By Steve Plunkett
Briny Breezes has a featured position in two lawsuits challenging Florida’s stricter Form 6 financial disclosure requirements that starting this year are now placed on all elected municipal officials.
The town has a starring role in a suit filed in state court in Tallahassee. Briny Breezes is the first one listed of 26 plaintiff municipalities and 74 elected officials from those municipalities. That means citations of the case in future lawsuits will likely be “Briny Breezes v. Florida Commission on Ethics.”
In a similar action filed in U.S. District Court in Miami, the first of 74 plaintiffs is President of Town Council Elizabeth A. Loper of Briny Breezes, meaning the case will probably be called “Loper v. Florida Commission on Ethics” in future citations.
Also, the town is the only municipality detailed in the lawsuits as having lost elected officials because of the new disclosure rule.
“Briny Breezes had three resignations so it is a good example of how the Form 6 requirement is impacting municipalities,” said Jamie Alan Cole, the city attorney for Weston in southwest Broward County and the lead lawyer for the lawsuits.
Cole did not give a reason for putting Briny’s and Loper’s names first but said, “The order of the plaintiffs has no legal significance.”
Other plaintiffs include Delray Beach and the town of Palm Beach. Cole emailed other city attorneys across the state on Feb. 15, the same day he filed the two suits, to say it was not too late to have additional plaintiffs.
The defendants are the seven members of the state Commission on Ethics.
Cole, who is the managing partner of the Weiss Serota law firm’s Fort Lauderdale office, originally asked towns to pay $10,000 apiece to join the litigation. But Briny Breezes
Town Attorney Keith Davis said Briny was able to negotiate its share down to $4,000 because of its small size.
Form 6 requires the disclosure of net worth, earnings and tangible assets and has long been applied to the governor, state legislators, county commissioners and other government officers at the state and county levels. A state law enacted in 2023 made elected municipal officials also subject to the Form 6 requirements.
Municipal officials previously had to file a less detailed Form 1 financial disclosure.
More than 100 Florida mayors and municipal commission/council members resigned on or before Dec. 31 rather than subject themselves to the disclosure requirements, the lawsuit says.
“For example,” the state lawsuit says, “in plaintiff Briny Breezes, former Mayor Gene Adams, former Council President Christina Adams, and former Alderman and Council President Sue Thaler all resigned in December 2023 because of the Form 6 requirement.
“As a result of resignations, municipalities, including municipal plaintiffs, have been (and/or will be) forced to expend significant public funds for filling vacancies, including temporary appointments and special elections. In addition, the vacancies have disrupted municipal operations.”
The state litigation alleges a violation of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Florida Constitution.
The federal lawsuit alleges a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech for compelling municipal officials to make “non-commercial, content-based” speech by saying, among other things, that “My net worth as of Dec. 31, 2023, was $________.”
It asks a federal judge to declare the new Florida law unconstitutional. The state and the federal lawsuits both seek an injunction to prevent the Ethics Commission from enforcing the Form 6 rule.
The law sets a July 1 deadline for filing the Form 6 with financial data as of Jan. 1.
A Government Accountability bill in the Florida House (HB 735) would delay the first reporting due date for Form 6 until July 1, 2025, and exempt elected officials in municipalities smaller than 500 people. A companion bill in the Senate (SB 734) does not have such language.
If the House bill were to become law, it would benefit Manalapan, which is small enough, for example, but not Briny Breezes, which is above the 500 cutoff.
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