It didn't take long for the city of Milton to get the case it filed May 15 against Mayor Heather Lindsay in front of a judge.
On Monday, Santa Rosa County Circuit Court Judge J. Scott Duncan set a June 13 hearing date for a motion filed by Milton City Attorney Alex Andrade on behalf of the city.
At the hearing the judge will be asked to address Andrade's concerns that the mayor has failed to provide him with requested public records and his fear that Lindsay may delete documents to render them "irretrievable."
Andrade is seeking permission to subpoena AT&T to obtain phone records from Lindsay that she "was already required by law to produce."
"Because of the existence of multiple responsive records (Lindsay) has previously failed to produce, and (Lindsay's) documented tendency to delay her production of public records, (the city) should be permitted to seek the original metadata records from (Lindsay's) cell phone provider," the motion states. "(The city) possesses a good faith belief that (Lindsay) will delete or destroy such records, and time is of the essence."
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Lindsay reported late Thursday that she had turned in what she believes are all documents she had been requested to produce. She said she will meet with the State Attorney's Office ahead of the pending hearing to "go over what I've produced."
"I believe the case is going to be moot in just a few days," she had said Wednesday, after announcing her plan to turn in the public records she was required to produce.
Lindsay said that she has been asked over time by Andrade to produce a host of public records and at no time during the course of her good faith efforts to comply did anyone ever point out to her that she had failed to turn over any specific item. She again reiterated that she found the city attorney's efforts to be a waste of taxpayers' time.
"This is an impractical use of the judicial process for Mr. Andrade to clutter up the courts with this legal dispute," she said.
The quick turnaround between the time of the May 29 filing of the city motion and the judge moving just two working days later to set a hearing date is directly related to the statute under which Florida's Sunshine Law was created and how the state's judges have interpreted its intent.
As Andrade noted in his motion, Section 119.11(1) of State Statute requires in cases involving public records the court set “an immediate hearing, giving the case priority over other pending cases.”
He cites a 2012 ruling in which Florida's 4th District Court of Appeals, in examining the statute language, held that an immediate hearing "does not mean one scheduled within a reasonable time but means what the statute says: immediate."
Andrade received the Milton City Council's blessing to pursue legal action against the mayor in mid-May. His suit claims she has refused to turn over public recordshe has been attempting to obtain from her, in some cases, for nearly a year.
The case has generated an impressive amount of paperwork in the short time since its filing. Twenty documents have thus far been turned over to the court, including the motion seeking the now scheduled hearing. That memorandum, rebutting Lindsay's objection to the subpoena of her telephone records, is 141-pages long.
Much of the material submitted to the court contained in the memorandum, Andrade explains in his motion, consists of public records released by Tom Powers, the chairman of the Milton Planning Board and a member of the city's Historic Preservation Board.
Andrade states that Powers' release of group chat texts that included several in the community, including Lindsay, appears to verify the existence of records the mayor has argued she didn't have. Specifically it provides evidence of conversations between the mayor and both citizen activist Pam Mitchell and former City Clerk Dawn Molinero. Andrade had specifically sought records of those conversations.
"If not for the extensive file of text messages produced by Tom Powers, (the city) would have never known ofthe 86 pages of 'group chat' communications," the court filing states. "(The city) is incapable, without the assistance of this subpoena or a court order compelling Lindsay to follow the law, to determine the extent of communications."
Powers, who as a board member is subject to public records' law, said that he had released to Andrade "everything responsive to his request" and defended any conversation he might have had with Lindsay outside of discussing the business of the boards he sits upon.
"Outside of the boards," he said. "I can discuss anything I want to discuss with the mayor."
He said he also, inadvertently, released a much larger file to Andrade that included his medical information, personal conversations with family and personal identification information.
"I asked Mr. Andrade to redact it and send it back. He refused," Powers said. "There was a lot of stuff he refused to return."
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Andrade said that while no information not considered a public record would be made public, he is powerless under the law to return documents submitted in response to a records request.
In approximately 30 of the group text messages turned over by Powers, those listed as being produced by Lindsay do not appear, and the letters "str" are found in the place of whatever comment had been made.
Powers said the letters indicate "string of text." He called the missing verbiage "the fault of the computer."
"The application I was using did not import all of the text messages," he said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Alex Andrade case against Milton Mayor Heather Lindsey gets date
