Sunshine Week Heroes

Sunshine Week celebrations are going on. Meet this year's Sunshine Week Heroes.

Joel Chandler of Lakeland, Fla., who has sued dozens of state and local government agencies over their failure to honor the state’s open records law, is the 2012 Sunshine Week Local Hero. Chandler began litigating violations of Florida’s public records four years ago, when his local school board refused a records request. Since then, he has filed more than two dozen open records lawsuits, securing the release of school, police, prison and medical examiner records.

Chandler’s open government activism began five years ago with a simple request for a copy of the school district’s health insurance policy. The district refused, releasing the information only after Chandler complained to the state attorney’s office.

A year later, he filed a request for names, addresses and other information about the district’s 13,000 employees. When the district refused, he sued and won. Chandler told the Lakeland Ledger that his fight with the district was like “dealing with a bully.”

He began aggressively looking for other ways agencies were hindering citizen access to information, which led to a successful suit against the area medical examiner over fees charged for autopsy reports. Chandler also sued the Lakeland police for its “flat fee” policy, and he recently won a lawsuit for records of a privately operated prison. His public records research led to a suit against the Department of Transportation over a policy that pulled aside drivers who tried to pay Florida Turnpike tolls with a $20 bill or higher while officials wrote down the make, model and tag number of the car, records that he says show racial profiling. He also used public records to show that a charity that received more than $400,000 in public funds had spent less than $10,000 on the designated program.

On his FOGWatch website, Chandler quotes a 2009 report of the Governor's Commission on Open Government Reform: "...the burden of enforcing violations of Florida's open meetings and public records laws generally falls to citizens who have few alternatives other than seeking an injunction or filing suit in civil court to compel compliance." He adds: FOGWatch “cheerfully accepts that burden because we are dedicated to the principles that our government serves at the pleasure of the governed and functions best when citizens know what is being done in their name and at their expense.”

The second-place Local Hero Award goes to Eric Rachner of Seattle, who forced the Seattle police department to make public the records of police activity videotaped by patrol car dashboard cameras. Rachner’s research showed that police were selectively withholding video records that might discredit specific arrests. He’s posted the police records on his website, www.seattlepolicevideo.com, which has prompted several media investigations and other public scrutiny of Seattle police arrests.

The third-place winner is Suzanne McCrory of Mamaroneck, N.Y., who, without an attorney, successfully sued her village twice for withholding records. In one case, it took her several years to obtain the financial disclosure statement filed by the chairman of the planning board. Ultimately, she got the records, the chairman resigned, and the village modified its ethics code to ensure that disclosure statements are routinely available to the public.

Read more about the 2012 Sunshine Week Local Hero Award winners.