On the heels of the University of Florida’s embarrassing legal loss in its fight to keep Student Government records secret — which cost taxpayers around $30,000 — student senators at the University of Central Florida fighting for more transparency are now seeking intervention from Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The movement seeking Bondi’s intervention, which is being proposed through a resolution requesting her formal opinion and passed second reading Thursday night, comes after UCF’s General Counsel has refused to publicly intervene for several months in an increasingly tense fight for access to the Knightmare financial database of which SGA President Michael Kilbride has seemingly assumed full custody and control.
The title of the resolution, submitted by SGA Sen. Luiz Centenaro, demanded full access to SGA’s Knightmare financial database for the legislative branch. During debate, Sen. Centenaro made it clear he was fed up with the stall tactics.
“It’s been seven months,” Centenaro said. “And obviously we were restricted [by Kilbride]. It’s been enough. It’s coming up to Spring Break now, I want this resolved by the time we get back.”
The resolution pointed out how state statutes specifically assign duties associated with allocating and expending funds to the legislative branch of SGA — not the student body president. In light of that, the resolution originally called Kilbride’s decision to shut out the senate while he maintained greater access as “unlawful,” and although many senators felt that word was accurate, it was deemed as too strong and was amended out.
Watch WFTV Anchor Hammer Kilbride on State Ethics Laws, Luxury ‘Retreat’
It’s not the first time the lawfulness of Kilbride’s actions have come under review. The university confirmed to KnightNews.com it was reviewing whether the decision of Kilbride, a member of the UCF Board of Trustees, to accept free Disney tickets from a theme park lobbyist violated any state ethics laws. The results of that review were never announced to KnightNews.com.
It was immediately after KnightNews.com broke the story of the scandalous SGA “retreat” — associated with the free trip to Disney –when Kilbride shut off almost all electronic access to the database. Records leaked to KnightNews.com showed Kilbride spent nearly $8,000 of student fees on the retreat for his staff held at a luxury five-star resort right outside Walt Disney World.
Here’s our Retreat Investigation Video that Preceded the Knightmare Restrictions:
According to the resolution, Kilbride never provided the Senate legal justification for shutting them out, but KnightNews.com has learned his former Chief Information Officer, Shane Chism, who was one of Kilbride’s biggest defenders of the retreat, has been back in the SGA office recently declaring loudly how FERPA allows Kilbride to restrict access in this way.
It’s not clear if Kilbride is once again paying Chism, who resigned late last year citing “academics,” because UCF’s interpretation of FERPA prohibits the release of the names and titles of students on SGA payroll records. It is clear, however, from records that Kilbride has paid a student to DJ events. Kilbride refuses to release that student’s name to KnightNews.com, presumably based on his interpretation of FERPA.
The FERPA argument reportedly cited by Chism was also made by UF when denying former student Frank Bracco’s request for UF Student Government records. KnightNews.com was first to break how a judge rejected the argument that SGA records were education records protected by FERPA, and Bracco says UF decided not to appeal.
In light of the universities applying their own interpretations of FERPA,
KnightNews.com contacted the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System, to ask whether anything is being done to address the situation the public is running into when requesting records from state universities.
“The Board of Governors is committed to public records and Government in the Sunshine, for which Florida is renown in its laws compared to other states in the nation, as you know,” said spokeswoman Kelly Layman. “There have been and always will be occasional legal disagreements about public meetings and public records, as with any field of law.”
It was clear during debate Thursday, however, that top Senate leadership didn’t want the request for this disagreement to be settled by Bondi as quickly as Centenaro did.
Pro Tempore Josh Miller even made a motion to kill the resolution, but it overwhelmingly failed. ORC Chair Catie Shields, who is a close friend of Kilbride, attempted to remand the resolution to her committee where she could presumably gather the votes to kill it, but her attempts were also met with failure.
The most controversial attempt to stall the resolution came from SGA Speaker Drew Pope, who refused to recognize a motion to move the resolution forward, and even he lost control of the senate when Sen. Centenaro appealed his refusal and the Senate heard it anyway.
Pope’s refusal marked the climax of questionable behavior displayed by the speaker throughout the meeting, where he blurred the lines between being an impartial chair and working against the resolution’s advancement.
Pope, Shields and Miller are among the small handful of senators records show Kilbride has granted access to Knightmare. Pope is also member of Beta Theta Pi, a fraternity Kilbride is so close to, sources told KnightNews.com he considered joining it. Pope, though not on Exec, was also invited on Kilbride’s lavish $8,000 retreat and joined him on a trip to Washington DC, where records show students paid for their meals.
Ultimately, as the time limit for the meeting’s end drew near, the Senate was persuaded to wait until its next meeting before considering the resolution’s third and final reading.
KnightNews.com has also filed a public records request for an unredacted version of Knightmare, which is still pending.
Kilbride is expected to meet with the UCF General Counsel before that meeting to discuss the controversy which is now consuming SGA.
Stay with KnightNews.com for our continuing coverage of Kilbride’s Knightmare.
