Top Secret – For Your Eyes Only

More and more states are making state records available to the public. Do you want to guess which state is bucking the trend?

‘Impossible to hold him accountable’: DeSantis signs laws to ease 2024 run

Measures would let him campaign while serving as Florida governor and shield travel records from public

The Guardian

By Betsy Reed

May 15, 2023

Ron DeSantis is using the final weeks before he reportedly launches a presidential campaign to modify Florida law to allow him to run while serving as governor and reduce transparency over political spending and his travel.

DeSantis is poised to sign a bill that would exempt him from Florida’s “resign-to-run” law, so that he won’t have to give up his office in order to run for president. Under existing state law, if he were to run, DeSantis would have had to submit a resignation letter before Florida’s qualifying deadline this year and step down by inauguration day in 2025. Last month, Republicans in the state legislature passed a measure that says the restriction does not apply to those running for president or vice-president.

The bill also imposes sweeping new voting restrictions in the state and will make it much harder for non-profits to do voter registration drives.

Doesn’t that sound like something that an authoritarian government would do?

But wait, there’s more!

DeSantis also signed a bill last week that will shield records related to his travel from public view. The new law exempts all of DeSantis’s past and future travel from disclosure under Florida’s public records law, one of the most transparent in the US. It also exempts the state from having to disclose the names of people who meet with the governor at his office or mansion or travel with him, said Barbara Petersen, the executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, who has worked on transparency laws for more than three decades in the state.

Supreme leader doesn’t want the voters to know what he is doing and how much it is costing!

“It’s un-fricking-believable,” Petersen said. “It will be virtually impossible to hold this governor accountable without access to those kinds of records.”

The security rationale for the bill was “bogus”, she said. “They’re not going to let somebody in the mansion if they don’t know who that person is. I don’t understand why it’s a security concern of where he went six weeks ago.

Neither do I. The voting public has a right to know how their tax payer money is being spent.

The New Republic asks,

What Is Ron DeSantis Hiding Beyond His Travel Records?

The Florida governor has signed a bill blocking all details about his travel, including where he goes and who he goes with.

By Prem Thakker

May 12, 2023

The new law, which DeSantis signed Thursday, will block reporters from accessing information about how and where DeSantis and other government officials travel, as well as who they travel with. Details about whether DeSantis used a state plane or a private plane will be retracted. The law, the first of its kind, will also keep secret visitor logs to the governor’s mansion and his office.

[…]

“Floridians’ hard earned taxpayer dollars should not go to pay for Ron DeSantis’s campaign junkets,’’ he tweeted. “But we will never know now that his legislative cronies made his travel records retroactively exempt from public disclosure.”

Ben Wilcox, the research director and co-founder of the good government organization Integrity Florida, told Insider that DeSantis’s argument that the law is necessary for his protection “strains credulity.”

“How else can we know whether the travel was an appropriate use of public funds and hold those responsible accountable?” Wilcox asked.

Don’t you think that the voters and taxpayers of Florida deserve to be told?

I am on the Connecticut governor's Advisory Council of Hate Crimes and each and every meeting is made public and is posted on the state's website along with our annual report.

Oh... BTW it is voluntary post, there is no salaries even through we are officially a state employee.