The University of Florida confirmed that the public has not been allowed to attend board of trustees' private retreats. The university said the law did not apply to the retreats because board members don’t vote or take official actions during those sessions. | Azhalia Pottinger, WUFT News)
Published on December 4, 2024 at 1:00 pm
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The University of Florida board of trustees, the political appointees who govern the state’s flagship university, has repeatedly met since 2018 in private settings where the public was not permitted to attend.
Those meetings include a two-day retreat earlier this fall when trustees discussed UF’s budget, which they expect to formally approve this month.
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Florida’s Sunshine Law says all government bodies must meet openly to take official actions — and allow the public to attend.
The university confirmed that the public has not been allowed to attend the board’s private retreats. It initially said the law didn’t apply to those meetings because board members don’t vote or take official actions in those sessions.
However, the law also requires meetings to be public when board members deal with issues that require what is considered a “foreseeable action” in the future, according to the Florida attorney general’s office and at least five decades of court precedents.
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Three legal experts said the board’s private retreats violated Florida law based on a review of the board’s agendas and presentations during closed-door meetings over the years. The board has conducted seven such private retreats where the public was not allowed since 2018, according to its own records.
For its private retreats since 2023, the UF board generally has disclosed in advance the date, time and city where it’s meeting privately — but not the actual location. It has not openly published its planned agenda or the official minutes of what board members said or did during such private meetings.
“The (board of trustees) is violating the Sunshine Law by not providing notice and allowing the public to attend its retreats,” said Barbara Petersen, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonpartisan group dedicated to government transparency. “The Sunshine Law applies to all meetings of the (board) at which public business is to be transacted or discussed.”
In response to this reporting, UF said this week that its board’s private retreats will be open to anyone who wants to attend and it will specify the location of next year’s retreat in advance of the meeting.
“Our board retreats are open to the public,” spokesman Steve Orlando said in a new statement. “Our intent has never been to close them, and anyone who wishes to attend them may do so.”
The most recent private board retreat was Sept. 12 in Tampa and included a presentation by the university’s chief financial officer, Taylor Jantz. It discussed revenues, appropriations, tuition and projected expenses for the future, with a note on one page of Jantz’s presentation that said, “We will seek formal approval of the FY25 budget in October,” according to documents the university turned over under Florida’s public records law.
At the same meeting, the trustees discussed national rankings, marketing, enrollment, UF Health financials and UF Health’s vision, strategy and execution, according to the documents.
The board is expected at its meeting Dec. 12 to approve the exact fiscal 2025 budget that Jantz presented to the board in September during its private meeting, according to its published agenda for that meeting. Every dollar figure in every category of revenues and expenses is identical to what the board saw behind closed doors months earlier.
No other public university in Florida has regularly held such private retreats that exclude the public, according to a survey of the boards’ calendars and review of official meeting minutes.
The UF private retreats are held annually at golf resorts and luxury hotels, including the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach and the Alford Inn, a boutique hotel in Winter Park in central Florida that includes an art gallery and spa, according to the board’s records, obtained under the public records law after the meetings had already taken place.
Public money paid for the private meetings: UF spent about $49,000 on the board’s two-day retreat in 2023 and nearly $41,000 in 2024. The 2023 figure includes $19,173 for two dinners. The following year, the board spent $5,897 for one dinner. The board’s longtime chairman, Morteza “Mori” Hosseini, personally paid for another dinner for an unspecified amount.
The board hosted its Sept. 12 dinner at Tampa’s Stovall House, an exclusive private social club that operates out of a $12.7 million historic home on the waterfront, according to the club’s marketing materials and expenditure amounts.
The records did not indicate how many people ate at the retreat dinners except that they included as many as 13 trustees, unspecified members of the UF president’s Cabinet and as many as 13 presenters at this year’s two-day retreat.
Orlando, the university spokesman, previously said the UF board’s retreats were legally kept private because the board made no decisions during them and received only informational presentations. He said the meetings were not covered by the Sunshine Law but said materials presented at these meetings are public records under the law.
“Each board member receives thorough instruction on Florida’s open meetings and open records laws when they join the board,” Orlando said in a statement. “In addition, the general counsel attends every board meeting and retreat to help ensure the board is in compliance with all applicable state laws.”
One trustee, Richard Cole, a Miami personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said in an interview the board has always tried to follow the Sunshine Law. Cole said the university’s top lawyer would have advised the board if meetings needed to be conducted openly.
Sarah Delphia Lynne, chair of UF’s Faculty Senate, attended this year’s retreat as the board’s faculty representative.
“It allows for an opportunity for a unit on our campus to really do a great informational deep dive with our trustees,” Lynne said in a phone interview. “It gives our trustees an opportunity to really know our campus so that they can advocate for us.”
Hosseini did not respond to an email and message left with his administrative assistant. Trustee Marsha Decker Powers, a retired health care CEO, declined to discuss the private retreats. Other trustees also did not return phone and email messages. The university’s general counsel’s office also did not respond to two emails asking about the private meetings.
The legal history requiring such meetings to be public — when topics later will be subject to votes or actions by the board — includes rulings over decades by Florida’s Supreme Court and appellate judges and formal legal opinions by the attorney general’s office.
These include a 2023 opinion from Attorney General Ashley Moody that banned Florida universities from allowing outside search firms to anonymously survey members of presidential search committees. Moody wrote, “The Sunshine Law applies to any gathering of two or more members of the same board to discuss any matter that might foreseeably come to that board for action.”
In a 1985 case, Neu vs. Miami Herald Pub. Co., the Supreme Court upheld a lower appeals ruling after the Miami Herald sued under the Sunshine Law about city council meetings the public couldn’t attend. The court said all discussions of public matters are implicated under the Sunshine Law by votes that may take place later.
“Every step in the decision-making process, including the decision itself, is a necessary preliminary to formal action,” the Supreme Court wrote in a 1969 case, Times Publishing Company v. Williams. “It follows that each such step constitutes an ‘official act,’ an indispensable requisite to ‘formal action,’ within the meaning of the act.”
An attorney general’s opinion in 1998 summarized earlier Supreme Court rulings and said, “The courts have recognized that it is the entire decision-making process that is covered, not merely meetings at which a final vote is taken.”
In a more recent case, the school board in Martin County, north of Palm Beach, paid $20,000 after a judge ruled in 2013 that it violated the Sunshine Law when it met privately to discuss issues about an adult education school.
The state Supreme Court said in a separate 1983 case, Wood v. Marston, that the Sunshine Law was intended to “frustrate all evasive devices” and said the law’s provisions must include “the collective inquiry and discussion stages” about matters that governing bodies might consider. That case involved UF’s student newspaper and others suing the university’s president over secretive practices for hiring a new law school dean.
Legal experts said the UF board has broken the law.
“Their actions are inconsistent with what the state attorney general says government agencies should do to follow the Sunshine Law in Florida,” said David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment at the university.
“When government bodies meet, they should be open for the public to watch, whether just talking or taking votes,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do, to build the public’s trust and keep our leaders accountable.”
Anthony Conticello, founder of the Conticello Law Firm in Tallahassee, which specializes in the Sunshine Law, also said the board’s private meetings broke the law. Conticello, a graduate of UF’s law school, noted that the university’s campus is home to the Brechner Center, which researches government transparency and advocates against policies that hide information from the public.
“They should walk the walk,” Conticello said.
Trustees at some other public universities — including the University of Central Florida, Florida A&M, Florida Atlantic University and Florida Polytechnic University — hold meetings described as retreats but allow time for public comment, provide Zoom links for outsiders or provide a phone number to listen during such meetings.
Other schools, including Florida Gulf Coast University, the University of South Florida and New College of Florida, do not conduct retreats, private or otherwise.
Trustees at Florida International University last held a retreat in 2018 but allowed the public to attend. The board of the University of West Florida held a retreat in 2021 that was open to the public.
Florida State held its first off-campus retreat this year since 2018 in Miami, where the agenda indicated no one from the public attended. It said, “No action items will be heard, and no proposals will be voted on.”
Violating Florida’s Sunshine Law could be prosecuted as a criminal misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. That is unlikely in this case: Criminal prosecutions for sunshine violations are rare, and jailing officials would require proving they knowingly broke the law. The governor can also remove from office board members who break the law, but DeSantis appointed eight of the UF board’s 13 members. Unintentional violations carry a fine up to $500.
Brian Kramer, the newly reelected Republican state prosecutor in Alachua County, which includes UF’s campus, said in an interview that a decision about prosecuting Sunshine Law violations would be based on three considerations: probable cause, likelihood to win the case, and whether their actions were justifiable. Kramer said his office also would need to determine whether an official intentionally broke the law and whether prosecution was in the public’s interest.
Kramer declined to say whether he believed the UF board had violated the law and said he did not want to review any of its meeting minutes.
The UF board’s formal notes from its private meetings, known as “minutes,” have not been published for the last two such retreats. The board turned over a copy of Jantz’s budget presentation from its September private meeting under Florida’s public records law.
At a private retreat in 2022, Hosseini recommended creating a new panel to review UF’s national rankings and formally appointed Powers, the board member, to the group. The meeting where this happened included representatives from the university but no members of the public, the minutes said.
During a 2019 private retreat, the board discussed a conflict of interest policy. It later generated national headlines when UF cited the same policy to temporarily block three prominent professors in 2021 from testifying in a voting rights lawsuit against DeSantis and other top state officials. No members of the public attended the 2019 meeting, the minutes said.
The 2018 meeting notes showed Hosseini asked the board during the private retreat to vote on a lease in Jacksonville for UF Health’s offices, which was unanimously approved. Attendees at the meeting included board members and university administrators but not members of the public, the minutes said.
