After a shake-up in the Editorial staff at the T-U, here's the response I received from Wayne Ezell:
Thank you for your letter of January 14 in which you criticized the
Times-Union for not publishing the Sunshine Law violations story until
several weeks after the City Council elections.
Frank Denton, the Times-Union’s interim editor, asked me to look into your
concerns and to respond. I discussed the matter with several members of the
newsroom staff and reviewed the stories and editorials in question.
You raised several issues and made several assertions, including the
following:
1. You questioned whether the Sunshine Law package published June 14 should
have been published prior to the city elections, which were on March 20
(primary) and May 15 (runoff).
2. You stated you had read comments by the Times-Union stating
the information was withheld so as not to impact the elections.
3. By withholding the information, which could have played a key
role in voter decisions, the Times-Union denied its readers information they
should reasonably expect it to provide, which you described as a violation a
public trust.
4. The issue of Sunshine Law violations did not come up in editorial board
interviews, even thought the newspaper was aware of alleged violations.
5. The Times-Union, with knowledge of the alleged Sunshine Law
violations, was hypocritical in that it endorsed incumbents that it would
later disclose had apparently violated the Sunshine Laws.
Summary
The timing and scope of this tedious investigative
project was such that it would have been practically impossible to provide a
coherent story, adequately reported and fair to all concerned, prior to the
elections.
My review has turned up nothing to indicate that anyone intended to withhold
information for purposes of impacting the elections or that anyone stated
that was the case. To the contrary, there were regrets expressed internally
that the timing was such that the project would not be complete before the
elections.
At the time endorsements were arrived at, editors knew it was apparent that
members of the council had not been adhering to the Sunshine Law, but they
were far from being able to conclude with sufficient certainty that there
were specific violations. It would be several weeks before editors had
sufficient information to confront council members with the investigation’s
findings, ask for explanations and publish a story that would meet the usual
standards for such reporting.
Background
The Sunshine Law project began taking shape in early 2006, after
editorial writer Joe Adams became suspicious that there may be violations,
based in part on a story written by Beth Kormanik about four council members
exchanging inappropriate e-mails about a pending matter.
In January, Adams asked the council secretary, Cheryl Brown, about being
able to view all council member e-mails on one central computer, as opposed
to visiting individual offices. It took until early May to set up that
system. During ensuing months Adams turned up additional information to
indicate there may be violations.
In December 2006 he made a series of formal requests to see all meeting
notices, minutes of meetings, tape recordings of meetings and calendars for
each of the 19 council members dating back to June 2005.
Adams began reviewing what eventually would be more than 4,000 pages
calendars, meeting notices, minutes and other materials. He used yellow
sticky notes to cross-tabulate information in calendars with meeting
notices, minutes of meetings and other information.
In February, Adams and Editorial Page Editor Mike Clark met with newsroom
editors and suggested the newsroom should take on the project because of its
scope, the amount of work remaining and because it could be more
appropriately presented in a news story format.
Reporter Beth Kormanik developed a spreadsheet with columns for member
meetings, whether meetings were noticed, whether minutes were generated and
so forth. She combed through the more than 4,000 pages as she completed the
project while continuing to provide beat coverage from City Hall.
Some of the material requested by Adams was not received for several weeks,
including one key council member’s calendar information that was received in
May.
When the spreadsheet was nearing completion Kormanik began interviewing
council members, asking them to respond to her findings. That was in April
or May, according to editors. Kormanik also began working with designers in
April on the presentation of the information.
Editors planned to publish the package on June 24. However, questioning of
council members by Kormanik and the general counsel by the editorial board
prompted the city to draft and consider a Sunshine Law Compliance Act
designed to address the issues being raised in the questioning. That was
introduced on June 12. The editors then moved up the schedule for publishing
the package to June 14. The first of several editorials appeared two days
later.
Given the imperative to be absolutely certain of the facts before leveling
serious accusations and given the need to ask each council member for their
response or explanations before leveling such allegations in print, it seems
unlikely any part of the report could have been published prior to the March
20 election.
While some aspects of the story perhaps could have been rushed into print,
the nature of the story that ultimately took shape prevented it from being
presented piecemeal.
This was much more than a story about one or two or even several individual
council members violating the Sunshine Law. The more important story pursued
by the Times-Union was one of widespread abuses over many months by a
majority of the council.
The completed story described a culture of abuse so pervasive that it turned
up 47 instances of meetings that member calendars indicated were about public
business but which were held without public notice or follow-up minutes.
An additional 77 meetings had no notice or minutes but the member calendars
didn’t indicate the purpose of the meeting.
During the endorsement process the intent was to discuss the Sunshine Law
with each candidate and that was done in most cases, although perhaps not all,
according to those on the editorial page staff.
A questionnaire provided to all City Council candidates by the editorial
page asked “How do you intend to comply with Florida’s public records and
government in the sunshine laws?” Each of the candidates in the District 14
race responded to the question on their questionnaire. Such questionnaires
are often used during the editorial board interview of candidates. However,
given the early stages of the evolving investigation, which was now being
led by the newsroom, it would have been unusual to discuss the findings with
candidates in that forum.
The candidate endorsement interviews began in February (at about the time
Kormanik’s spreadsheet was getting underway) and ended in time for the first
of 12 council endorsements to be written and published beginning March 4. At
that time, the investigative project was far from concluded.
As for how the Sunshine Law findings figured into the endorsements, every
indication is that at the time endorsement decisions were being made in late
February and early March, the editorial board had not accumulated the
information necessary to conclude that there had been violations by specific
members. Nor were they prepared to share the investigation’s findings and
ask for a response from incumbents believed to be in violation.
At that stage it would have been unfair, not to mention ill-advised, to
attempt to base an endorsement on incomplete information that had not been
vetted by the usual processes employed by newsrooms in such investigations.
I trust this addresses the issues you raised, but I invite you to contact me
if I can provide more information or if you would like to discuss this
further.
Again, thank you for contacting our editors about this.
Wayne
Wayne Ezell
Reader Advocate
The Florida Times-Union
904-359-4217
wayne.ezell@jacksonville.com
T-U Awards? Timing Isn't Everything.
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