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Joe's Hit Records! HOT!: Catch the latest Florida open government news with The Florida Sunshine Review ... Open records and meetings links, resources.
Dig the new iDig!: Enjoy this iDigAnswers classic page. Then catch the new iDig Wordpress site and follow iDig on Facebook and Twitter! ... Harris gets a big scare from sidewalk driver: Public records help illustrate just how crazy these days leading to the election have become. An arrest report aids Mike Saewitz of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in this report about a driver who hit the accelerator and jumped the curb in surging toward U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris and a band of her supporters. Barry Seltzer, 46, a real estate investor, told police he was merely exercising his “political expression” in driving toward the group. "I intimidated them with my car," he told officers in an arrest report. "I did not run them down. I scared them a little." Authorities said Seltzer became annoyed because the group stood in the street and slowed traffic. The story notes Seltzer “had not been arrested in Florida before this week. Records show he lived in California and Illinois before moving to Sarasota, where he registered as a Democrat in 2002.” He is now charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. The public records handbook covers arrest reports on Page 23, criminal background checks on Page 101 and voter registration records on Page 372.
October 27, 2004 FBI, FDLE say crime down in Florida: Public crime statistics typically generate plenty of public interest. The latest federal and state crime stats obtained by Ron Word of The Associated Press indicate crime rates declined 2.3 percent in the first half of this year and 16.5 percent from 1999 to 2003. “In its report for the first six months of 2004, the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) said, overall crime decreased by about 10,000 crimes, a drop of 2.3 percent compared to last year's report. Declines were reported in forcible rape, forcible sodomy, robbery, burglary, larceny and car thefts.” Murders in Florida, however, are up to 5.3 percent from the previous year. The story also offers statistics from the latest FBI annual crime report. An interesting stat: Jacksonville led the state with 92 murders in 2003 followed by Miami with 74 and Tampa with 41.
October 26, 2004 Woman accused of taking signs: Public records often chronicle the tenor of our times, especially during an election season. A police report obtained by Ken Lewis of The Florida Times-Union fuels this brief story (see the second item in this police roundup) about a woman “accused of stealing 78 Republican Party signs in Fruit Cove on Monday and pushing a woman who confronted her about it.” St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies arrested Fabiola Armitage, 46, of Fruit Cove on charges of battery and grand theft. They found Bush/Cheney and Mel Martinez signs in the suspect's sport utility vehicle. The story says the suspect has a quadriplegic son she thinks can be helped by stem cell research. Her attorney said Armitage thought she had a right to pick up the signs, although authorities and the woman who tried to stop her obviously had a different view. The public records handbook covers arrest reports on Page 23.
October 25, 2004 Double votes taint Florida, records show: Public records-driven stories are seldom more timely or relevant than this one. The Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Roy and Beth Kassab examined voter registration records from Florida, Georgia and North Carolina to find that “more than 1,600 may have cast ballots in Florida and one of two other states in recent elections, taking advantage of an absence of safeguards to prevent illegal double voting.” The reporters found more than 68,000 instances in which voters with the same names and dates of birth had dual state registrations. They found 1,650 cases where voters cast ballots in Florida and another state in the 2000 or 2002 elections – which is illegal under federal law. The newspaper focused on North Carolina and Georgia voters because of public records access to those lists and because they field the largest populations of Florida-registered voters. The story points out that double voters have had little chance of being caught – no national central voter registration database exists. The state asked the FBI to investigate double voting after a New York Daily News story in August revealed 46,000 dual registrations in Florida and New York with at least 1,000 people double voting in past elections. The public records handbook profiles voter registration records on Page 372.
October 22, 2004 Murdered cop, 9-year mystery: Jim Schoettler of the Florida Times-Union relied heavily on a sheriff’s office cold case homicide file for this intriguing two-part series on the unsolved murder of Jacksonville police detective Lonnie Miller. The veteran officer died on May 6, 1995, while responding to a tripped alarm at a local business. “Records have now been made public that expose an investigation filled with enough twists, turns and internal turmoil to convince many it will never be solved,” the story says. Those records over a 9-year period include the full homicide reports, backgrounds and photos of suspects, crime scene photos, evidence technician reports, detectives case notes, tapes of 911 calls of that night and a suspect arrested in another slaying. The story includes links to the 911 call made during the night of Miller’s death and video taken of a man who eventually became the prime suspect. Check out the second day of the special report here. The public records handbook profiles police incident reports on Page 312 and state attorney case files on Page 328.
October 20, 2004 Contract money misused at DCF: Inspector general reports often expose serious problems at state agencies. A new report on the Department of Children and Families obtained by Carol Marbin Miller of the Miami Herald indicates DCF “misspent perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars on a contract for improving the mental health of Jacksonville residents.” Florida’s top mental health official, Deputy Secretary Celeste Putnam, resigned in the wake of the scathing report, which “showed that only about $55,614 of $568,796 paid to a Florida State University research institute last year was spent on goods and services for the 106 clients enrolled in a program designed to allow people with chronic mental illness to design their own plans for treatment.” The story says the rest of the money, including $153,280 from double-billing, went toward administrative expenses of James Bax, an FSU researcher with close ties to Putnam, and Carolyn Russell, a former DCF employee who helped draft the contract before going to work for FSU. Much of the money spent on agency clients covered goods and services that had little to do with mental health recovery, the report said. “(O)ne client, for example, spent more than $350 in taxpayers' money between October and December 2003 on such items as: a trip to a bowling alley, $17.39; a visit to a tan, hair and nail salon, $9.96; ceramics, $35; crafts, $98.54; and a trip to Wal-Mart, $105.92.” The story also includes a link to the 10-page report on PDF. The public records handbook profiles inspector general reports on Page 251.
October 19, 2004 Local hospitals, nursing homes hit with thousands in fines: Regulatory records of licensed health facilities are among Florida’s most relevant public documents for consumers. Such records obtained by Phil Galewitz of the Palm Peach Post show the state “has levied nearly 200 fines in the past two years against about 100 Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast health care centers and hospitals for violating quality of care and patient safety regulations.” The story notes the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration doesn't announce the fines, preferring to keep a low profile on its enforcement actions. “Agency records recently obtained by The Palm Beach Post may explain why state officials don't like to tout the monetary penalties: One in five of the fines were never collected. And in nearly half the cases, the fine was reduced, often by as much as 75 percent.” Fines ranged from $250 for paperwork errors at one adult family care home to a suspected record $323,800 for repeated infection-control problems at a local medical center. The public records handbook profiles Florida Agency for Health Care Administration licensing and regulatory records on Page 156.
October 18, 2004 Bush urged to “pull the plug” on voter purge: E-mail records can be some of the most revealing public records about the inner workings of government. An e-mail written by a state computer expert and obtained by Chris Davis and Matthew Doig of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune indicates Gov. Jeb Bush knew in May serious problems existed with a database that would determine which voters would be taken off the rolls. The story says Bush was advised to "pull the plug" on the entire project but refused the request and told the Department of State to proceed with the purge of nearly 48,000 voters. The state abandoned the effort to purge voters on the list two months later after the press exposed flaws in the list. Bush disputed the Herald-Tribune story that said he overruled concerns about the felons list. The public records handbook profiles e-mail records on Page 140.
October 15, 2004 Water board grants Ava Marie permit: Environmental permits are important public records for tracking development in Florida. Eric Staats of the Naples Daily News draws upon area water management district records for this storyon district approvals for the first phase of a Catholic university and new town planned for farm fields south of Immokalee. “Water Management District permit tracking documents show that the permit has been under review for more than a year and that reviewers asked three times for more information about the project.” The story says plans show 6,000 students eventually could attend Ave Maria University, and some 11,000 residences could be built in the town. Other town features outlined in plans: offices, retail space, hotel rooms, medical facilities, a private and a public school. The public records handbook covers water management district permitting and regulation records on Page 375.
October 12, 2004 “Escort” ad leads to arrest of 22 men: Arrest records reviewed by Tia Mitchell of The Florida Times-Union fuel this story about 22 men nabbed in Jacksonville during an undercover escort service sting targeting people soliciting prostitutes. “Among those arrested were a former police lieutenant, the head basketball coach at Edward Waters College, a real estate broker trying to bring a Wal-Mart Supercenter to Philips Highway and the vice chairman of The Justice Coalition board.” Those charged responded to a classified ad in the Times-Union purchased by police in the Dating and Services section. The names of two fictitious women, "Cherokee" and "Amanda," were advertised, as well as a phone number for each.
Authorities said men called the numbers and arranged to meet with an escort, who was actually a female police decoy. A motel near the Jacksonville International Airport donated rooms for the officer to use. Those who offered money for sex were arrested. The public records handbook profiles arrest reports on Page 23.
October 11, 2004 Inspections at crux of building fiasco: School district records analyzed by Collins Conner and Barbara Behrendt of the St. Petersburg Times showed “people responsible for documenting inspections, doing inspections and dogging missed inspections failed to do their jobs” regarding a botched school construction project in Homosassa. The Times’ review of the records uncovered several disturbing revelations, including how the district's facilities office was supposed to document all inspections and didn't. “Many district records are contradictory, inaccurate or missing altogether,” the story says. The district’s designated eyes and ears on the job site “set up a system for logging inspections, but didn't make sure the inspectors used it.” The end result is a mess. “…Homosassa Elementary, a long-neglected school with the greatest number of low-income students in the district, got two new buildings so riddled with defects and a renovation so behind schedule that the children had to be farmed out to Crystal River campuses while repairs take place.” Various state officials are investigating, and a blue-ribbon citizens panel is trying to sort out who is to blame for the $4 million fiasco. The public records handbook covers bids and contracts records on Page 33.
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