Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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May 8
The Pensacola News Journal on hiding coronavirus death information from the public:
The state of Florida is hiding information about coronavirus deaths from citizens. Under the direction of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Health, the state has consistently refused to inform the public about deaths and infections in Florida nursing homes, prisons and now, coronavirus deaths as documented by public medical examiners.
As fatalities from the virus continue to increase daily, never in recent historical memory has there been a more unsettling display of Florida government’s dark impulses to conceal the truth from its own citizens. Citizens should be outraged.
Crucial reporting from the Miami Herald Wednesday night detailed the state of Florida’s decision to blackout large swaths of public information from data sheets about statewide deaths due to coronavirus.
The Herald and other news organizations including the Pensacola News Journal had sought access to the list for weeks. According to the Herald, the documents are compiled from individual medical examiners and maintained by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Earlier the state had been providing it.
The head of the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission, which governs the state’s 21 medical examiners, has confirmed that the information is subject to disclosure under the state’s public records law. In fact, such fatality information is crucially maintained for public access in cases of statewide natural disasters such as hurricanes and pandemics.
The Herald noted that for nearly 30 years since Hurricane Andrew, the DOH has never objected to full public disclosure of the death records.
Yet the DeSantis administration has suddenly directed the information to be kept secret.
Barbara Petersen, president emeritus of the First Amendment Foundation, told the Herald, “For whatever reason, our governor is trying to hide information - first about nursing homes, and now from medical examiners. They are trying to paint a rosy picture by refusing to provide us accurate information that allows us to make informed decisions about the health and safety of our families.”
The public data is crucial in the midst of this crisis, in part because death and illness reporting from multiple state organizations does not match up. The Herald explained that death counts from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement don’t align with reported fatalities from the Department of Health.
And as recently as a month ago, death counts from the medical examiners were about 10 percent higher than figures released by the DOH.
The most recent records in question were previously being released by the Medical Examiners Commission until the DeSantis administration ordered them to stop and redact certain information about the deaths.
This is DeSantis’ dark pattern: Citizens are facing a health crisis and the governor tries to prevent them from seeing the truth.
In the midst of outbreaks at elder-care centers and nursing homes, DeSantis sought to shield the names of the facilities from citizens whose family members might be at risk inside.
The Florida Dept. of Corrections hid the numbers of cases at state prisons for weeks.
And as noted by the Herald, the DeSantis administration is still hiding information about the backlog of testing results from private labs, which are handling 90% of all testing in the state.
This defiance of transparency in a state of emergency is inexcusable. Florida governors of every political party have shown far more commitment to public safety and the basic right to know during times of statewide crisis. It’s a fundamental value that would undoubtedly be upheld by Republican governors like Jeb Bush and Bob Martinez just as well as Democrats such as Reubin Askew and Bob Graham.
Why DeSantis has been dead set on concealing the truth from you in this moment of crisis defies understanding.
Our news organizations have once again committed to file suit for the public information on your behalf - on behalf of truth, transparency and public safety.
We strongly encourage citizens of all political parties to contact the governor’s office as well as your state legislators and condemn the state’s ongoing attack on your right to essential public health information.
Online: https://www.pnj.com/
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May 8
The Tampa Bay Times on granting felons the right to vote:
Let’s stop pretending Florida’s Republican governor and the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature have any intention of honoring the intent of voters who approved Amendment 4. A top state elections chief made crystal clear during a federal trial this week that the state has no plan or even a clue about how it would automatically grant felons the voting rights as the 2018 constitutional amendment requires. Fortunately, the presiding judge sent his own signals as the trial concluded Wednesday that the court would uphold the law and the voters’ will.
The director of Florida’s Division of Elections, Maria Matthews, told a federal trial judge Tuesday that the state has still not settled on a process for allowing hundreds of thousands of felons to vote. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled in October that the state cannot deny voting rights to felons who genuinely could not pay outstanding legal obligations tied to their case, as required by state law. That requirement was approved by the Legislature in 2019 and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis, only months after more than 64% of Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment that automatically restores voting rights to most felons “who have completed all terms of their sentences.” The law was a back-door way to perpetuate discrimination and to neuter a referendum these lawmakers opposed, and it was a shameless postscript to the state’s shameful history.
Lawmakers have had the opportunity to repeal a law that puts a cash register in front of the voting booth. State officials have had the opportunity to design a process to determine what - if anything - felons owed. And Florida leaders have had months to process if not accept the guidance of the federal courts, which have consistently held that voting rights cannot be conditioned on a felon’s ability to pay.
Matthews said her office was “crystalizing” the process for identifying felons with unpaid legal obligations, but noted: “We don’t have anything final at this point.” A proposal for felons to seek an advisory opinion from the Department of State is insulting for its embrace of bureaucratic slog. The state is also considering a creating a form allowing felons to declare themselves indigent, a discussion that has carried on for far too long.
Hinkle was right to signal his frustration during a pretrial hearing in March. “If the state is not going to fix it, I will,” he snapped. The state has ignored clear direction from the courts, including the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Hinkle’s ruling and denied the governor’s request for a rehearing. Hinkle sent another signal last month, ruling that his decision in the trial would apply to all felons in Florida - not merely the 17 who sued the state - clearing the way to provide overdue justice to 430,000 felons or more. And as the trial ended Wednesday, Hinkle suggested he would rule at least in part against the state and issue an injunction directing the next steps for Florida in advance of November’s presidential election.
The voters’ intent in passing Amendment 4 must be upheld. The state has wasted its many opportunities and challenged the authority of the federal courts with bad faith and empty promises. The only question now is how much longer felons must wait for justice already delayed and for voters to see their clear intent followed. Hinkle should bring this travesty to a close with a clear, simple process for registering eligible felons to vote.
Online: https://www.tampabay.com
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May 7
The Palm Beach Post on protesters who want states to reopen:
It was infuriating to see the Palm Beach County Commission pummeled on Tuesday by a small but noisy group of protesters who claimed to be fervent defenders of freedom - their freedom to violate public-safety rules, never mind how many other people they might endanger in the process.
It was dismaying to see Commissioner Melissa McKinlay, worried that maskless rebels could sicken herself or her children, succumb to tears. And to hear County Mayor Dave Kerner say that it “hurt my heart” when two fellow commissioners moaned that Kerner and a few other leaders were setting policies during the coronavirus pandemic like some cabal.
This is so disappointing. Up to now, our county commission has impressed throughout this difficult period with common-sense decisions based on data. But residents are now being forced to watch their elected leaders descend into a partisan abyss that discounts the health of the community at large.
Under the pressure, the commissioners agreed on Tuesday to ask Gov. Ron DeSantis to divorce Palm Beach from Miami-Dade and Broward counties and let restrictions on business begin to ease here as they have in most of Florida.
The commissioners did this despite a lack of endorsement from the county’s chief health officer, Dr. Alina Alonso. Under questioning for about an hour - mainly from Commissioners Hal Valeche and Robert Weinroth, who have been vocal in their impatience with the shutdown - Alonso held fast to the view that “we still need to be careful.”
“We can’t just say everything is over,” Alonso said. “We need to maintain the social distancing really until we have a vaccine. So I don’t think this is a matter of just ripping the Band-Aid off and proceeding that everything is fine.”
Not surprisingly, DeSantis, who had previously provided the needed cautions, said he would sign an order allowing Palm Beach County to join the state’s Phase 1 re-opening and abandon coordinated policy-making for the three hardest-hit of Florida counties.
“I think they’re ready for it,” the governor said while visiting the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches testing site on Friday.
But to be ready, we deserve better than the bickering we saw Tuesday in the commission chambers. We need a smart, data-driven plan to re-open - not decisions pushed by emotions and frustrations.
We sympathize with many who are chafing at the restraints we’re under: The wage-earners gone broke, desperate to feed their families. The small-business owners facing ruin. The cooped-up kids and parents at wits’ end from quarantine fatigue.
For others, we have no patience: The loud protesters for “personal freedom” who show up unmasked at a public meeting not caring if they could be asymptomatic and infecting others. The president who eggs them on, discarding precise CDC reopening guidelines on a gamble that a quick business bounce-back will win him re-election, never mind if it hastens the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
The protesters have succeeded in hogging outsized attention on TV news and newspaper front pages. But they are outliers. Poll after poll shows that large majorities of Americans - including here - remain cautious about reopening the economy amid a pandemic just so they can eat in a restaurant, shop in a retail store or go to a barbershop.
Most of us, like the majority of the county commission, are using our common sense. Despite the economic hardship that is getting worse for millions by the day, we’re keeping abreast of the data on infections and fatalities, and largely staying home.
Because - despite the genuinely good news that the infection rate has greatly slowed in Florida - we still face a very serious situation.
On the very day people were begging commissioners to “reopen” Palm Beach County’s economy, the county’s and state’s death toll soared past the sober milestones of 200 and 1,500 COVID-19 fatalities, respectively.
And while Palm Beach County’s reported COVID-19 infections lag those in Broward and Miami-Dade, remember that our level of testing continues to lag woefully behind those counties. Further, remember that almost one-quarter of our residents are over 65 - some 360,000 people in that high-risk group. Both those things cry for us to go slow.
The situation we face is simple: Send more people back to job sites, restaurants and retail stores before we have a proper handle on things, i.e. testing and contact tracing - and more people will get sick, more people will die.
These are tough decisions. But we have to be able to trust that our elected leaders will do what’s best for all residents, not just a self-centered, privileged few, and heed the data.
The common sense? That’s on all of us. To keep ourselves separate from others as much as possible. To halt the spread of microorganisms by covering our mouths and noses in public. To keep reminding ourselves, as difficult and tedious as it is, week after week, that the novel coronavirus is still jumping from human to human, undetected by some, yet fatal for others.
We must do all of this together.
Online: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/
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