Florida Governor Ron DeSantis needs to fix his convoluted Appointments Process

For updates, scroll to bottom of page.

 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis makes many appointments to local government agencies like Judges, Lake Sumter State College Board of Trustees, St. John's River Water Management District, etc.

 

His appointments office page is here:  https://www.flgov.com/appointments/  

 

And I support him, but the appointments process is a quagmire with no transparency or responsiveness. How do we even know if a position is vacant, what the requirements are or where to monitor progress in making the appointment?

 

So I made a video in March 2019 about the process. I also requested a list of all appointed positions, which were vacant, etc. and they took THREE MONTHS to respond.

 

So I am now setting up a weekly process to keep nagging legislators, the Governor's office and others until this is fixed.

 

I just sent an email to the County Board of Commissioners asking them to set up a transparent tracking system on all appointed positions related to Lake County so at least WE KNOW the status.

 

You can see my video and my update in the comments at https://youtu.be/ZEoXVL2rcqE

 

You can see the 53-page list at this link:

https://tinyurl.com/FL-Gov-Appointments  << which may not work

So here is the actual list:

Download 6-20-2019_VANCE_01-P_Responsive_Documents

 

Either more funding and staffing is needed to fix the process, or we have a "Deep State" leftist problem and someone needs to be fired for the lack of transparency over the positions and details.

 

 

Here are my recommendations for a re-designed system:

• - Request the Inspector General do a review of the process for efficiency, transparency, openness, and timeliness of appointments. He should also review the process for any situation where only insiders even know of vacancies and apply for them without others knowing about it.  For example, a vacancy could occur on a water district board and the staff facilitates a favored application while the public has no clue a position is open.  That situation should be prevented.  The IG should also review the adequacy of the notification to the press to ensure that ALL press contacts and online subscribers received the same notifications at the same time.  Are there situations where only favored press or officials are receiving notices of open positions? 
• - Establish an online place to submit suggestions or complaints about the new system and publish them for all to see on the Open Government website. 
• - Separate listing pages for specific positions like "Judicial" need to be disclosed on the main appointments page.  Senator Dennis Baxley and Lake County Court Clerk Gary Cooney pointed out to me in emails that all the court appointments for Judges, etc. AND vacancy lists and status etc were under a separate Judicial tab.  Why aren't the other appointment positions listed with the detail on the Judicial page? Why isn't there a link on the main appointments page to the entirely separate "Judicial" tab on the Governor's website?   It appears that maybe the court administrators and potential appointees didn't like the existing Governor's appointment system and created their own page, with status lists, etc.  (This item was added after original posting).
• - Create an online database of all appointments, accessible to all.
• - Ensure the database is always current within a week.
• - Review funding, staffing, and competence of leadership to administer the entire process, including database administration.
• - Provide the ability to request basic AND sophisticated reports online and they are generated immediately for download or printing.  An example might be the Florida Ethics Commission, which allows you so define various reports on election compliance.
• - Add sufficient fields to track and define reports, such as by County, by District (i.e. the various water districts), vacancy date, days elapsed since vacancy posted, 
• - Add an online "subscription" system where any member of the public or press can subscribe to notifications based upon specified criteria like 1) all vacancies or pending expirations, 2) by County, by State agency, etc.  It would then include an autogenerated notice of vacancies or expirations of appointments to the subscribers' list subscribed by viewers.
• - Add the master list of press contacts used by the Governor's office to the above subscription list.  Include press contacts for news media in every County.
• - Have a visual calendar that shows expiration dates of positions, so a viewer could look at September and see all the positions expiring that need re-appointment.
• - Develop a database of "job specifications and criteria" for every position and have a link to them for each related position in the database.  No potential applicant should have to wonder what happened.  I also could not find if any positions are paid, or have expense accounts, etc.  That information should also be disclosed.  These job specifications should follow an objective format and should be always posted on the website of the relevant agency.  If there is a budget for the position, like travel, etc. it should be disclosed, plus the actual taxpayer-funded reimbursements to the position incumbent for the prior three years should be disclosed.
• - Have a weekly report online showing all vacant positions and days elapsed since vacant, and list of applicants with links to their application form.  Thus, if the public wants to see the status of every local, vacant position, the time since it was posted, who has applied, and status (like scheduled for review on a specific date).
• - Ensure there is a process to show that if the Governor declines to consider an applicant, that is shown, so other potential applicants might apply.  An example is that a local candidate might apply and other qualified candidates might defer to them, but if that person is dropped from consideration, there needs to be a disclosure that more applicants are sought.
• - Each position should have a "request notification" subscription for those only interested in receiving immediate news of specific positions, such as the Board of Trustees of their local college. 
• -  Internal administration reports should be developed that are also easily available to the public, such as the elapsed time that a position is open.

Conclusion:

I am sure I could develop more ideas, and volunteer to be on the design committee for the new process.  We should not be using a closed, 1970's process for Governor appointments in Florida. 

 

Vance Jochim

Tavares, FL

FiscalRangers.com 

[email protected]

 

Updates:

Dec. 11, 2019 - Senator Dennis Baxley told us about a completely different "Judicial" tab and webpage https://www.flgov.com/judicial-and-judicial-nominating-commission-information/ (not disclosed on the Governor appointments page) that contains much better info on Judicial appointments, including vacancies and their status. 

 

Why isn't this same attention to detail used on the main appointments page?

 

AND why isn't there a link on the main appointments page https://www.flgov.com/gubernatorial-appointment/ to this page?  The entire appointment process needs to be consistent and from ONE page, not by wandering around trying to find if some other tab or page has info.