A deal is rejected on financial disclosures for municipal elected officials

Florida Commission on Ethics members on Tuesday rejected an effort to try to reach a settlement with plaintiffs challenging a law that required municipal elected officials to disclose detailed information about their personal finances.

U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian in June issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the 2023 law, siding with municipal officials throughout the state who challenged it.

Damian’s decision came three weeks before a July 1 deadline for filing the information.

Damian’s ruling said that the Legislature did not adequately justify a need for the law after decades of the state requiring less-detailed financial disclosures by municipal officials.

Damian, who is based in Fort Lauderdale, wrote that a law “compelling speech, as with a statute forbidding speech, falls within the purview of the First Amendment.”

Both sides have filed motions for summary judgment in the lawsuit, but Damian has not issued a final ruling in the case.

Bill Stafford, a lawyer for Attorney General Ashley Moody, told ethics commissioners, who are defendants in the lawsuit, Tuesday that a decision finding that the 2023 law unconstitutionally violated the First Amendment could have broad implications.

If Damian rules that the law is unconstitutional, Moody is recommending that the commission should appeal, according to Stafford.

“The issues would apply beyond this context, in terms of what is compelled speech,” Stafford said.

Commissioner Laird Lile suggested that the commission try to reach a settlement with the municipal officials, such as by requiring less-detailed information about financial disclosures, to prevent the possibility that the law is overturned.

“If the commission loses this case, it seems to me that’s a pretty big deal,” Lile said, adding that such a scenario “would put at risk the entire financial disclosure scheme.”

Lile asked why Moody’s lawyers weren’t trying to work out a deal with the plaintiffs.

“We feel that in this case, as in any constitutional case, our duty here is to defend the constitutionality of the statute. Given that, it severely limits our settlement opportunities,” Stafford said.

Lile offered a motion seeking to ask lawyers for the commission and plaintiffs to work on a “negotiated resolution” to end the lawsuit in an effort to eliminate “the future risk that a final judgment in favor of the plaintiffs … would put at risk the entire financial disclosure scheme.”

Commission Chair Luis Fusté, however, said that settling the lawsuit might not put an end to the battle over financial disclosures.

“I feel there’s already a target on the financial scheme to begin with and I think that, other than seeing it through, would still leave challenges in the future,” Fusté said.

The commission voted 6-2 to reject the motion. The law (SB 774) required mayors and other elected municipal officials, such as members of city councils, to file annual reports detailing issues such as their net worths, incomes and assets.

Other elected officials, such as the governor and state legislators, have long faced such requirements.