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Joe's Hit Records
September 30, 2003  Lawmakers skirt rule for cash: Gary Fineout of the New York Times Regional Newspapers reviewed records on “committees of continuous existence” at the Florida Secretary of State’s Office to help show “how many top Florida lawmakers have turned a campaign finance loophole into a cash machine.” The story says more than $2.8 million has gone into committee accounts in the last four years, with funds sometimes used on questionable expenses. “The money is usually handed back out to candidates for office, or it is used to reimburse expenses largely incurred by the state legislators themselves. But unlike campaign accounts for candidates, there is no limit on the amount of money that one person can give to these committees. And more importantly, state lawmakers don't have to reveal the source of these donors under state election laws.” For another look at this issue, see the report (“Lawmakers secretly raise big bucks”) by Steve Bousquet of the St. Petersburg Times. The public records handbook addresses records on committees of continuous existence and other types of political committees in Florida starting on Page 88.
September 29, 2003 Company lacking expertise got work in schools: What’s missing in public records is sometimes more important than what is found on public records. The Miami Herald’s ongoing series on problems in Miami-Dade County schools continues with Debbie Cenziper’s look at a company paid to investigate widespread water leaks in the school system despite questionable qualifications. The company’s staff included not a single licensed architect, engineer, testing expert and environmental specialist. The company doesn’t even have a listed phone number, the story says. “The case shows how a well-connected company – without the staff and expertise of a more established firm – can land lucrative School Board work even at a time when students and teachers languish in water-soaked, outdated and unsafe classrooms.” The company received $90,000 for the water leaks work (although some sources for the story probably would not use that term) and has raked in more than $5 million in school system projects overall. Public documents used in this story include corporation records, payment records, school board voting records, campaign contribution records and e-mails. The public records handbook covers corporation records on Page 96, government payment records on Page 72, voting records of public officials on Page 284, campaign contributions on Page 60 and e-mails on Page 140.
September 27, 2003 Officer cited for breaking rules too often: Internal affairs police records and personnel records help Jim Schoettler of The Florida Times-Union depict the triumphs and troubles of a Jacksonville police officer who seems to be “good cop, bad cop” rolled into one. On one hand, the officer has a personnel file filled with kudos for being an aggressive crime-fighter and team player. The story says crime victims praised her compassion and courtesy, and she once saved a woman from jumping off a 19th-story railing. On the other hand, she has 26 in-house and citizen complaints against her – the most of any Jacksonville police officer since she started with the force in 1996. The story says 20 of the cases have been upheld, ranging from traffic crashes and tardiness to unbecoming conduct and rudeness. She now faces a three-day suspension next month in part for “the rare departmental charge of having repeated infractions on her record,” the story says. For more on police internal affairs investigation records, see Page 310 of the public records handbook. Government employee personnel records are covered on Page 239.
September 26, 2003 Web site lists convicted doctor in good standing: Just because information comes from public records resources doesn’t always mean it is accurate. Antigone Barton of The Palm Beach Post reports the state Department of Health’s physicians profiles on the Web includes a doctor listed with a spotless record despite his manslaughter conviction. Dr. George Kubski was convicted in January of causing the death of one of his patients by “grossly overprescribing medication.” However, the state’s database continues to show him in good standing. His hospital privileges and even his own home address (which is now the county jail) are wrong as well on the site. How could this happen? See the story for more details. An agency spokesman said those who see wrong information on the site should notify the department. But a hospital that asked the state over the summer to remove information on the site indicating Kubski has hospital privileges is still waiting for the info to be yanked. And the detective who arrested the doctor a year ago can’t believe the department hasn’t changed the Web site listing. Consumers can get the latest disciplinary information on doctors in Florida by calling the DOH at (850) 488-0595. Find out more about how to research doctors and their track records starting on Page 194 of the public records handbook.
September 25, 2003 Inquiry found “runner” was used to seek clients: Records from a Florida Bar investigation examined by James L. Rosica of The Tallahassee Democrat indicate a judge found Tallahassee attorney David Barrett guilty of violating seven of The Florida Bar's professional conduct rules. The story says the Bar is recommending Barrett be disbarred based on a 4-year investigation that concludes “Barrett knew of and approved the use of a ‘runner’ by his then-law partner to drum up business from accident victims.” Transcripts show Barrett denies the allegations, saying he never told the partner to solicit clients and was not aware that he was doing so. The Florida Bar oversees people who practice law in Florida but the Supreme Court ultimately takes disciplinary actions against them. The public records handbook explains the lawyer disciplinary process and the records surrounding it starting on Page 259.
September 23, 2003 Bridge guard rail rating: zero: Bridge inspection reports from the state Department of Transportation raise concerns about the safety of the Shands Bridge in St. Johns County in this story by Bryan Noonan of the St. Augustine Record. The newspaper reviewed records on the bridge’s structural integrity following the death last week of a 39-year-old woman who plunged over a railing. It was the bridge’s second bridge fatality since June. The records show the aluminum railing that gave way received the lowest rating possible from the DOT in its last bridge inspection report. Meanwhile, DOT statistics show traffic crossing the bridge has grown from 1,814 vehicles a day in 1973 to 11,000 per day in 2002. For more on DOT bridge inspection reports, see Page 52 of the public records handbook.
September 19, 2003 Phosphate victories costly for Charlotte: Jamie Manfuso of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune details how victory in opposing phosphate mining permits is taking a financial toll on Charlotte County government. Budget records show Charlotte has spent more than $4 million on mining permit challenges, lobbying efforts and negotiations. At least $4.2 million more could be required to keep the fight going through September 2005. The story says the “amount of paperwork and preparation for the cases is stunning.” In one case, the firm and its experts hired by the county sifted through 180,000 documents received from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection through a public records request. “For 14 days this summer, more than 10 people sifted through an IMC Phosphates warehouse to gather information on mining reclamation sites. The tens of thousands of documents they copied are archived on 21 compact disks …,” the story says. The public records handbook profiles budgets on Page 53, expenditure records of state and local governments on Page 72, legislative files of local governments on Page 263, and DEP permit and regulation files starting on Page 179.
September 18, 2003 Many public workers took gifts, police say:Arrest reports and purchasing records play important roles in this story by Henry Pierson Curtis of the Orlando Sentinel about one of the most widespread public corruption cases the state has ever seen. More than 150 state, city and county workers stand to lose their jobs because they took kickbacks “in return for buying cleaning products with silly names such as S.O.B. – Slide Over Baby – at 10 times the cost of comparable products.” Purchasing records showed kickbacks in the form of gift certificates to The Home Depot, Victoria's Secret and other national chains amounted to 10 percent of each order. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Officials said “at least 2,000 and as many as 5,000 public employees in 48 states accepted kickbacks from Stone Cold Chemicals, a cleaning supply house in Ponce Inlet that targeted blue-collar workers allowed to order their own supplies.” Nine Stone Cold employees face charges ranging from racketeering to illegal marketing. The company earned $4 million last year with workers earning up to $100,000 a year on 35 percent commissions. Florida public officials are subject to state disclosure laws that require gifts to be reported. Those reports are public records.
The public records handbook profiles arrest reports on Page 23, purchasing records on Page 101 and disclosures of public officials on Page 121.
September 17, 2003 DCF reform leaves goals unachieved: Public records play a key role in helping the public determine the effectiveness of state agencies. Records from the state’s Department of Children and Families obtained by Mark Hollis and Shana Gruskin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel indicate mixed results for a new agency leader appointed a year ago to reform the troubled agencies. The story says the department has intensified its focus on missing children and is trying to overhaul foster care, reduce case backlogs and pay workers more to keep them from leaving DCF. However, records show many of the goals set by the governor for reform haven’t been met. For instance, more than 400 children in the foster care system remain missing and children are lingering in the foster care system almost as long as before new agency head Jerry Regier started. But Regier says he’s still optimistic about reaching the goals he set for the agency.
September 16, 2003 Bogus sick leave a cause for
alarm: Public records can help show taxpayers how government spends their money in dubious ways. Steve Patterson of The Florida Times-Union reviewed thousands of firefighter sick leave records to report how Jacksonville taxpayers have spent as much as $2.2 million during the last three years on a hooky problem bosses knew about but didn't stop. Sick calls per day by firefighters regularly doubles Friday to Sunday and especially go up during college football season. One of the big weekends for sick calls came last October when Florida's Gator football team hosted Auburn. Sixty workers called in sick that weekend. The city is on pace this year to spend $650,000 on overtime to fill weekend vacancies that are above the everyday sick count. The public records handbook profiles government personnel records on Page 239.
September 15, 2003 Americans feared attacks in Arabia: Obtaining public information through Florida’s public records laws is typically much easier and faster than getting information through the federal Freedom of Information Act. Susan Taylor Martin of the St. Petersburg Times waited more than a year to receive federal documents from the State Department for this recent story about Americans living in Saudi Arabia and their reactions in 2001 to bombings in that country. The story says diplomatic dispatches “suggest a far greater level of post-9/11 fear among Americans in the kingdom than has been publicly acknowledged. They also paint a rosier picture of Saudi cooperation after Sept. 11 than that portrayed by critics of the secretive Saudi regime.” A cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to the State Department said reports of a second Saudi bombing, coupled with the Afghanistan bombing campaign, had “pushed some American citizens into near hysteria.” The public records handbook has answers to questions on how Florida's public records laws work starting on Page 1.
September 14, 2003 Lobbyists give lawmakers far more than '2 cents' worth': Registered lobbyists with the state file spending reports showing the source of the money and where the funds were directed. Jim Saunders of the Daytona Beach News-Journal used the records to show lobbyists spent more than $6.1 million during the first half of this year, or more than double what they spent the year before. The skyrocketing spending resulted because of big-ticket issues (medical malpractice, Everglades, phone rates and more) before state lawmakers and due to four special sessions. The story includes a “Meet the Big Spenders” list of lobbyist groups that spent the most money. At the top of the list: Floridians for Patient Protection, which spent $1.9 million in lobbying for trial lawyers and malpractice victims. This is must reading for anyone who follows state politics and efforts to influence state lawmakers. The public records handbook explains lobbyist registration and expenditure reports along with how to obtain them on Page 271.
September 12, 2003 Workers’ private e-mail is just that: The ability of Florida taxpayers to know how their state and local public officials are using their time and government computers on the job just took a hit. Jennifer Farrell of the St. Petersburg Times reports the Florida Supreme Court ruled public employees do not have to turn over private e-mail to the public, even when using government computers at work. The newspaper had sued the city of Clearwater to obtain e-mails of two city employees who sent and received messages about a private business in which they had invested. The city let the employees decide which e-mails should be made public. Notes the story: “In an era when business increasingly is conducted electronically, critics worry the ruling erases an important layer of public oversight, leaving government employees to police themselves and taxpayers forced to trust the judgment of those workers.” Clearwater officials allow personal use of city computers but don’t encourage it, the story says. The public records handbook covers e-mail records on Page 140. Civil lawsuit case files are reviewed on Page 82.
September 11, 2003 Fugitive's prosthetic leg gives him away: Public records power works in many constructive ways. In this case, it helps bring the Florida Highway Patrol’s most wanted fugitive to justice. Michael Ko and Ian Ith of the Seattle Times report that Washington state authorities nabbed Walter Norman Rhodes after a Florida state trooper picked up his trail using public records. Rhodes had disappeared in 1994 with his wife while on parole. He was initially sentenced to 18 years for his role in the shooting deaths of two law enforcement officers in Broward County. Authorities later found new evidence suggesting Rhodes had actually been the gunman. “The case had gone cold when, two weeks ago, Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Paul Henry, an identity-theft specialist, saw Walter Rhodes' name on the Florida Highway Patrol Web site and, on a whim, ran it through some public records databases.” One lead led to another, and a driver’s license application from Washington state nailed the identity by confirming a man by a different name who fit Rhodes' description had an artificial left leg just like Rhodes. Operating on a tip from Florida, deputies in a north-central Washington town arrested Rhodes and his wife. An Associated Press story provides more details on this case and the arrests. The public records handbook profiles Florida’s most wanted fugitives list on Page 215.
September 10, 2003 Examiner to turn over records: The public isn’t alone in asking for public records. Financial records sought by county commissioners from the medical examiner’s office in Lee County are at issue in this story by Lee Melsek of The Fort Myers News-Press. The county medical examiner had hesitated at turning over five years of budget records to the county circuit court clerk’s office for an audit. The ME’s $1 million budget is funded by taxpayers. Prior to the official’s change of heart, county commissioners had voted to send a delegation of county officials to explain the Florida’s public records law to the ME. The public records handbook explores budget records on Page 53.
September 9, 2003 DCF lacks accountability in elder abuse cases: Some confidentiality laws make less sense than others. This story as part of a three-day series on elder abuse in Florida by Alisa LaPolt of Gannett News Service shows how confidentiality laws make it hard to determine how well a state agency charged with protecting Florida’s seniors does its job. The Florida Department of Children and Families each year “shelves thousands of reports of elder abuse and neglect, stamping them ‘unfounded’ or outside the agency’s jurisdiction. But, even when evidence shows those cases should never have been closed or the victim died, the files remain sealed,” the story says. But an internal agency report demanded by a state lawmaker “showed district caseworkers were just as likely to turn away vulnerable elders as opposed to helping them.” In the West Palm Beach district, for instance, the department wrongfully closed 63 of 127 cases reviewed because the department alleged the person could take care of himself. In the second day of the series,
LaPolt reports that Florida lawmakers devised a new state law this year requiring police departments and sheriff's offices to help the DCF investigate elder abuse cases similar to the way they assist already on child abuse. Nearly all of the state’s 340 law enforcement agencies have forged agreements with DCF district offices ahead of the upcoming March deadline. The rate of DCF verifications on elder abuse cases doubles and even triples in some instances when local law enforcement agencies are involved, the story says. This series on the state’s elder oversight system wraps up on Wednesday. Records used for these reports include state files, audits and police reports. The public records handbook audits by the Florida Auditor General’s Office on Page 162 while reviews by inspector general offices are covered on Page 251. Police offense and incident reports are explained on Page 312, and how to track bills in the Florida Legislature is outlined on Page 218.
September 8, 2003 Horne lobbied for 2 schools while senator: Financial records and memos from the Duval County school system and the state attorney’s office play an important role in this story by S.V. Date of the Palm Beach Post raising ethical questions about lobbying by State Education Secretary Jim Horne's former accounting firm. The firm performed annual "independent" audits for two troubled charter schools while simultaneously lobbying on their behalf back when Horne was a state senator. “No law prohibits a state senator … from lobbying a school board for money. However, the world of accounting has long recognized the potential problems of an auditor having other business relationships with a client,” the story says. A state rule in place at the time between 1999 and 2001 – when Horne's firm was working for the schools – prohibited an accounting firm that is performing an independent audit from taking on duties that would lead "a reasonable observer" to question the firm's independence, the story says. An outside auditor hired by the school system called the firm’s relationship to the schools a "a conflict of interest" and said a $23,976 school payment to the firm for consultation on an appeal to the state Cabinet for the school was in particular "very suspect." Horne told the newspaper he knew nothing of that payment. The public records handbook profiles state attorney case files on Page 328.
September 7, 2003 Radioactive water flowed to thousands of homes: Scott Streater of the Pensacola News Journal reviewed various public records in reporting that “thousands of people in Pensacola and Gulf Breeze drank water contaminated with high levels of radioactive material for more than four years.” The story says people drank the contaminated water as recently as three years ago and that a Superfund hazardous waste site in central Pensacola might be the source of the contamination. “A review of more than 50,000 pages of public documents reveals that for at least 54 months, between February 1996 and September 2000, more than 10,000 residents in Pensacola and Gulf Breeze were drinking water polluted with radium 226/228 at levels considered unsafe by the federal government,” the story says. The story also says various public records – including e-mails, court records and memos – show that two Escambia County Utilities Authority administrators knew residents were drinking high concentrations of chemicals linked to bone and nasal cancers. However, the story says, “the administrators resisted attempts by state regulators to force ECUA to take immediate corrective action, which the administrators said would cost the utility millions of dollars,” and they also worked to delay notifying the public. The water supplied by the utility authority today meets federal and state standards. Environmental records profiled in the public records handbook include Florida Department of Environmental Protection permit and regulation files on Page 179 and water management district permitting and regulation files on Page 375. E-mails are covered on Page 140 and civil lawsuit records on Page 82.
September 5, 2003 Translators help schools communicate with growing immigrant population: Public school systems keep tons of interesting statistics. Public information from the Collier County school system helps Ray Parker of The Naples Daily News report how translators aid schools in communicating with immigrant students and their families. “The school system has two professional translators — one for Spanish and the other for Haitian Creole — to interpret printed material, such as report cards and school announcements.” Collier County now has more than 6,000 students whose primary language is not English. There are 117 bilingual tutors in county classrooms with 93 speaking Spanish, 22 Haitian Creole; 1 Portuguese; and 1 Canjoval, an Indian dialect from Guatemala, the story says. The story leads with an anecdote about a school letter to home and how communications can go awry when translating from one language to another. The public records handbook explores some of the many school statistics available starting on Page 177.
September 4, 2003 Officials: Cuban documents show dissidents received no justice: Cuban court records become Florida public records through a new Florida State University Web site. John Pain of The Associated Press reports the site features hundreds of pages of sentencing documents involving the 75 Cuban dissidents convicted in the Fidel Castro crackdown on opposition earlier this year. The dissidents, which included journalists, received anywhere from six to 28 years in prison as none of the trials lasted more than a day. The story says the university's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights worked with the U.S. Interests Section in Havana to get the documents. Terry Coonan, the center’s director, told the AP the Web site’s purpose is to draw attention to Cuba’s "very, very severe and we think draconian human rights abuses" and to invite people to advocacy. The site includes original documents and translations.
September 3, 2003 Power play: City mediation records obtained by Jim Stratton of the Orlando Sentinel reveal behind-the-scenes maneuvering seldom visible to the public in this story about the high stakes surrounding who will control the power lines across parts of Central Florida. An e-mail written by a Progress Energy manager three years ago proposed introducing controversial issues in a Winter Park election to divert attention from the power company’s chronic power outages. "Identify other important issues that will captivate the electorate." Finding "other controversial issues … will help us." The e-mails and hundreds of other once-confidential documents dating from the early 1990s provide “a glimpse at how a big company mixes persuasion and political muscle to keep a grip on business” in Central Florida. The story says the ”documents cover everything from broad policy positions to the way buyout attempts should be described – ‘bureaucratic boondoggle’ and ‘government takeover’ are the recommended terms. Executives are told to repeat key messages while sidestepping thorny questions. One memo suggests ‘lobbing a new factual grenade’ every week to keep opponents off balance.” The story comes as another upcoming election in Winter Park weighs heavily on the company’s business interests in the area.
September 2, 2003 Florida farmhands reap a harvest of poverty, pain and exploitation: Ronnie Greene of the Miami Herald used a variety of federal and state records for a fascinating three-part “Fields of Despair” series on the exploitation of Florida farm workers in North Florida. The first-day lead story says federal investigators are examining the practices of farm labor contractors who recruited workers from homeless shelters, soup kitchens and parks in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa. “What they didn't know: They would live in slum housing, work long hours for scant pay, and, in several cases, have to pay back $1 of interest for most every $1 loaned to them to buy food – including the $15 that first lured them into the van. Poor, isolated, without transportation, these men said they became slaves to the boss and their debts.” The second-day lead story titled “Brutal farm labor bosses punished, but not growers who hire them” includes the use of federal court records, state corporation records and property appraiser records. The public records handbook covers corporation records on Page 96 and property appraiser records on Page 322.
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