TALHASSEE – State legislators are preparing to keep the addresses and phone numbers of elected officials secret from being a drastic change to the state’s widespread public record laws.
Council members, school board members, state legislators, other state and local officials, and their families will have the option to edit personal information from county and state records.
The bill, SB 268, passed the Senate on Wednesday, with two Democrats voting against it. Sen. Shevlyn Jones, D-Miami, sponsor of the bill, said he hopes it will pass the House as well.
Lawmakers point out the need for more protection in a toxic political environment. The senator spoke to the committee about his experiences with death threats and cases of police protection for 24 hours in a row.
However, public government advocates say the bill could make it easier for local and state officials to live outside the district.
If the bill is passed, elected officials will be granted the right to approach the rights of police, judges and prosecutors.
Upon his appointment, the mayor, property appraiser, city and county commissioners and other elected officials were able to compile key home numbers and street names from the records.
So did their spouses and adult children. Name, address, phone number, minor child’s birth date and place to go to school are also exempt from public records.
Once an elected official has taken office, the exemption will expire.
“No one needs to know where you and your family live,” Jones told the senator on Wednesday.
“It has nothing to do with the government,” he added. “All you need to know is where you can come to my office to meet my staff and meet me.”
Jones said he was threatened with death following his passionate 2022 speech on parental rights in the education bill, which is also known to not be gay.
Other senators on either side of the aisle told their stories.
A former senator from R-Melbourne Beach, who was elected to Congress last week, said the two were arrested and jailed for threatening him and his family.
“We had to go to law enforcement and bring the sirens on fire and all else up to our home,” Fine said last month. “It gave me the joy of realizing what it is like to be important for a few days.
Sen. Jason Pizzo of D-Hollywood said that in 2020, state police pulled him out of the committee and warned him of the fact that “someone killed me and paid me $47,000.”
Sen. Corey Simon of R-Tallahassee said he recently came to his home in search of him.
“It scared me one of my wife,” he said.
Sen. Barbara Sharief of D-Miramar said her home address was placed on a website belonging to Ku Klux Klan.
“I was in three months’ worth of security,” she said.
Part of the intense political rhetoric was evident in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ conflict with Republican legislative leaders at a special legislative meeting on immigration earlier this year. Wilton Simpson, the state’s agricultural commissioner on the other side of DeSantis, was subjected to death threats.
Opponents of the bill note that they have not produced any data on the number of threats received by lawmakers or whether or not the number has increased. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which can pursue accusations against those threatening lawmakers, did not respond to requests for data on lawmakers’ threats.
Critics of the bill also point out that there have been many instances of politicians being captured living outside the district, and that they are not eligible to take office.
“It undermines accountability in the sense that no one is sure their legal representatives are living in the district,” said Bobby Brock, executive director of the first amendment foundation. The organization is defending an open government.
Abdelilla Skyer, a senior strategist at the American Civil Liberties Union in Florida, said the organization is afraid that the custodians of records will interpret the law and compile more information than is permitted.
The organization asks senators to amend the bill, explicitly saying that certain information in Florida voter files must be made public, such as where they are located and the congressional district in which they live.
If that information is compiled, it is impossible to determine whether state and local officials are repeating districts to support one politician over another, Skhir said.
“We fully understand where they come from where they want privacy and security,” Skhir said. “But there’s a balance they have to walk.”
