During the 2005 session, Florida lawmakers passed 13 new exemptions to the state's open government laws. An exemption is a law that clearly states certain records cannot be made public or certain meetings are not required to be open to the public.
All of the exemptions passed in 2005 concerned public records, while two also related to open meetings. For example, one new exemption makes some meetings of the Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services Board exempt. It also exempts certain investigative records of the board until investigations are complete.
Click here for details on each of the exemptions.
Nine of the 13 exemptions were passed unanimously by legislators in both the Florida Senate and the Florida House of Representatives. In fact, all of the exemptions were passed unanimously by Florida Senators.
The two exemptions that faced the most resistance by Representatives were the Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services Board exemption and an exemption regarding hurricane data. The hurricane data exemption creates a public records exception for "reports of hurricane loss data and associated exposure data" specific to a particular insurance company, as reported to the state in order to develop a hurricane loss projection model. Thirty-nine representatives voted against the hurricane data exemption; 30 voted against the funeral board bill.
To find out how your representative voted on open government laws in 2005, first use the map below to find your district number. Next, click on the district numbers below for your representative's voting record.
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