Naples City Council reverses and votes for free public records for Council members

By Gina Edwards

Naples City Desk

Naples City Council reversed course from November and voted unanimously to provide City Council members with free public records, a decision that comes after some council members voiced concerns that they were quoted public records service charges adding up to hundreds of dollars per request.

Council voted 5 to 2 to forgo sending a request for an opinion to the Attorney General’s Office. City Attorney Bob Pritt gave the opinion that providing free public records to Council members is a local policy decision for the Council based on an existing decision.

Under the city’s public records policy, the city begins “extensive use” hourly charges for any time beyond 30 minutes that city staff takes to research, review, redact and refile public records. Hourly charges have been quoted at $31 an hour and one citizen was asked to pay more than $1,400 for the right to inspect – not obtain copies – of 18 months of city government reports. The Council did not change its fee policy for members of the public.

Councilman Sam Saad made the motion to provide free public records to Council.   

Mayor John Sorey said he would support lifting the public records fees on Council members. “This has morphed into various comments about transparency and restriction of individuals getting information,” Sorey said. “The majority of public records requests are what I call commercially motivated, an attorney doing this or somebody researching a piece of property … At the same time everybody should be on notice if it gets to be something that appears to be unnecessary or extensive Council can always come back and take a look at it.”

The Council vote Wednesday comes just ahead of a Town Hall forum today organized by Watchdog City and the First Amendment Foundation in partnership with community organizations including Florida Southwestern State College, the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, the East Naples Civic Association, the League of Women Voters of Collier County, the Naples Press Club, the Naples Better Government Committee, the Collier Citizens Council and North Naples Church. Journalists and experts, including Florida First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen and this journalist, are slated to speak and take audience questions about the public records law and difficulties encountered by citizens, journalists and elected officials in getting access to public records.

Councilwoman Teresa Heitmann, who says she has been assessed $900 on a public records request said public records charges have become a real issue and that she’s concerned that special service charges are based on subjective interpretation.  

Councilman Doug Finlay was told he would have to pay $480 for public records he requested. Finlay requested back-up detail — the 121 incidents cited by city staff — to justify the purchase of a city fire boat with taxpayers’ dollars.

Finlay refused to pay the public records fees. In an interview, he said he can’t do his job as an elected official without the ability to research issues. He also said he has no way to know if the time estimates are legitimate. “I have to accept what they say,” Finlay said. “It seems like the Sunshine State isn’t so sun-shiny anymore. I hope that the courts or the Attorney General will come in and say you guys have got to open your government back up.”

During the meeting when questioned by Vice Mayor Dee Sulick, City Clerk Pat Rambosk said 10 requests, out of approximately 300 since July, have resulted in time and cost fees paid of $233.

Heitmann said the figure was misleading because she, for example, had refused to pay and get records after she was provided fee estimates.

“I said I’m not going to keep coming in and paying for records,” Heitmann said.

Heitmann said the City Clerk’s office is there to provide a service to citizens because the records are public.

“That means the manager doesn’t own them. The Mayor doesn’t own them. The attorney doesn’t own them. They belong to the people,” Heitmann said.

Naples citizen Henry Kennedy in November told Council he was provided an estimate of $5,000 for city records involving Naples Bay reports he had requested to inspect.

Contacted for an interview, Kennedy declined to comment. But a copy of his request and resulting fee estimate obtained by Naples City Desk showed he was provided an estimate by the City Natural Resources Department of $1,416, or 45 hours of city staff time at $31 per hour. He had requested to inspect – not make copies – of 18 months of Naples Bay clean-up project reports, not emails. The city’s Natural Resources Department director, for example, said he would need to spend 21 hours going through 55 electronic file folders, to locate what Kennedy was seeking. Additional staff would need to spend 24 hours of work time locating files, they said in response to Kennedy’s request.

Kennedy did not pay the $1,416 fee to inspect the records.  

“There’s an effort to censure Councilwoman Heitmann and Councilman Finlay,” Kennedy said Wednesday. “We all know this. It’s politics… We elect you to tell them what to do,” he said referring to City Manager Bill Moss and City Clerk Pat Rambosk.

Moss declined to provide an interview to Naples City Desk regarding public records requests including for time estimates by his staff and he referred questions to Rambosk. Moss also declined the opportunity to speak offered to him at a Town Hall meeting on public records fees and exemptions.

At Council Wednesday, Vice Mayor Sulick said consuming of staff time got “completely out of hand” responding to public records requests.

“We are able to find our records and get them to the public pretty quickly,” Rambosk said, noting that the Clerk’s Office hasn’t assessed any citizens for any time changes. “The issues you are referring to are for redactions of records for other departments.”

Sulick said she doesn’t see a problem. “The city has been extremely generous and it has not been a problem,” she said.

Councilwoman Linda Penniman said City Clerk Rambosk has done a phenomenal job of putting records online.

Rambosk said the city’s web site has been recognized with awards and the Clerk’s Office has worked to put more online. In an interview, she said has also instituted daily email reminders to make sure that public records requests of city departments are responded to promptly.

However, she said the city doesn’t have an indexing and searching method that’s part of a document management system. “It doesn’t mean you’re finding them faster on the outside,” she said. 

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Reporting by: Gina Edwards

Dateline: Naples, Fla., Feb. 5, 2014

Contact Gina Edwards at 239-514-1336 or by email at ginavossedwards@gmail.com