IRE found open record laws can prevent corruption– but what about Florida? (Photo by Steven Martin)
By Ashley Lopez
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
New research from Investigative Reporters and Editors found that open record laws can benefit a country by addressing and preventing corruption. Florida, however, presents an interesting case study of how broad public information laws haven’t necessarily meant less corruption.
By comparing indices on corruption, human development, and years of having an FOI law across 168 countries, I found support to the assumption that having an FOI law leads to lower levels of perceived corruption.
Also, countries with older FOI laws tend to have higher levels of human development than countries with younger FOI laws or countries without them.
An intriguing link, however, is between ratings of FOI law effectiveness and the perceived level of corruption in a country.
The Center for Law and Democracy rates the implementation of right to information laws across countries based on seven categories: right of access, scope, requesting procedures, exceptions and refusals, appeals, sanctions and protections, and promotional measures. I compared their ratings with corruption ratings from Transparency International.
While the Sunshine State does boast some robust open record laws, it also manages to top out lists for corruption.
Ethics watchdog Integrity Florida found a host of improvements that need to be made in order to fix many of the state’s ethics problem and susceptibility to corruption. Some of these suggestions became law this year.
However, the state isn’t ranking as bad as many others when it comes to laws and institutions that hold public officials accountable. In fact, Florida was graded a C- in the State Integrity Investigation conducted a few years ago. The Sunshine State also ranked 18th in the country for accountability.
But a closer look reveals why perhaps the state’s sunshine laws aren’t getting a handle on the state’s corruption problems.
According to the same State Integrity Investigation, “In law, citizens have a right of access to government information and basic government records… the right of appeal if access to a basic government record is denied… and there is an established institutional mechanism through which citizens can request government records.”
However, Florida’s main problem is that there is no “agency or entity that monitors the application of access to information laws and regulations,” the investigation found:
No state agency monitors compliance by state or local officials or by the judiciary. However, the governor’s Office of Open Government and the Florida Attorney General’s Office provide guidance to the public.
Here is some of the sourcing:
The Office of Open Government is authorized under Executive Order 11-03, but not in state statutes.
The order states, in part: “The Office (of Open Government) will (1) facilitate Floridians’ right to know and have access to information with which they can hold government accountable, (2) establish and maintain a website providing ready access to accountability information, (3) continue to assure full and expeditious compliance with Florida’s open government public records laws, and (4) provide training to all executive agencies under my purview on transparency and accountability. The Office will also have primary responsibility for ensuring that the Office of the Governor complies with public records requests in an expeditious manner.”
Florida did, however, make some strides this year in terms of writing rules that would prevent corruption in the future.
Before this year, Florida had no safeguards in place to prevent a state legislator from writing legislation that could benefit them personally. There had also been no rules about legislators lobbying state agencies immediately after leaving public office.