SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream.

In October 2013, our City Manager and two City Commissioners attended a closed door, private meeting of downtown merchants and property owners concerning the very real, prominent issue of groups of homeless individuals camping 24/7 on the streets of downtown Sarasota. No minutes were taken, we don’t know the specifics of what was said, or by whom, but we do know from emails that City Manager Tom Barwin and Commissioner Susan Chapman left feeling encouraged.

Later that month, Citizens for Sunshine filed suit claiming the meeting violated the Sunshine Law. The City and Commissioner Suzanne Atwell settled posthaste for what, in the land of attorney fees, amounts to a slap on the wrist. Commissioner Chapman chose to fight. One year and seven defense motions denied later with attorney’s fees approaching $200,000, her supporters continue to ardently defend the 2013 meeting as just a couple of Commissioners hearing from their constituents. Their argument—neither spoke, so no harm no foul.

Okay, let’s go with that, see where it leads. Picture a similar closed-door, private meeting attended by the City Manager and two Commissioners. But this time it’s with Rosemary District development interests hoping for relief from unwieldy building code regulations disallowing density sharing between non-contiguous parcels in the same development. According to the “argument” the Commissioners would be A-OK in the clear as long as neither “said” anything.

Other than topic, how are the two meetings any different from the other? They aren’t, but it begs the question; who could dare argue with a straight face that a couple of Commissioners going to merely “listen” privately to developers would be perfectly acceptable?

Basic commonsense—even the most rudimentary understanding of how elected officials are expected to conduct themselves—ought inform us both meetings violate our Sunshine Law. 

Whatever the individual mindset of any two (or more) Commissioners, the very act of attending any meeting not publicly noticed where no minutes are taken on topics reasonably expected to come up for a vote could easily be construed as a predisposition signaling some future legislative alliance between those Commissioners with those who called the meeting.

But the worst of it, rather than simple admitting to what many of us, even Citizens for Sunshine, were willing to consider an unfortunate lapse in judgment is how the argument that silence is innocence has expanded, contriving to make the Sunshine Law the baddie. Sorta like blaming the speed limit when you get a ticket for driving too fast through a school zone.

A tradition since 1909, born into statute in 1967, our Sunshine Law by popular vote in 1990 became part of our State Constitution. The Law doesn’t play favorites. It is “broadly applied and narrowly exempted,” not the other way around. The State of Florida promises (Art. I, § 24, Fla. Const.)  “meetings of any collegial public body…. shall be open and noticed to the public”.

By the by, that meeting with developers didn’t happen, but, if it had, Citizens for Sunshine would have been all over it, and I’d like to think we would’ve cheered them on.

SRQ Daily Columnist Diana Hamilton, after living 35 years in Sarasota, labels herself a pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream.