DeSantis administration settles lawsuit, will disclose COVID data withheld to disguise severity of pandemic, circumventing state public records law

[essentialsaltes]

After two years of denying that detailed COVID-19 data relating to 2021 infections and vaccines existed, and then being forced by a court to turn it over, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Health have agreed to a settlement that will require the state to disclose coronavirus data on its web site and pay attorneys fees for attempting to circumvent state public records law.

The settlement, announced Monday by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a non-profit public records watchdog which sued the state on behalf of former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, requires the department to publish detailed COVID-19 data on the Florida Department of Health website and pay $152,250 in legal fees to attorneys representing FLCGA and Smith.

“The department lied about the existence of these public records in court and did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of COVID even while the Delta variant ripped through Florida — a decision that cost many lives,” Smith, an Orlando Democrat, said in a statement.

At the time [summer 2021] a third wave of cases was ballooning in Florida and hospitalizations were rising dramatically, but the Department of Health was changing the way it reported death data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, giving the appearance of a pandemic in decline, a Miami Herald analysis found.

The settlement agreement vindicates the position that “transparency and accountability are not negotiable. The Constitution mandates it,’’ said Michael Barfield, director of Public Access Initiatives at FLCGA. “The Department hid public records during the height of the pandemic to fit a political narrative that Florida was open for business.”

 

[CRAZY_CAT_WOMAN]

He should be fired for deceiving his people.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Including the ABC article (as it has some additional info and context that's missing from the Miami Herald article referenced in the Yahoo link provided)

Florida settles lawsuit over COVID data, agrees to provide weekly stats to the public

Florida will provide COVID-19 data to the public again after a former Democratic state representative settled a lawsuit with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration over the decision two years ago to stop sharing information on the virus’ spread o...

abcnews.go.com

This seems more like a "for show" lawsuit, and one that FL were willing to pay just to get the case off their table.

Then-Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith sued after the Department of Health denied his public records request for COVID-19 data in 2021 and announced the settlement Monday. He was joined by the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

Florida stopped daily COVID-19 updates on its online dashboard in June 2021, citing a decrease in cases and an increase in vaccinations.

The Department of Health admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement and said it has always provided the data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Department spokesman Jae Williams III criticized Smith and the Florida Center for Government Accountability in an email, saying the lawsuit was a political stunt.


In a nutshell, a Florida Rep (with an axe to grind) was trying to demand gift-wrapped records to use as political ammo against DeSantis. (when they could've just referenced the CDC website like the rest of did)

Many other states stopped updating their state-specific dashboards around the same time window in favor of just reporting the numbers to the CDC (who publishes them)

 

[The Barbarian]

In a nutshell, a Florida Rep (with an axe to grind) was trying to demand gift-wrapped records to use as political ammo against DeSantis. (when they could've just referenced the CDC website like the rest of did)

Many other states stopped updating their state-specific dashboards around the same time window in favor of just reporting the numbers to the CDC (who publishes them)

For the same reason; to hide the severity of the situation from the citizens of their states.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

For the same reason; to hide the severity of the situation from the citizens of their states.

How is it "hiding" the information if it's in plain sight on the CDC website?

Is there any particular reason why a state government IT Department (which has far less funding and resources than the CDC) should have to continue to maintain a duplicate (more watered down) version of the CDC website that has granular data that let's you drill down to county and view every metric?

Ohio had a covid dashboard, even when it was being updated regularly, I still opted to use the CDC one.

 

[The Barbarian]

How is it "hiding" the information if it's in plain sight on the CDC website?

They don't have a choice for CDC. The law makes them hand over the data. But the law doesn't require them to make it readily available for the citizens of their state in their public health data. So they did what you'd expect any bureaucrat to do; they hid that from state records.

Is there any particular reason why a state government IT Department (which has far less funding and resources than the CDC) should have to continue to maintain a duplicate (more watered down) version of the CDC website that has granular data that let's you drill down to county and view every metric?

Not unless they wanted their citizens to know the facts. Which the governors of a number of states did not want. I'm not sure how much money you think it requires to put a document on a state website, but it appears you've grossly overestimated the cost.

Ohio had a covid dashboard, even when it was being updated regularly, I still opted to use the CDC one.

I didn't say it was an efficient means of hiding the information. But it was the best they could do, given the law.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Including the ABC article (as it has some additional info and context that's missing from the Miami Herald article referenced in the Yahoo link provided)

Florida settles lawsuit over COVID data, agrees to provide weekly stats to the public

Florida will provide COVID-19 data to the public again after a former Democratic state representative settled a lawsuit with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration over the decision two years ago to stop sharing information on the virus’ spread o...

abcnews.go.com

This seems more like a "for show" lawsuit, and one that FL were willing to pay just to get the case off their table.

Then-Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith sued after the Department of Health denied his public records request for COVID-19 data in 2021 and announced the settlement Monday. He was joined by the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

Florida stopped daily COVID-19 updates on its online dashboard in June 2021, citing a decrease in cases and an increase in vaccinations.

The Department of Health admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement and said it has always provided the data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Department spokesman Jae Williams III criticized Smith and the Florida Center for Government Accountability in an email, saying the lawsuit was a political stunt.


In a nutshell, a Florida Rep (with an axe to grind) was trying to demand gift-wrapped records to use as political ammo against DeSantis. (when they could've just referenced the CDC website like the rest of did)

Many other states stopped updating their state-specific dashboards around the same time window in favor of just reporting the numbers to the CDC (who publishes them)

Yeah, I'm not sure what these records disclose that the CDC doesn't. People's medical records aren't "public information" and the CDC already published the meta data.

I'm confused about what is claimed to have been hidden or what this is supposed to reveal.

 

[The Barbarian]

Yeah, I'm not sure what these records disclose that the CDC doesn't.

The issue is that DeSantis illegally withheld the information from state databases accessible to the public. He's admitted the violation and is correcting it. We all get why he tried to hide it; it's a natural bureaucratic impulse to cover up mistakes. But this time he got caught.

People's medical records aren't "public information"

But the aggregated data is. And that's what DeSantis got dinged for hiding from the people of Florida. Again, it's not surprising that he tried to do it. But he got caught.

I'm confused about what is claimed to have been hidden

The lawsuit and the report pretty well shows it. Is it possible English is not your first language?

 

[The Barbarian]

Is there any particular reason why a state government IT Department (which has far less funding and resources than the CDC) should have to continue to maintain a duplicate (more watered down) version of the CDC website that has granular data that let's you drill down to county and view every metric?

The law requires it. The governor thought that could be ignored, but he got caught.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

They don't have a choice for CDC. The law makes them hand over the data. But the law doesn't require them to make it readily available for the citizens of their state in their public health data. So they did what you'd expect any bureaucrat to do; they hid that from state records.


Not unless they wanted their citizens to know the facts. Which the governors of a number of states did not want. I'm not sure how much money you think it requires to put a document on a state website, but it appears you've grossly overestimated the cost.


I didn't say it was an efficient means of hiding the information. But it was the best they could do, given the law.

But the CDC was already making it readily available, and in much more user-friendly form. (as did several national publications like NY Times and WaPo, where they imported the CDC data and maintained nice easy to use websites). Why the need for a redundant "lesser" rendition of the same data?

Let's keep it real, the people who were that worried about Covid in late 2021 (to the point where they'd let it dictate their behavior and control every aspect of their lives) already had the CDC, NY Times, and WaPo covid tracker sites in their Chrome favorites.

To the other point.
Storing a raw document or csv file on a website doesn't cost much, but if you want the data to be stored, normalized, indexed, searchable, presented in pivot tables, and allow users to sort and filter and generate bar graphs, etc... that takes IT resources ranging from DBAs to BI devs (who specialize in ETLs), Web API integration with all the various medical systems in the state, and Front-end Web devs to present it all in a user-friendly format.

That's not a cheap project in terms of IT staffing & resources. "It's just a graph on a website, that should be quick and easy right?" is the kind of thing the marketing staff and novice project managers usually say when they're impatient with the timeline of the development cycle.


All of that aside, what exactly do you think the nefarious motives would be behind "trying to hide it" even if it could be definitively proven that that's what they were doing?

You think a bunch of red-state Florida conservatives would look at a website and say "Wow, the covid numbers are bad...I guess we'll stop liking DeSantis and become Democrats now"?

 

[ThatRobGuy]

The law requires it. The governor thought that could be ignored, but he got caught.

Which law requires that every state has to publish and maintain a state-specific website with granular data about the spread of respiratory viruses?

A lot of states discontinued their state-specific covid trackers well before the Federal government ended the public health emergency...if that was, in fact, a violation of law, how has the department of justice not taken action against ~20 states at this point?

 

[The Barbarian]

Which law requires that every state has to publish and maintain a state-specific website with granular data about the spread of respiratory viruses?

The one that DeSantis agreed to stop violating in the court settlement.

...if that was, in fact, a violation of law, how has the department of justice not taken action against ~20 states at this point?

State law, not a federal law.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

The one that DeSantis agreed to stop violating in the court settlement.

State law, not a federal law.

Agreeing to the settlement out of court isn't the same as "proof of guilt" of violating any law.

In many cases, the amount of legal fees and court costs exceeds what it would cost to pay a low settlement amount.

In this case, the number was $152k. ...and per the ABC article:
The Department of Health admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement

And in this case, the law in question isn't a law that suggests that a state has an obligation to provide neat, concise data on respiratory viruses, it was a dispute over public records law.

The plaintiff was demanding that the DeSantis administration give them detailed, specific covid information pertaining to their county (when that data was available from umpteen other sources)

They didn't want the data for purely inquisitive reasons, they wanted the data from DeSantis specifically (because they already knew the answer) so they could say "aha! see DeSantis admits covid is bad and just didn't want to admit it!!"

Like the ABC article referenced, it was a political stunt.


This is the left-wing equivalent of when Republican senators were grilling judicial nominees on questions they already knew the answer to. They know the answer, they already had the information they claimed to want, they just want their opponent to have to say it out loud because they know it'd put their opponent on the hot seat with their constituents/supporters.

The fact that the plaintiff said "DeSantis's administration refused to give me the numbers when Delta was spiking in the state of Florida!"...ummm, if they knew Delta was spiking in their state, then they already their answer. They just wanted to publicly force DeSantis to acknowledge it because they knew it would make him look bad in front of his base that appreciated his "we need to try to get back to normal" stance on it.

It's the left-wing version of the "What is woman?" or "Do you denounce Antifa?" questions republicans liked to ask democrats publicly.

 

[The Barbarian]

Agreeing to the settlement out of court isn't the same as "proof of guilt" of violating any law.

He got caught. He agreed to stop breaking the law. End of the story.

 

[The Barbarian]

They just wanted to publicly force DeSantis to acknowledge it because they knew it would make him look bad in front of his base that appreciated his "we need to try to get back to normal" stance on it.

And DeSantis wanted to cover it up. But he got caught.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

And DeSantis wanted to cover it up. But he got caught.

Cover up what?

Let's boil it down to brass tacks.

A lot of DeSantis's stances on the matter were proven to be right. If we're going to fault someone for only being 80% right about covid, then Fauci is on the hot seat too.

"Get vaccinated if you're concerned because everyone's going to catch it at some point, protect the elderly and immunocompromised, everyone else can get back to normal" isn't a controversial viewpoint knowing what we know now.

Suing him for being right (but because a lot of people 2 years ago, at the time, thought he was wrong) is silly.

Look at the stipulations of the settlement, Florida now has to have a state-specific website to provide detailed covid data until 2026, that's a waste of resources, yes?

 

[Ana the Ist]

We all get why he tried to hide it

Do tell....why?

The lawsuit and the report pretty well shows it. Is it possible English is not your first language?

Quote it then.

I sincerely doubt you read either a lawsuit or report.

 

[Ana the Ist]

The law requires it. The governor thought that could be ignored, but he got caught.

Who cares? If you go to one website and the data is available...I don't really care if it's available on another website.

 

[The Barbarian]

The law requires it. The governor thought that could be ignored, but he got caught.

Who cares?

DeSantis didn't care until he got caught. Then he obeyed the law.

If you go to one website and the data is available...I don't really care if it's available on another website.

Turns out, the law does. And Gov. Ron learned the hard way. The report details the loss.

Quote it then.

Former State Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith first filed the lawsuit in 2021 against the Florida Department of Health and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, after the department refused to continue to post data on COVID to their public dashboard under orders from DeSantis. Access to Covid-19 data was restricted after the Republican governor decided to open Florida for business in June 2021 just as the Delta variant spread throughout the state. During the information blackout, thousands of Floridians died from COVID-19 in the summer and early fall of 2021.

In a series of posts shared to X, formerly Twitter, Guillermo Smith celebrated the settlement while calling out DeSantis' decision to restrict information in order to downplay the threat of COVID-19, saying the decision has cost many lives while alleging it also played into the governor's political agenda.

"After a 2-year battle, the DeSantis administration has agreed to settle my public records lawsuit against them for illegally hiding COVID health data while the Delta variant ripped thru Florida killing 23,000 people. We persisted. We prevailed. We held them accountable," Guillermo Smith wrote on X.

"The Department LIED about the existence of these public records in court + did everything to restrict information and downplay the threat of COVID in order to fit their political narrative. They did this during the deadliest wave of the pandemic—a decision that cost many lives," Guillermo Smith added.

The settlement agreement requires the Department to provide detailed COVID-19 data for the next three years, including vaccination counts, case counts, and deaths, aggregated weekly, by county, age group, gender, and race.

While neither the Florida Department of Health nor Ladapo admit any fault, the state has also agreed to pay all legal fees in the case.

Ron DeSantis agrees to release COVID data after 2-year battle

Florida Gov. DeSantis' administration settled a lawsuit over COVID-19 data and will now release it to the public.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Ana the Ist]

The law requires it. The governor thought that could be ignored, but he got caught.

Don't care. The information was available.

DeSantis didn't care until he got caught. Then he obeyed the law.

Again, don't care. The information was available.

Turns out, the law does. And Gov. Ron learned the hard way. The report details the loss.

Cut out the grandstanding and soapbox sermon and you're left with...

While neither the Florida Department of Health nor Ladapo admit any fault,

Nobody claims fault. A nothingburger.