Last month, the state of Florida had to fork over $7,500 of your money to lawyers for the Orlando Sentinel.
Now, normally, I like it when people give money to the Sentinel.
This, however, was a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. Not the biggest, but definitely one of the most ridiculous.
Because it was money that Gov. Ron DeSantis had to reimburse us for suing him over access to obviously public information — White House reports about what was happening with COVID in each state.
They were records created by public officials for the public.
Other states weren’t even waiting for journalists to request these reports. Ohio and Oklahoma simply posted them on the internet for everyone to see.
Why? Because that’s why they were created.
The problem for DeSantis was that Florida’s reports didn’t look so good. They showed case numbers spiking — and that the governor was ignoring some advice from the nation’s top medical minds.
So instead of facing the music, DeSantis tried to silence it.
When Sentinel health reporter Naseem Miller requested copies of the report, DeSantis’ administration refused to provide all of them. So we sued.
Some legal cases are complex. This one was not. It was a slam dunk; the legal equivalent of Shaquille O’Neal trying to score on a 4-foot Nerf goal.
At first, the state tried to claim it wasn’t intentionally hiding the reports, but that it was just so darn busy with things — like other lawsuits — that it couldn’t get around to providing the reports in a timely manner.
But, as Miller reported earlier: “When the judge pressed them for a list of other litigation, the state attorneys backtracked their statement and said they were busy monitoring the election.”
I believe the Latin legal term for the state’s excuse was Bullimus Crapimus.
After their flimsy excuses crumbled, the state’s lawyers quickly caved, handing over the reports, agreeing to promptly share future weekly dispatches and coughing up $7,500 to cover our newspaper’s legal fees.
I know we live in an age of hyper-partisan tribalism where some people will defend any action perpetrated by a member of their own party. But for the handful of Republicans who still defend everything DeSantis does, try finishing this sentence:
“I support the governor’s effort to hide public information because _______.”
Or this one:
“Giving $7,500 to Sentinel lawyers — instead of providing public information for free — was a smart financial move because _______.”
If you can finish either of those sentences with a straight face, you should go into acting.
Sentinel Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson said: “We are satisfied with the settlement and hope we don’t have to sue again for crucial public records regarding the pandemic or any other important public matter. Onward.”
I’m proud to work for an institution that had the guts and resources to fight for the public’s right to information. But it shouldn’t require that. Plus, not everyone has those resources.
Unfortunately, DeSantis’ behavior in this case reflects a troubling trend. As the South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed in its investigative piece, “Secrecy and spin: How Florida’s governor misled the public on the COVID-19 pandemic,” the state’s county-level health officials were ordered last fall to stop issuing public statements about COVID-19 until after the Nov. 3 election.
The state also withheld information about infections in schools, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes. And the governor’s former spokesman regularly took to Twitter to spread misinformation about the disease.
None of these actions reflect an administration confident in own its actions.
Not everything DeSantis has done with regard to the pandemic has been bad. In fact, some recent metrics suggest he is overseeing a perfectly average response.
On vaccine distribution, for instance, the latest CDC numbers show that Florida has administered about 41% of the vaccines it has received — a rate that’s around the national average.
We’re doing worse than Texas, Colorado and New Jersey; better than California, North Carolina and Georgia — about the same as the New York and Indiana.
Our overall per capita death and case counts are also around average — though our numbers are now spiking more than elsewhere.
Basically, if the CDC was handing out grades, DeSantis might earn a C … one that’s trending in the wrong direction and where the governor was trying to hide the report card.
And Floridians have noticed.
Several months into the pandemic, one survey found that DeSantis was the only governor in the entire country whose approval ratings had gone down.
Think about that. In almost every state in America, citizens saw their governors — Republicans and Democrats — trying their darnedest to fight the virus. And yet in one, they’ve seen a governor trying to fight to keep citizens from even hearing all the facts.
That strategy isn’t just bad policy for the citizens, it’s also bad politics for DeSantis.
Listen, I get that some people still like this governor’s red-meat take on issues and his fealty to Donald Trump. I know some cheered DeSantis’ efforts to deny Joe Biden a duly won presidency.
I’m just not sure how anyone can also cheer his efforts to deny you access to information … and to waste your money doing so.
