Requesting the Records: A Field Test of Florida's Sunshine Commitments
Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Florida's Sunshine Law has been on the books since 1967, and generations of lawmakers — of both parties — have campaigned on defending it. But statutes are tested not in their preamble but in their administration. To measure how open government functions today, we conducted a small field test: filing identical or near-identical public records requests with state agencies, logging every response, delay, and invoice.
The Method
We submitted records requests to five state entities, each touching an area of active gubernatorial policy: correspondence related to a high-profile education rule, travel schedules for senior officials, communications with a private contractor, meeting materials from a discretionary board, and internal analyses of a contested environmental permit.
Under Florida law, there is no fixed deadline for producing records — agencies must respond within a 'reasonable' time. That ambiguity is where the tracking begins.
What Came Back, and When
The results were mixed, in ways that matter. One agency acknowledged the request within two business days and produced responsive records within three weeks, redacting sparingly and citing each exemption used. Two others acknowledged receipt and then went quiet for more than a month, producing partial records only after a follow-up letter citing statutory obligations.
One request — for the calendar of a senior official — returned a heavily trimmed document in which entire days had been withheld under the security exemption, a category that open-government advocates have watched expand steadily. A fifth request was answered with a fee estimate exceeding several hundred dollars, justified by staff review time, which the requester could either pay or abandon.
The Exemption Ledger
The field test sits against a broader legislative backdrop. Since 2019, the Florida Legislature has passed dozens of new public records exemptions, spanning security planning, emergency response communications, and personal information of officials and their families. Some are uncontroversial; others are broad enough that transparency organizations, including the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee, have flagged them as erosion by accumulation.
Our tracker of exemption bills filed each session shows a consistent pattern: the volume of new carve-outs has not declined in any year of the administration. Each exemption is individually defensible; collectively, they shift the default. Records that once began as public now begin as withheld, with the burden on the requester to argue otherwise.
Press Access at the Capitol
Formal records are only half the ledger. The other half is the daily practice of access. Reporters covering the administration have documented a preference for controlled settings — scripted announcements, friendly outlets, and interviews that bypass the Capitol press corps. Gubernatorial Q&A sessions with the traveling press became less frequent during the 2023–24 campaign period, a practice that has partially resumed but not fully.
Grading the Record
A fair grade would be incomplete rather than failing. Florida still produces records; the statutory framework still functions; some agencies respond promptly and in good faith. But the trend lines — expanding exemptions, slower and costlier responses in contested areas, and tightened press access — all point in the same direction.
The Sunshine Law's promise was never that openness would be convenient for officials. It was that inconvenience would not be permitted to become policy. Whether that promise holds through the remainder of this administration is a question this tracker will continue to monitor, request by request.
