This reform effort did not emerge from academic theory or ceremonial Sunshine Week rhetoric. It grew out of lived experience — and a dawning realization that secrecy has become the default operating principle of state government.

No one understands this better than Andrade. Last year, he led House efforts to investigate the Hope Florida scandal, after the public learned that $10 million in Medicaid settlement funds — money intended for health care — had been routed through a nonprofit linked to the governor and ultimately used to support political activity opposing a citizen-led marijuana amendment. When Andrade sought basic records needed by his legislative subcommitee to do its job, requests went unanswered, deadlines passed and explanations disappeared. If a sitting legislator can’t obtain public records from the governor’s office, what chance does an ordinary Floridian have?

That experience is hardly unique. Every day, Floridians seeking information about school policies, zoning decisions, police incidents, tax levies or government contracts encounter silence or are quoted exorbitant “research and processing fees” just to access documents the public already owns. Delay has become policy. Indifference has become procedure.

Recent events show just how far enforcement has collapsed. In November 2025, the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee approved a report certifying that Florida was complying with its Transparency Florida Act — even though investigative reporting had already shown that billions of dollars in state contracts, including for the hastily devised immigrant detention facility in the Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” had never been posted to the public website where the law requires them to appear. The committee approved the report in under a minute, without discussion, rubber-stamping false compliance and rendering our transparency laws meaningless.

That same enforcement vacuum enabled an even more troubling revelation weeks later. Investigations by Seeking Rents, the Miami Herald, and the Tampa Bay Times found that at least $36 million in taxpayer funds — money originally earmarked for children’s services, health care and opioid recovery — had been diverted to advertising, consultants and legal services aimed at defeating two citizen-led constitutional amendments: one on marijuana, the other on abortion rights.

Florida law clearly prohibits using public resources to influence elections. But that prohibition only works if the public can see how money moved, who authorized it, and for what purpose. In this case, access to those records was delayed, fragmented and obscured — ensuring voters could not fully understand what was happening until long after ballots were cast.

The erosion of transparency is not limited to billion-dollar scandals. When the Orlando Sentinel sought records from the Florida Department of Transportation explaining the decision to paint over the rainbow-colored crosswalk near the Pulse nightclub — a community memorial to the victims of the 2016 mass shooting at the nightclub — the paper was unable to obtain a single document supporting FDOT’s public claim that the artwork posed a traffic hazard. No studies. No memos. No emails.

Taken together, these episodes reveal a system where public records laws exist largely without enforcement or accountability. Florida now has more than 1,200 statutory exemptions to public records access, and that number grows every year. Increasingly, agencies don’t even bother citing exemptions. They simply ignore requests, knowing there are no consequences for doing so.

That is why the reforms proposed by Rouson and Andrade matter so much. Their legislation would require agencies to acknowledge records requests within three business days, prohibit agencies from charging fees when they fail to respond on time, and — most importantly — impose penalties on officials who ignore or obstruct lawful requests. Accountability without consequences is not accountability at all.

This legislation, shaped with input from the First Amendment Foundation and research from the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project and the Florida Center for Government Accountability, represents the strongest effort in years to restore Florida’s transparency framework. And it comes at a pivotal moment. A 2024 study cited by the Brechner Center ranked Florida 31st nationally in public records compliance and 49th in the fees charged to requesters — a stunning fall for the state that once defined open-records laws.

Decline, however, is not destiny. Floridians still have a choice. If we want a government that works for the people rather than above them, we must demand better. Call your lawmakers. Tell them you support HB 437 and SB 770. Insist on a government that doesn’t hide how it spends your money or wields your authority.

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