Guest Speaker Adria Gonzalez Harper

Adria Gonzalez Harper visited us today from the First Amendment Foundation to discuss public records in the state of Florida. The First Amendment Foundation is a not for profit organization that helps to oversee that the Sunshine Law, which is imposed in the State of Florida, is adhered to by all the various forms of government. The Sunshine Law is to ensure that the citizens of Florida have the opportunity to know what our government is doing and why they are doing it. Both the First Amendment Foundation and The Office of Open Government were established just for the purpose of overseeing that the citizens of Florida were able to do what the legally have the right to do. While Adria gave us a ton of quality information the main thing she established in my mind was that we have the right to request almost anything that is part of the public record. In addition to that she also left me thinking that it will not always be easy to obtain the documentation I am looking for. The key there is that I can only request documents and no information when I go to make my requests. In fact they also will not compile lists or reports for the requesting party; all they have to do is provide the public record and nothing more. I also found it very interesting that not only can a member of the public attend meeting but they also have the right to film it or tape record it as long as he or she is not creating a disturbance. That being said the most discouraging part of her presentation was the fact that a lot of agencies try to use the threat of charging a person for records as a way to get them to go away and not request the records they need. I find this practice to be both unethical and discouraging and you would really hope that with all the taxes people pay they would be treated more equally. Now she did mention sometimes people come in and request some outlandish things and because of cases like this every agency should have to have policies on file that tell exactly how much they are going to charge and what exactly they are going to charge for. In my humble opinion every time someone asks for public records from anywhere they should be handled a policy of exactly how this entire process is going to handled. To wrap up my thoughts I was very impressed with the wealth of information she had right at the tip of her tongue and she very rarely had to even think about the facts she was providing. To be an effective and informative speaker you must have two things; love for the topic at hand and a great deal of knowledge on the subject and she had both.