A temporary injunction granted by a federal judge means some mayors, elected officials and candidates in the November 2024 elections will avoid a public deep dive into their personal coffers – for now.
On June 11, Florida Southern District Court Judge Melissa Damian granted a temporary injunction to block enforcement of Senate Bill 774 due to its infringement on First Amendment rights of municipal leaders.
Signed in May 2023 by Gov. Ron DeSantis after passing through the Florida Legislature, and effective at the start of 2024, the bill required an expanded pool of elected city, town and village leaders to fill out the highly-detailed Form 6 financial disclosure document instead of the previously-required – and far less detailed – Form 1, used for decades by those same officials.
Form 6, already the standard for certain higher-level county and state offices as a product of Florida’s 1976 “Sunshine Amendment” to its Constitution, requires disclosure of a bevy of financial information including officials’ net worth, assets and liabilities of more than $1,000, values of possessions and household goods, and all sources of income over $1,000.
Form 1, on the other hand, only requires disclosure of major income sources – but not the exact amounts – of more than $2,500, along with property valued over $10,000 and liabilities over $10,000.
Until Monday, seated officials were required to complete Form 6 by July 1, prompting multiple Keys municipalities to enlist the help of outside consultants to simply complete the complex form correctly.
Staff analysis reports from multiple Florida Senate and House committees, Damian wrote, failed to provide justification for the change or consider less burdensome options to achieve the underlying goal of SB 774.
“Neither (report) includes empirical data nor evidence suggesting that either committee investigated, studied, or solicited reports on the need for municipal elected officials to comply with the more comprehensive requirement of Form 6,” she said, eventually agreeing that the bill violates First Amendment rights by “impermissibly compel(ling) content-based, non-commercial speech.”
After concerns in the Legislature over its potential to discourage citizens from running for local offices, roughly 125 municipal elected officials resigned across the state between the bill’s passage and when it took effect, Damian’s ruling said.
On Feb. 15, 2024, a group that now totals more than 170 elected officials sued the Florida Commission on Ethics over the new requirements, arguing the bill was not narrowly tailored enough to achieve the “compelling government interests” of protecting against conflicts of interest and deterring corruption.
Though the state has seen a “steady, upward trend” in the number of ethics complaints filed against municipal leaders, Damian wrote, the Commission on Ethics’ annual report and more failed to establish that the more detailed Form 6 disclosures will address the trend, or that the information is “necessary or relevant to the issue of (the trend).”
“The State enacted SB 774 without giving serious consideration to whether the government interests at stake could be addressed through less burdensome alternative means,” Damian concluded. “It is not apparent … that a change from the Form 1 requirement to the Form 6 requirement was necessary, nor that SB 774 is substantially related to the State’s identified interests.”
Jamie A. Cole, the plaintiffs’ lead attorney, lauded the injunction in a June 11 statement. “Most municipal elected officials receive little to no compensation for their public service, yet they are being asked to disclose their precise net worth, income and assets,” he said. “This legislative overreach has already resulted in the mass resignation of about 125 municipal elected officials and, if allowed, would discourage many others from serving their communities.”
As of Monday, all five council members in Marathon had yet to file what mayor Robyn Still called a “heavy burden” in Form 6.
“I understand the need for transparency, and I understand the reason behind (the disclosures),” she said. “But we’re not doing this for a salary. We have other jobs and other commitments. So to come and ask (us) to fill this out as if it was our full-time job, I think that was an overreach. I did this because I wanted to serve the community, but this doesn’t pay my bills.”
Still said she believed Form 6 would “absolutely” discourage future candidates in local elections, adding that the detailed rundown of possessions could make officials an easier target for home burglaries along with ethics complaints stemming from honest mistakes in completing an onerous form.
The timing of Damian’s order comes at a critical juncture for Monroe County, which will close its qualifying period with a new landscape for candidates in municipal elections in the coming weeks. Required until Monday to file a Form 6 disclosure, candidates now need only a Form 1 instead.
A June 11 memo from the Florida Commission on Ethics confirmed that while current municipal leaders who have already filed Form 6 early may not “replace” the document with a Form 1, those who have yet to do so may now complete Form 1 by the July 1 deadline.
