Ron DeSantis Won’t Stop Trying To Gut Florida’s Public Records Law
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration is once again trying to carve out broad new exemptions to the state’s celebrated government transparency law.Â
This time, lawyers for DeSantis are arguing that call logs from a high-ranking staffer’s phone aren’t public record, even though the staffer was conducting government business, because it was a private phone.
The Tampa Bay Times first reported Thursday that lawyers for the DeSantis administration argued in court this week before a Leon County judge that the governor’s office shouldn’t be compelled to turn over call logs from DeSantis’ Chief of Staff James Uthmeier’s private cellphone.
The Florida Center for Government Accountability sued the DeSantis administration in 2022 for records concerning the migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard that DeSantis organized that year using state resources. The governor’s office has turned over many records so far—and disclosed that Uthmeier and other staff used personal email addresses and phones rather than their state-issued ones—but it is currently defying a court order to release Uthmeier’s phone logs.
Public records laws are commonly interpreted at both the federal and state levels, including in Florida, to cover records created on private devices and accounts if they concern government business. For example, the 2023 edition of the Florida attorney general’s Government-in-the-Sunshine Manual states that “the mere fact that an e-mail is sent from a private e-mail account using a personal computer is not the determining factor as to whether it is a public record; it is whether the e-mail was prepared or received in connection with official agency business.”
The manual also notes that “a public official or employee’s
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