I'm not Woodward, but I am me.

A little about me.

I LOVE mystery/spy/legal type movies. Even though I can often tell you the end of most of the movies less than halfway through (my wife hates this), I find it all intriguing.

I like to see how everything happens and how it all falls apart. In the spy movies, it is often how they use things like deception to get what they need or hide their actions. Something gets exposed and chaos ensues. How do they work their ops without others knowing they are doing it.. And when its found out, how do they do more to cover it up? Everything is intentional and well planned. In mysteries it can be a number of things, but generally similar in that regard... With legal type movies, I love to see the arguments come into play and how the carefully crafted words they use to make their arguments and try to get people to corner themselves... "A Few Good Men" and the line "You Can't Handle the Truth" come to mind.

While yes, these are movies and Hollywood often stretches things beyond realism to create something for entertainment, most of the time there are SOME things that relate to real life events or how things work in the real world.

That is why I have decided to take a more investigative approach to what I am doing here. I can sit here and type about local government events, this vote or that vote, (and I do at times), but the "fun" in what I do is in the research. There is not much research into "We are approving this mowing bid". But... how did the Commissioners come up with their own version of the sales tax? That I can dive into.

The fun is getting a tip about something and diving into it. It is the public records requests. It is the piecing the things together to get a full picture of whatever it is I am looking at. It is seeing the things happening behind the scenes to lead to the things you see publicly at a meeting.

It is basically like I am living my own spy story and at the same time, keeping people informed on things they would never know about if I did not take the dive into it.

Fun Fact... most of what I dive into has nothing to see... as it should be.

In real life, there are plenty of these types of stories in politics. Perhaps the most famous is Watergate. This ultimately led to Nixon resigning and things like audio recordings no longer occurring in the White House. This led to the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

Watergate is a classic spy type story. Lots of twists and turns, people turning on each other and so on. It is pretty intriguing to read about, so I strongly suggest it if you have not.

The key thing with Watergate is how it was exposed and how the connections were made. Long story short, the scandal was exposed by reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who at the time worked at the Washington Post. They wrote several articles that exposed the Nixon Administration and the subsequent coverup. Nixon resigned and several White House aids, attorneys and others ended up in prison.

But how did Woodward and Bernstein get the information used to expose the scandal? From an anonymous sourced nicknamed "Deep Throat". This turned out to be Mark Felt, who was the FBI Deputy Director at the time. Felt would provide information to Woodward and Bernstein, who would then investigate those leads, do interviews and so on.

Without Felt speaking to the reporters and letting them know what was happening, Watergate likely never gets exposed and Nixon likely never resigns. So why did Felt do it? We don't really know for sure, but reports suggest his loyalty to the FBI caused him to want to do the right thing. Interestingly, that same loyalty likely led to his conviction for ordering the FBI to raid Whether Underground without a warrant in 1980... He was pardoned by Reagan.

See.. truly spy/thriller/mystery type stuff.

The interesting thing to take away here is that when there is some political scandal, most likely, there was someone that reported it to someone else who began to investigate it.

The Clinton/Lewinski scandal, David Petraeus, Anthony Weiner, Dennis Hastert and SO MANY others, followed similar patterns. There was someone that provided information to someone else that then led to an investigation and findings of the full details.

There has been an ongoing discussion over the past day or so in the comments on the Facebook page regarding public records and public records laws. If you are bored and would like to read them, here you go! Good stuff to read at night to lull yourself to sleep.

In short, there are far more things considered public record in Florida than things that are exempt from disclosure. The exemptions mostly relate to things like personal information (social security numbers, bank account numbers, etc), privacy for specific officials (lawyers, judges, fire/police, etc) and things like ongoing investigations.

Most everything else is considered public record. Even things like mortgages are public record. Yup, I can go to the clerk's website and look up your mortgage agreement. Pretty interesting.

But when it comes to government, the purpose of the Sunshine Law and public records laws are to keep transparency in government. Florida has perhaps some of the broadest public records laws in the country. The idea is that government should be done in the "sunshine" so that everyone can see what is going on. This is meant to avoid things like backroom deals... because in theory, they would be disclosed publicly.

This extends to things on their government devices (emails, files, etc) and things on personal devices, including cell phones. This also includes things like call logs and phone records. As I said, what is considered a public record is pretty expansive.

And importantly, this extends BEYOND their terms in their jobs. So an elected official with text messages about a project may be required to maintain those records, even after leaving office, depending on the specific records in their possession. I would argue the law requires them to turn over all documents before they leave, but I digress. They can be asked to provide a record YEARS after they leave the job and they would have to supply it. Failure to do so is violation of public records laws.

Makes you want to become a government employee or elected official, right?

Short solution to all of this... do not conduct government business on private devices. Problem solved... but apparently not reality. That is why I told the county that they need to enact an automated process to secure/save text messages sent to/from the staff/commissioners... because at some point someone may ask for a record years from now and if that record no longer exists, its a violation of records laws... like me with the airport. This extends to employees who leave their government jobs as well. They can be asked for any records in their possession.

There are specific durations that records are to be retained depending on the type of record it is. Some things are considered "transitory" and can be deleted almost immediately... Others have 5-10+ year requirement to be kept.

This gives you the retention period for various records.

Here is the "Government in the Sunshine Manual" if you wish to have more sleep aiding reading material. Fun stuff, but talks about how government is to retain records and all of that.

The reason behind all of this disclosure and sunshine is to avoid scandals and things happening without the public knowing. If everything is done in clear view, why would someone engage in a scandal? Yet, they often happen. Why?

In short, people do not think they will be caught. They feel that they can hide the information and as long as it is never disclosed, it will never be exposed. The problem is, that often relies on other people also keeping your secret. As we have seen throughout history, all these things come crashing down once someone finds out or becomes involved that does not want to risk their job or face going to jail over the issue.

Most every mob boss got taken down because someone in the lower levels of the organization flipped to protect themselves... Not because they were caught red handed. Cases I mentioned above... someone leaked information to someone else... to kick start the investigation. It might take weeks/months/years but eventually it is found out.

And there are certainly "innocent" reasons as well... someone newly elected may not know what qualifies as a public record because they are not used to being under the watchful eye of the public. I would argue that ignorance is not an excuse, but perhaps, at times, grace is warranted.

I do not write this today because I have knowledge or anything of anyone breaking public records laws. For all I know, everyone complies with records requests as they should. While I may have some strong feelings that some things have not been provided, I only have speculative "proof", which is fair to be questioned.

For instance... Let's say there is a request for text messages for an elected official. Those messages show this person texts a friend about something constantly for a few months... then goes radio silence for months... then picks back up the texting for a few more months... then more silence... and then texting again for a few months? In the middle of those silent periods, emails, meetings, etc.. all behind the scenes...

Is it possible they simply stopped texting about that topic for those periods? Sure.. Is it likely, particularly with other actions taking place? I'll let you make your own assumptions.

But.. with no proof, nothing can be done... but that does not mean the proof won't be found elsewhere... say a lawsuit by another entity that has subpoena power through the courts.

And maybe that proof does not exist because the person was telling the truth. Again... it is fair to question it.. but not fair to accuse them of lying, which I will never do without proof.

I write this as a general warning to ALL government employees/officials, particularly those who are elected. If a record exists, no matter how bad it looks, it is better to just provide the records than to try to hide them and be exposed later.. rather than facing the optics of said disclosure, they would then be facing potential criminal charges.

And remember, at some point, someone is not going to be willing to take the fall themselves and risk losing their job/family/etc to protect someone else. Everything will eventually be exposed and come toppling down like Jenga blocks.

Now to go watch "All the President's Men"