Tarpon Springs broke public records law in ‘bad faith,’ judge rules

The city of Tarpon Springs broke Florida’s public records law when it withheld documents requested by its former city attorneys and manufactured excuses of confusion for “bad faith” delays, a judge has ruled.

After resigning amid “baseless public attacks” in October 2022, former City Attorney Tom Trask requested city commissioners’ emails, text messages and other public records that discussed his law firm’s tenure.

For nearly two years, the city created “unquestionably unjustifiable delays” in producing records while illegally withholding others, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George Jirotka wrote in his July 10 ruling. The city also failed to cite statutory exemptions when declining to turn over certain documents, constituting numerous violations of Florida’s public records act, according to Jirotka.

The judge ordered the city to hand over all nonexempt records not yet provided to Trask’s law firm, deliver a log detailing statutory grounds for any that are still being withheld and pay Trask’s legal fees. Jay Daigneault, Trask’s law partner, told the Tampa Bay Times the litigation has cost them about $100,000 to date.

“The way the public records request was handled by the city borders on comical,” Daigneault said. “They broke the public records law in almost every way it could be broken.”

In an interview, Mayor Costa Vatikiotis attributed the delays to turnover in the city attorney’s office after Trask’s resignation and the breadth of the request. The city had to hire a contractor to review tens of thousands of documents before they could be released, he said.

“I think the judge is probably correct in the sense that we took more time than we should have,” Vatikiotis said. “On the other hand, in my opinion, from a workable perspective, there’s some extenuating circumstances there.”

Ethan Loeb, a Tampa-based lawyer representing Trask Daigneault LLP in its lawsuit, originally submitted a request in October 2022 for a series of texts, emails and other records among city officials and 17 private citizens that discussed the firm.

They also asked for correspondence of elected officials and city staff with a Tarpon Springs resident suspected of being behind Alex Androu, an anonymous Facebook page “responsible for spreading lies about Mr. Trask and the Trask firm’s tenure as City Attorney,” court records show.

The city’s initial response a month later stated there were 52,692 records that could be responsive, including 1,228 from Vatikiotis and 42 from Commissioner Mike Eisner.

Loeb requested the 1,270 records from Vatikiotis and Eisner and submitted search terms to narrow down the remaining documents. The city responded that the narrowed search left about 31,000 records that would cost $10,562 to review for responsiveness and whether any needed to be held for statutory exemptions. The firm paid a 25% deposit to begin the process.

In March 2023, the city provided 878 total documents from Vatikiotis, Eisner and two other city commissioners — fewer than the original count from Vatikiotis and Eisner alone.

Trask Daigneault sued the next month. In May 2023 the city provided 46,321 records but did not notify the firm at the time that any others were withheld due to confidentiality or statutory exemptions, according to Jirotka’s ruling.

Jirotka ruled that city officials’ production of these records “was in essence a data dump” and their refusal to comply with the requested terms violated the law. Of the documents that the Trask firm paid for and received, about 5,410 did not include any of the keywords they had identified. Almost 12,000 emails provided were either to or from Trask, and the firm had asked that those communications be excluded from the search parameters.

Loeb estimated based on a sample that 70% of the records produced were not related to what they requested in the first place.

At a hearing in August, the city contended that it provided all records responsive to the request, according to the judgment. But city clerk Michele Manousos testified that not all records provided by Vatikiotis and Eisner were produced by the city, the judgment states.

The court ordered the city to turn over the records, confirm in writing it had provided all responsive documents or cite exemptions to why they are being withheld. The city provided some additional records, stated in writing it had then produced all documents, and did not disclose that any had been held for exemptions, according to Jirotka.

In March, the Trask firm deposed the contractor hired by the city to handle the records request, who confirmed she had identified thousands of records that she believed should be exempt from disclosure.

In April, almost a year after contending it had complied with the public records request, the city produced an exemption log detailing hundreds of records that had been withheld due to statutory exemptions, according to the judgment. But Jirotka ruled that some exemptions cited were not valid. For example, documents related to litigation that has already terminated were withheld and described as active litigation.

Daigneault said his firm began requesting the records in late 2022 in order to understand the “utterly false allegations” made by citizens and city officials about his firm’s handling of a controversial apartment complex proposal near the Anclote River.

A commission majority elected in March 2022 opposed their predecessors’ approval of the project. They hired outside counsel to investigate interactions between the developer, city staff and the attorneys after publicly raising questions about criminal and procedural misconduct. Trask’s firm resigned amid the allegations. The $160,000 probe found no wrongdoing.

“The commission seemed satisfied with destroying the firm’s reputation, so really we were left with no choice” but to investigate,” Daigneault said.

He declined to answer whether the records his firm received so far have proven defamation to be argued in future litigation.