COMMENTARY
MARK SCHUMANN
In explaining to the Vero Beach City Council why they thought it inadvisable to seek a ruling form the Internal Revenue Service on their proposed structure for the sale of Vero Electric, FPL spokespersons Amy Brunjes and Patrick Bryan suggested any such request would be written by Florida Municipal Power Agency attorneys, and in a way that would likely result in a negative ruling from the IRS.
Seeking to determine the veracity of those claims, I made a public records request of the City and of the FMPA for any documentation of communication between the FMPA, City staff and elected officials, FPL representatives and the City’s transactional attorneys on the need for a private use ruling from the IRS.
See: Meeting notes raise questions about FPL’s claims of obstruction
See also: Email correspondence reveals collaboration on request for private letter ruling
Vero Beach’s transactional attorneys, John Igoe and Rick Miller, of the firm Edwards Wildman, charged the City a total of $5,000 at $500 to fulfill the records request. Though state law requires the party fulfilling a public records request to provide an estimate of the costs, no such estimate was given the City. Further, state law requires public records requests be fulfilled by the least expensive employee available to do the work. In an email to City Manager Jim O’Connor, Igoe explained that neither he nor Miller give their secretaries access to their email. Igoe wrote, “The most efficient path for us to ensure we did not miss anything in a sweep of our records in responding to his board request was for both of us to search our own records,” which he did at $500 per hour.
Indian River Guardian 
If they were working for me (the attorneys), I’d fire them so quick they’d meet themselves coming and going.
This is an outrage and defeats the entire intent of the law to increase public knowledge about the actions of the government.
A public records request under Florida law is comparable to the Federal government’s Freedom of Information Act, No Federal official would have the audacity to charge the public the kinds of fees quoted in this article.
Of course NOT. If Igoe and Miller had complied with the law by giving the City Clerk an estimate of what they would charge to fulfill the public records request, and if I had agreed to that charge, then, of course, that would be different. As it is, the law firm that has already billed the City some $1.5 million dollars to accomplish virtually nothing of value, added insult to injury by charging $500 an hour to fulfill a public records request. In my view, the City should never have accepted this charge. Particularly because Igoe and Miller never gave an estimate of what they would charge to fill this request, they owe the City a credit of the full $5,000.
As it turns out, copies of correspondence provided by the FMPA reveal the transactional attorneys and FLP’s lawyers knew along the drafting of a private use letter would be a collaborative effort, which is not at all what FPL’s Bryan and Brunjes tried to lead the City Council to believe.
Further, Mr. Mucher, it is interesting to see what a political animal you can be. If the tables were turned, and theFMPA were charging Pilar Turner $5000 to fulfill her recent public records request, you would be going nuts, absolutely nuts.