By KATHLEEN CHAPMAN and WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers
Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice could help prevent its private contractors, and itself, from recycling violent and incompetent employees by simply enforcing the state's long-standing open records law.
Florida law allows anyone to see job applications, disciplinary records and letters of termination of public employees such as teachers and police officers. And the state's contracts with its juvenile justice operators require them to follow that law as strictly as any public agency.
But many contractors, who are awarded millions in taxpayer money, are reluctant to share personnel information with anyone, even one another.
Some companies responded promptly to requests from The Palm Beach Post for information about their employees, but others balked, incorrectly assuming their private status exempted them from the records law. A few companies that run juvenile programs here but are based in other states argued that Florida laws did not apply to them.
After The Post started requesting the records, state officials reminded their contractors of the open records law, which state officials have long allowed the contractors to ignore. All but one company then complied.
But the same companies that opened employee files to the newspaper still are failing to give those same records to other companies that are making crucial hiring decisions.
Several contractors who were asked in recent weeks about their reference policies continued to cite nonapplicable federal privacy laws, said they could confirm only dates of employment or said that to protect terminated employees they would not share work histories.
Mark Fontaine, who represents the state's private contractors as head of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, said that needs to change.
"There is not a provider that wants to hire a person who's been found violating a kid's rights or not performing up to their duties," he said. "Nobody wants that employee."
Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice could sanction companies that violate the records law, but the agency has been a toothless watchdog on the issue. The state has its own history of refusing to conduct business within view of the public.
This year, state juvenile justice officials filed a motion in court to block the release of critical sections of a grand jury report that outlined their failure to fix problems at the Florida Institute for Girls in suburban West Palm Beach.
Top juvenile justice officials also lost their jobs after legislators investigating a teen's death at the Miami-Dade detention center felt they were tight-lipped and secretive.
Florida's private contractors say they aren't trying to hide anything - rather, they withhold information out of fear of being sued by a former employee who doesn't get a job because of a bad reference.
If enforced, however, the records law would compel Florida's juvenile justice providers to exchange complete files on their ex-employees without fear of lawsuits.
One state contractor, the Martin County Sheriff's Office, which runs a juvenile boot camp, has followed an open records policy for years. They, too, fear liability and train supervisors not to offer opinions about employees.
"We are not allowed to chitchat," sheriff's spokeswoman Jenell Atlas said.
But the boot camp does not hire anyone without checking the applicant's file at past agencies. The sheriff's office also invites anyone to read their former employees' entire files.
"We say please come in and look at this employee file, it can tell you more than I can tell you," Atlas said.
Though the state has advised its contractors to do the same, it has not taken punitive action when they refused.
In October 2003, for example, The Post asked Miami's Bay Point Schools for a list of its current and former employees, along with details such as their job title and the dates they were hired and fired.
Nearly three months later, Joseph Klock Jr., the chairman of Bay Point's board of directors and head of one of the state's largest law firms, denied the request.
In February of this year, an attorney with the Florida Attorney General's Office told Klock he was obligated to release the information. Two months later, when he still had not done so, the juvenile justice agency's general counsel warned Klock that failure to follow the law was grounds for the state to cancel Bay Point's contract.
Still, Klock did not provide the records, and state officials did not follow up on their threats. After further letters went unanswered, The Post sued Bay Point in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.
In July, eight months after the newspaper's initial request, a judge ordered the documents' release.
Copyright 2004 The Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc.
Palm Beach Post (Florida)
December 5, 2004 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
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