Lawsuit claims public records law violation in Walton County

A lawsuit filed against Walton County commissioners wants the county to comply with the state's public-records laws and "abandon its unlawful practices of allowing the records of government to be destroyed in an affront to Florida's celebrated open government ethic."

Attorney Matt Gaetz filed the complaint April 16 on behalf of Suzanne Harris, president of the Edgewater Beach Owners' Association in Santa Rosa Beach.

"Walton County has a systematic method where, if an individual e-mail sender deletes a record from a computer, five weeks later it's completely wiped away," Gaetz said.

"There's no control or safeguard to protect public records."

The records can be purged easily because computers in the commissioners' district offices' are not connected to the county's central servers. No backup system exists "to ensure the integrity of the records," the lawsuit claims.

So "a county commissioner, or a member of their staff, can delete public records ... without leaving any trace that the public record had ever existed," the complaint states.

County attorney W.C. Henry was not immediately available for comment Thursday afternoon.

County Commissioner Larry Jones referred questions about the lawsuit to the county legal department.

A hearing is scheduled for 9:15 a.m. July 17.

The public-records issue dates back to Oct. 22, 2008, when Harris asked county officials for copies of e-mails related to the Leave No Trace ordinance, which regulates what items can and cannot be left on the beach overnight.
The ordinance has since been suspended so it can be revised.

A lawsuit had been filed against the county and County Administrator Ronnie Bell in September 2008 on behalf of Edgewater Beach Owners' Association members angry that their items left on the beach were being collected and thrown away.

The latest lawsuit contends that the county also has failed to respond to a second public-records request Harris filed Dec. 5, 2008.

While the first request asked for e-mails related to the ordinance, the second "asked for those public records, maintained in hard-copy, which were referring, regarding or relating to the issues of the underlying litigation, information technology policies and document retention policies," as well as a time frame for when those documents might be produced and how much it would cost.

"To date, no such estimate or time frame has been supplied," the lawsuit states.

Gaetz said the county still has not complied with the eight-month-old request, nor has it requested an exemption of the records from the Florida public records law because of pending litigation over the Leave No Trace ordinance.

Gaetz said government agencies are expected to respond to public-records requests "promptly."

"I am unaware of any situation in Florida where a judge has allowed a government to play hide the ball with public records for a period exceeding six months," he said.

The complaint also states that a county attorney told Gaetz to "review the county government's electronic data storage infrastructure and ‘figure out' how to access the requested public records."

But the lawsuit contends that that is not the plaintiff's job. A state-mandated records-keeping manual requires every agency to document what its files contain, how its public records may be accessed and used, and how they may be updated, added and deleted from the system.

The lawsuit also states that during a teleconference on Nov. 12, 2008, the county's information technology staff attempted to "identify the required policies" but "were instructed by the county government's attorneys to remain silent."