill — House Bill 35 — Thursday that would allow local governments to remove public notices from hundreds of legal newspapers like the Lake City Reporter and instead place them on a website possibly run by government and with no independent checks and balances to guarantee proper public notice.
The bill is bad legislation. It’s bad for the public, for you, the taxpayers. You have a right to know what your government, your elected officials are doing, always. You deserve to know how and when your tax dollars are being spent or if new taxes, codes, land-use changes or other government fees are coming your way.
In order to speak your mind and express your opinions or protest government mandates that affect your livelihood, you first must know about the public meeting.
Instead of placing public notices where the public would most likely notice them, in their independent, local newspaper and free newspaper website, this bill would allow governments to bury them on their own websites. This means they could be scattered on each entity’s website, so a concerned citizen would have to bounce around to find the information they need.
All public notices in Florida already are available for free, online, in a distinct position on the home page of all legal newspapers in Florida. The button links directly to www.floridapublicnotices.com. All public notices in the state are available to search in one place. Legal newspapers, such as this one, also provide a notarized legal affidavit as proof of publication. There is a permanent record the transaction was properly and legally noticed for the public.
In Columbia, Suwannee and Hamilton counties, dependable, broadband internet isn’t available everywhere. This is part of an extra hurdle the bill requires of local governing bodies in “fiscally-constrained” — poor, rural — counties such as those in North Florida. A public hearing must be held to determine if the change is in the public’s best interest.
That’s simple: it’s not.
Neither are the amendments already proposed to its Senate counterpart — SB 402 — which is being heard Monday by the Florida Senate’s Judiciary Committee. Our Dist. 5 State Sen. Jennifer Bradley sits on this committee.
The amendments have ranged from placing control of a statewide public notice website in the hands of the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers — allowing the clerks association to charge fees to other government entities to place ads on the site — to further expanding the governing bodies’ options on where to post their notices, making them harder for the public to find. There is nothing wrong with the current private-sector system that offers the content online, unabridged and easily accessible to the public. And, it’s operated by statutory guidelines by the independent Florida Press Association.
Freedom is under attack. This legislation is vindictive at its origin. It is filed by a Central Florida legislator with an ax to grind against his local newspaper. The real loser, now and forever, would be citizens who deserve a right to know what their government is doing. If this legislation becomes law, this right is in serious jeopardy.