Lawmakers don’t want us to know where DeSantis goes, or even — can you believe? — where he’s been | Opinion

Just trust us.

That’s what lawmakers seem to be saying more and more in Florida, as the assault on transparency in government continues in an unprecedented way from Tallahassee to Miami.

The latest? The Florida Legislature is poised to pass a bill, SB 1616, that will keep Gov. Ron DeSantis’ travel records secret. And not just in the future. It’s about past travel, too. Incredibly, it’s retroactive.

The reason offered: DeSantis needs to keep his whereabouts a mystery for security reasons, because he might be targeted. And past travel has to be shielded because it might reveal travel patterns that could make him vulnerable.

The governor said Monday, according to Politico, that the measure wasn’t his idea but that he does get a lot of threats. Running for president, assuming he does, isn’t likely to reduce that — though at some point he might qualify for Secret Service protection.

The measure doesn’t stop there, though. It’s so broadly written that it could keep citizens from knowing where the state jet (paid for by taxpayers) has been and what the governor is up to and who else was aboard. It also would remove from the public record information who is visiting the governor’s office and mansion. You guessed it — another security concern.

Florida’s overreach

By that logic, virtually anything any elected person does involving state government could be deemed a security concern and kept secret. It’s an overreach, to put it mildly.

No one wants the governor or any elected official to be put in danger. The world can be a crazy place. But the answer to security threats against public officials cannot be a blanket order shutting out the public. It cannot be keeping the governor’s travel a secret, now and in the past. And it cannot be hiding the identities of those visiting the governor’s office or mansion, people who may there for reasons ranging from mundane to nefarious.

Citizens might well wonder, if the governor is really trying to to serve his constituents, what does he have to hide?

One legislator indicated that some of this information would still be made available in an as-yet-undefined way. Without the words being written into the law, that means nothing.

But just trust us.

The anti-open-government virus seems to be spreading. In Miami, the Miami-Dade School Board is caught up in a Sunshine Law ruckus over a meeting that two board members held last month to discuss minority participation in School Board contracts.

The two members — DeSantis appointee Danny Espino and DeSantis-endorsed Roberto Alonso — may have tried to block senior board member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall from participating in the meeting when she showed up, as the Miami Herald and Channel 10 reported.

Bendross-Mindingall, first elected to the board in 2010, said she was initially told she was not invited and couldn’t participate. The district’s lawyer then said she could. But the incident left a stench: The next day, during the regular board meeting, Bendross-Mindingall, who is Black, said the episode reminded her of going to school in Alabama, where “what was legal wasn’t right.”

Espino has called for a new meeting, on May 9, this time to talk about “Florida in the Sunshine meeting procedures.”

Don’t newly elected officials get government-in-the-sunshine training anymore? Perhaps it’s needed.

The general thrust of the law is any gathering of two or more members of an elected or appointed board to discuss something that may come before the board has to be publicly announced. The idea is to provide public access to government at state and local levels. That way, we don’t have to just trust public officials to do the right thing. Because that will go horribly wrong.

Make no mistake, Florida’s cherished open-records laws are under attack. Secrecy, always the favorite mode of shady politicians, is on the rise. And it won’t end with DeSantis’ term. It’ll apply to governors going forward, too, Republican or not.

But hey, go ahead. Listen to the politicians. You can trust them.