First Sunshine Violation of the Night: Trip to Spain by Four Commissioners

The St. Augustine Record article (below) leaves much to be desired, Misspelling proper names, casting aspersions (and asparagus), the Record should be ashamed of itself. While encouraging civic participation on its editorial page, the Record discourages it in its news hole, holding dissenters up to ridicule. As shown by the commenters (below), Anthony and Judith Serpahin (not Serafin) and B.J. Kalaidi and I have concerns shared by a majority of St. Augustine residents.

our City’s plan to spend more than $25,000 for four Commissioners to spend thirteen days in Spain is a Sunshine law violation. See Florida Attorney General’s Opinion AGO 2003-03 (January 6, 2003), which holds that government meetings held distant from the government jurisdiction violate the Sunshine law and are null and void. (down below).

As the Florida Court of Appeals explains its decision in

Rhea v. School Board of Alachua County, 636 So. 2d 1383 (Fla. 1st DCA 1994). the Alachua County School Board (ACSB) announced its intent to conduct a workshop for board members in Orlando (another county) in December because members already would be in Orlando for a convention of the Florida School Boards Association. The ACSB advertised the Orlando meeting by placing a detailed notice in the Gainesville Sun newspaper approximately one week before the out-of-town meeting that it would be a workshop to which all persons were invited. The Orlando meeting occurred as scheduled and was open to the public. Rhea sued, alleging a violation of open meeting law, in that the ACSB met outside the geographical borders of its district, Alachua County, and more than 100 miles from its headquarters in Gainesville, and but for the long distance, Rhea would have attended the meeting. The trial court entered summary judgment in favor of the ACSB. See id. at 1384. On appeal, we recognized that the relevant “public” in question were members of the community in Alachua County, not Orange County: specifically, those who would be affected by the ACSB’s official actions. Whether the Orlando workshop was sufficiently “open to the public” depended on whether Alachua County residents were afforded a “reasonable opportunity” to attend the meeting. We concluded that the relevant public’s interest in having a reasonable 13 opportunity to attend the ACSB’s workshop had to be weighed against the ACSB’s need to hold a workshop at a site well beyond the county line. See id. at 1385. Because the ACSB’s decision to meet in Orlando denied Alachua County citizens a reasonable opportunity to attend, and the reason for meeting in Orange County was only that members of the ACSB were already assembled at the same hotel for a different professional meeting, the balance favored the citizens of Alachua County. See id. at 1386.

Grapski v. City of Alachua, 1D09- 509 (1st DCA January 21, 2010), slip op. at 12-13
As the Grapski Court held:

Mere showing that the government in the sunshine law has been violated constitutes an irreparable public injury.” Town of Palm Beach v. Gradison, 296 So. 2d 473, 477 (Fla. 1974). Further, “no resolution, rule, or formal action shall be considered binding except as taken or made” pursuant to the open meeting requirements. § 286.011(1), Fla. Stat. (2006).
Grapski, slip op. at 15