Private Citizens as for Public Records
People other than journalists, lawyers and private detectives use public records. But often the records aren't easy to get.

People who use public records all the time are often considered pests by government employees, and sometimes the officials strike back in any way they can.

In tiny Welaka, self-appointed "citizen advocate" Bob Ford filed so many records requests and legal challenges that the mayor resorted to featuring Ford and his wife, Pat, in the town's monthly newsletter that gets delivered with the water bill.

The 1997 letter, authorized by Mayor Gordon Sands, blamed Ford for much of the legal bill that had jumped to $30,000 a year for this town of 600 people in rural Putnam County.

"The Fords were the Town's biggest legal liability during April 1996 through April 1997," the newsletter said. "The taxpayers can ill afford the Fords."

The Fords are among a small group of Welaka residents who have filed more than a dozen ethics and public records complaints against Sands and other city officials.

People like Ford sit through endless government meetings in commission chambers and city offices all over the state. Often, government officials see these people as pests, worthy of sneers and snickers, not respect for their activism in government.

Once, a town employee got so angry with Ford, who records all of his conversations with city officials, that the clerk smashed his tape recorder on a table. The town had to buy him a new one.

Journalists, lawyers and activists may use public records more frequently than most, but regular citizens have found access to public information invaluable, too.

Public records can tell you if a prospective nanny has a poor driving record, if your home is valued properly compared with your neighbors' and which school you may want to send your child to.

Some citizens ask for public records for a single purpose -- to check on an incident at their child's school or to prove to an insurance company they weren't at fault in an accident.

Those records should be easy to get. But often they aren't.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist said a citizen's ability to sift through public records and attend government meetings is one of the most important and fundamental rights.

"The people's access to their government is extremely important: It's the people's government," Crist said. "It's not like (records are) something that should be hidden from them."

Sands, who said Ford's "extreme activism is a good thing in the end," stands by his decision to outline the city's legal expenses caused by the Fords in the town newsletter.

"It's just information," Sands said. "People want to know where their tax money is being spent."

Dave Miner regularly scours public records to make sure the Manatee County School Board is operating truthfully and effectively.

Property records

Convinced he pays a higher property tax rate than his Bradford County neighbors, O.J. Stores turned to public records in 1999 for proof.

He says the records aren't coming easily.

"You talk about nightmares, man, I've got them," Stores said. "It's a disgrace."

In person, Stores pulled property maps. On the Internet, he scoured property tax filings for evidence that some paid less than others for comparable properties.

Key to his case, Stores said, was a review of all of Bradford County's building permits from 1999 to 2002. He wanted them on computer disk, which appeared to be a reasonable request since the records are kept on a computer.

But Bradford County Building Official Wilson Whidden said Stores would have to pay $1,400 to access those records because the county had switched to a new computer program. The $1,400, Whidden said, was needed for a computer programmer to retrieve the information.

Stores spent $1,000 on a lawyer instead, and in July 2003 paid $45 for a disk that had the building records on it.

Watching schools

A Manatee County parent of an 11th-grader and head of a regional parent advisory council, Dave Miner regularly scours public records to make sure the School Board is operating truthfully and effectively.

A bookshelf covering most of one wall in his sparse law office is stacked floor-to-ceiling with documents he has collected over the years.

"Compliance with the Sunshine Law, to me, is a root issue of having a responsible government -- everything else is almost secondary," Miner said.

Miner uses the Internet to cull School Board agendas and minutes for Manatee High's school advisory council.

At least a dozen times in the past year he's made public records requests for things such as the projections for costs on lengthening the school year to see if they are realistic, or how much architects of new schools are being paid.

John Hamner lauded Miner's volunteer work in a Herald-Tribune column late last year.

"He's a constant monitor of all aspects of the schools here," Hamner wrote.

But Miner's requests aren't always greeted with open arms. When he gets up to speak at School Board meetings now, district employees can be seen rolling their eyes.

The district once created a tracking system to keep tabs on how much time officials spent on Miner's public records requests.

"We're not tracking his requests anymore because his requests have become a great deal fewer," said Marianne Lorentzen, a spokeswoman for Manatee schools.

Miner vows to continue keeping tabs on the School Board.

Records can open meetings

During the mid-1990s, Vero Beach resident Frank Zorc kept getting shut out of closed-door meetings of the City Council.

Zorc, a retired real estate developer, figured the council members were discussing a lawsuit he had threatened to file over some contaminated land the city had leased him.

Zorc knew that meetings could be closed to discuss an active lawsuit, but he also knew they can't be closed to talk about a threatened lawsuit.

"They were all illegal because they should have been done in the open," Zorc said. "But they refused to let me in the meeting."

To prove the meetings didn't qualify for the closed-door exemptions to Florida's open-meetings law, he used public records -- the minutes from the closed-door meetings -- to show a court what was discussed behind closed doors.

He lost his case at first, but then won on appeal to the 4th District Court of Appeals in West Palm Beach.

"I never would have been able to sue them over what they did if I didn't have access to those records," Zorc said. "If they change the law so that those types of records are not available to the public, it would be a disaster. And there are people who want to do that. We can't let that happen."

Where did the money go?

Tampa writer Terry Neal lives on 40th Street, a road in need of a $70 million renovation to repave and widen the crumbling street, fix a drainage system that leaves puddles on the road long after the rain ends, and install sidewalks for pedestrian safety.

When the money that had been earmarked for those repairs disappeared from the budget at the same time a new housing development for the poor was announced, Neal wanted to see if the money to improve his neighborhood had been diverted to another.

"I am looking for sneaky, smelly financial doings," Neal said. "Money that's not used appropriately."

Neal says he made specific public records requests, in writing, for the financial documents he wanted to view. Neal was told to speak to the "records custodian," but nobody told him who that was.

Eventually, Neal said he was able to view what he considered a partial response. The information didn't clearly show if money had been diverted from his street.

He said that during the ordeal over the past few months, he's seen journalists given quick access to records.

"I'm always asked, 'Who are you with.' Since I'm not a reporter I get treated differently," Neal said. "It's like, 'Citizen? Go home.'"

Lillian Stringer, public relations director for the Tampa Housing Authority and its records custodian, said she is familiar with Neal.

"I've seen every e-mail he has sent to our staff, and he's also sent his requests to CNN, NPR, HUD, the president, their mothers and cousins," she said. "I told him we had them and please advise me a date and time to view them, but I never got a response back."

"As far as I'm concerned he did not do everything he could to get the information," Stringer said.