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Randolph: Release records on tax money spent against Fair Districts amendmentws

Posted Aug 12, 2011 by William March

Updated Aug 12, 2011 at 11:59 AM

State Rep. Scott Randolph, an Orlando Democrat, has sent a public records request to House Speaker Dean Cannon demanding records showing how much tax money the state House has spent on a court case to overturn one of the Fair Districts constitutional amendments passed last year by voters.

Officials in House Speaker Dean Cannon’s oiffice have previously said the state House has spent about $114,000 on the lawsuit, but Randolph said he wants an accounting of more than $1 million in total spent by the House to hire outside lawyers in connection with redistricting.

Randolph has already asked for the legal bills once and been turned down. In a letter, the House general counsel George Levesque said making public the legal fees would reveal legal strategy. Documents that reveal strategy in litigation are exempt from being made public under Florida public records law.

But Randolph said he finds it “difficult to believe that past billing records would disclose current litigation strategy or legal theory,” and that if they did, that information could be redacted—blacked out—before the documents are released.

The state House, under the authority of Cannon, a Winter Park Republican, has joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn one of the two Fair Districts amendments, the one applying to congressional districts. The amendments seek to prevent drawing congressional or legislative district lines designed to benefit a political party or incumbent.

Cannon along with other leading Republicans fought adoption of the amendments, which are expected to increase Democratic chances in some legislative and congressional races.

The House action has been controversial, as Democrats and voting rights groups have accused the GOP House majority of spending taxpayers’ money to overturn amendments passed by the taxpayers themselves with a 63 percent majority in last November’s election.

“Taxpayers and all members of the Florida House of Representatives deserve the right to examine the full billing records of private attorneys your office has hired to fight the will of Florida voters,” Randolph said in his letter.

Randolph said he also wants to find out “who’s actually driving the litigation—wehther it’s the taxpayers themselves who are being charged to push this litigation forward.”

The lawsuit was filed by two members of Congress, Democrat Corinne Brown of Jacksonville and Republican Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami; the state House joined as an intervenor on their side.

But Randolph said most of the major court filings in the case are “co-motions,” filed by both the plaintiffs and the House.