The city of Coral Gables could join other municipalities in a lawsuit against the state to overturn legislation passed last year that requires municipal electeds to submit a more detailed financial disclosure document known as Form 6.
It’s a war against transparency.
Currently, city commissioners have to file Form 1, which has far less information on it than Form 6. All around the state, municipal electeds have left office rather than submit Form 6, which they contend is a violation of privacy. The city of Coral Springs recently joined the lawsuit, as has the town of Palm Beach. Palm Beach County has seen at least 34 elected officials resign rather than come clean with their financial situations.
Weiss Serota is seeking at least 10 plaintiffs for the lawsuit for declaratory and injunctive relief challenging the constitutionality of the new requirement passed in the 2023 legislative session. City Attorney Cristina Suarez will bring up the option at Tuesday’s commission meetingince. And it won’t cost the city any more than $10,000 — unless there’s an appeal, she said.
Senate Bill 774 changed the financial disclosure requirements applicable to all elected municipal mayors and elected members of the governing body of a municipality as of Jan. 1 of this year.
“Such elected officials are now required to file a Form 6 financial disclosure which requires, among other things, disclosure of the specific amounts of an official’s net worth, income, and asset values. Historically, municipal elected officials have been required to file the Form 1 which is a more limited financial disclosure and requires, among other things, disclosure of information related to sources of income, real property, intangible personal property, liabilities and interests in specified businesses, but does not include the specific amounts of an official’s net worth, income, and asset values,” Gables City Suarez wrote in a memo to the commissioners.
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The potential lawsuit would be based on Florida’s constitutional right to privacy, which provides that “[e]very natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life except as provided herein.” We can also expect them to argue it’s a First Amendment issue and violates Florida’s constitution which also protect freedom of speech, “including the right to choose what to say and what not to say”
What not to say? Don’t elected officials waive that right when they run for office?
“On the basis of these constitutional principles, the lawsuit would assert, among other legal theories, that the imposition of Form 6 requirements at the municipal level represents an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy rights of municipal elected officials; unnecessarily risks the safety of such officials (making them targets of, among other things, burglary, identity theft and extortion); and will deter many otherwise qualified and interested citizens from running for office,” Suarez wrote in her memo.
“Additionally, the potential lawsuit would assert that the imposition of new financial disclosure requirements upon municipal elected officials who were elected without such requirements violates due process, is fundamentally unfair, and violates fundamental constitutional rights,” she said.
Suarez sounds like she wants permission to join in.
But why are people fighting so hard to keep secrets? If you run for office, you waive any right to privacy on your finances. That’s just how it is. It is the only way that society can have trust in their electeds.
And there importance of that transparency has become very evident in recent months with all of the side gigs that Miami Mayor Francis Suarez had to disclose in his federal disclosure — we wouldn’t have known otherwise — when he ran for five minutes for the Republican nomination for president. As if.
Read related: Coral Gables Mayor Vince Lago is another Francis Suarez in the making
Ladra was looking forward to reading the Form 6 filed by Gables Mayor Vince Lago, who also seems to have a load of side gigs fueling his net worth. Obviously, it’s something he ought to keep under wraps.
Ladra also doesn’t know how any of the commissioners can vote on this when they will all benefit from it. Wouldn’t they all have to recuse themselves? Talk about a blatant conflict of interests. It is definitely in the constituents’ interest to have full disclosure. At least the two newest commissioners, ushered in last year with a promise of transparency, will have to put their feet down.
One of those, Commissioner Ariel Fernandez, told Ladra late Monday that he was not inclined to fight the state law but was open to hear from the city attorney.
“I want to hear what it is they’re trying to argue,” Fernandez said. “But I think we’re elected officials, people want to know where our money comes from and that’s understandable.
“It’s about transparency.”
Exactly. And any effort to thwart transparency ought to be looked at with caution and suspicion.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, city commissioners will consider:
A planned area development at the downtown Publix, which has been on the drawing board for years. Gone are the apartments above the grocery store. Now the plan is to have two floors of indoor parking space over a new Publix that will be built adjacent to LeJeune where the parking lot is now. The developer has promised the city a park on the other half of the property, where the Publix is now.
An extension of the lease for Fritz and Franz, a popular German eatery where several elected officials countywide awaited word about Miami being chosen as a host city for the next World Cup. This would need a 4/5th vote, since it would waive the competitive process. The city has already begun writing a request for proposal. But commissioners should be wary. The city has already lost Burger Bob’s and the Liberty Cafe.
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