From The February 1999 Quaterly Report by the

The Brechner Center for Freedom of Information PO Box 118400 3208 Weimer Hall University of Florida Gainesville, FL 32611-8400 Phone: (352) 392-2273 Fax: (352) 392-9173

Newspapers frustrated by Jeb Bush transition team by Tom O'Hara The holiday season wasn't the easiest time for six large Florida newspapers to agree to jointly sue the governor-elect. But a principle was at stake and we all were frustrated by the Jeb Bush transition team.

Bush refused since election day to concede that documents collected or generated by the transition staff were public records. Both The Palm Beach Post and the Tampa Tribune were on the verge of suing Bush in November and then backed off. But the pattern continued and by Dec. 28, attorneys for Holland & Knight had drafted a 20-page complaint on behalf of The Post, the Tribune, The Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, The Orlando Sentinel and The Florida Times-Union.

The threat of a lawsuit apparently caught attention. In a Dec. 30 letter to David Bralow of Holland & Knight, Bush's transition attorney, Roberto Martinez, said Bush would provide documents sought by the papers, but never acknowledged they were public records. The battle of legal semantics continued into New Year's Eve. Eventually Martinez agreed that transition records "will be treated as public records within the meaning of Public Records Act, Ch. 119."

With that language agreed to in writing, the papers decided not to sue. The concession dislodged informative documents about people vying for jobs in the Bush administration and preserved all the material generated and collected by the transition team. Finally, we've established some precedent for the next governor-elect. As is often the case, the critical character in this story is not an editor or lawyer, but a reporter -- Shirish Date of the Post Tallahassee bureau.

Shirish's frustrations began soon after he presented the Bush staff with a records request on Nov. 9. He asked for copies of the transition budget, daily and weekly schedules for transition officials, and all communication between applicants for administration jobs and the transition team. The Bush team said it was not a public agency and would provide some documents only in the spirit of openness, not because it had to.

That truce lasted about a month, until Shirish learned that prospective appointees were asked to complete a questionnaire. On Dec. 10, Shirish asked for all returned copies of the questionnaires -- a request that was ignored for two weeks. Finally, the transition team said it would supply questionnaires only for people who had already been named to jobs, but not those whose names hadn’t been announced or had been rejected.

The easy option in late December was to ignore it. But Shirish knew Bush was wrong and pestered me to do something about it. Within a day, Doug Clifton of The Herald, Ellen Soeteber of the Sun-Sentinel, Larry Fletcher of The Tribune and editors in Orlando and Jacksonville agreed to chip in and challenge Bush.

In arguing that public records law apply to a governor-elect, our attorneys noted that the Bush team: was allocated more than $2 million in taxpayers money to operate the transition; occupied state offices; conducted state business, particularly the hiring of dozens of important state employees; and established a web site through the state Department of Management Services to solicit ideas from citizens.

Are we facing four years of legal battles to keep state government operating in the open? Cory Tilley, Bush's director of communications, assured me in a Jan. 8 phone conversation that we need not worry. He attributed the transition troubles to a difference of opinion about what the law requires. And he called an illegally closed meeting Bush conducted Jan. 6 a simple oversight by the new administration. "I think the media will be very pleased about how open we're going to be,'' Tilley said. I hope so. But I would urge the state's newspaper editors to budget extra cash for legal fees in 1999.

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