“Appear” correct...or get sued?

The agitation drumbeat gets louder...Kissimmee City Commissioners must have their own offices, or the city will be sued for Sunshine Law violations and lose...so the agitators say. The Associated Press did the research for us...a list of every violation since 1977 of the Sunshine Law that has resulted in criminal or civil penalties can be found here... http://www.fsne.org/sunshine2005/news/history/index.shtml. We did a full-text search of that page, and amazingly, the word “office” does not appear. Not even once. So we’re still waiting for that groundbreaking case where two elected officials had a common office, were found guilty of a Sunshine Law violation, and the outcome was to force that elected body to have individual offices.

“But it’s all about appearances” the protestors say. It just doesn’t look right, to them, that two elected officials would have common office space. Need we list the number of projects that the city could spend “appearance money” on, if that was the goal? Certainly if city commissioners were given individual offices, appearances would come into play, as the self-appointed keepers of the Sunshine Law would scream “Sunshine Law violation!!!!” if one city commissioner were to even set foot into another commissioner’s office.

Where would you have your city’s money spent? If part-time city commissioners need to have meetings, couldn’t they sign out a conference room? And wouldn’t creating some additional conference rooms, rather than offices, benefit the entire city? (This is, of course, based on the assumption that there is some free space at City Hall that is just waiting for a purpose.) A separate office doesn’t prevent Sunshine Law violations from those who would have intent to commit the violation. It does, however, make a great place to have “official meetings” and decorate with all kinds of personal mementos, if you’re into that sort of thing.