Does the Tampa City Council have a Sunshine problem? The Bill Carlson-Guido Maniscalco fiasco suggests so

A storm grey cloud blocking the sun, giving the ray of light at the background

Tampa City Council member Bill Carlson would never have been an obvious contender for the Public Safety Committee, considering the known rift between him and local law enforcement leaders.

So it was at least moderately surprising when he was appointed to lead that exact committee. Before getting into the details, understand that there is no proof that anyone broke the law. This is merely speculation that timing and circumstances suggest the spirit of our state’s open government laws were not being followed.

At issue is Carlson’s appointment as Public Safety Committee Chair by colleague Guido Maniscalco after Maniscalco had been renamed City Council Chair thanks to support from Carlson and three others.

While Carlson and Maniscalco never showed any public signs of malcontent, they also weren’t exactly allies either. So it already had the faintest smell of a quid pro quo.

But the smell got stronger just a few days after Carlson’s appointment. Tampa Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Brandon Barclay reached out to Maniscalco after the appointment, expressing concern that Carlson wasn’t the right guy for the job, and instead suggested that Council member Luis Viera might be a better fit to lead on public safety.

So just one day after Maniscalco handed the authority to Carlson, he took it away and gave it back to Viera.

After that, Carlson moved at a meeting that week to reconsider Maniscalco as Chair. While he cited a letter Tampa Mayor Jane Castor had sent to Maniscalco as his reason, not the committee snub, the timing was curious. Maniscalco himself even directly called Carlson out, arguing that the motion to reconsider had nothing to do with the letter and instead was about revenge.

And of course, without Carlson’s support, Maniscalco lost the gavel.

Anyone who has worked in any capacity in the political realm knows that backroom deals happen all the time. The “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” thing is the world’s worst kept secret in politics at any level.

But for City Council members in Florida — as with other elected officials — the Sunshine Law should keep some of the backroom dealing at bay.

The law holds that City Council members may not converse with one another outside of public forums on city business. That means if, for example, a City Council member is giving a speech at a political fundraiser that will include anything about city business and another Council member is present, the meeting must be open to the press. Quite simply, Sunshine laws prohibit Council members from meeting behind closed doors.

To be clear, there is no proof that Carlson and Maniscalco met with one another to discuss a tit for tat deal. This is speculative. But given Carlson’s support for Maniscalco, Maniscalco’s original appointment of Carlson to the Public Safety Committee, and the subsequent withdrawal of support from Carlson after he was snubbed, it sure looks like there was at least some level of wheeling and dealing.

It’s all the more suspicious considering Carlson is widely expected to run for Tampa Mayor in 2027, and leading on public safety is a good way for him to shore up support from those who might otherwise be critics.

The most circumstantial piece of evidence though comes from the fact that it was no secret that local law enforcement leaders were not Carlson fans, which should have signaled to Maniscalco that they would not be on board with his appointment.

Two examples jump to mind. First, the PBA in Carlson’s most recent re-election campaign backed Carlson’s challenger, Blake Casper, who ran on a pro-law enforcement platform. Second, former Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan has sparred with Carlson before. The two men have a history of animosity, including a tense text exchange near the end of Dugan’s tenure and Carlson’s exit from a City Council meeting during a commendation to Dugan for his service.

With all of that in mind, it’s hard to imagine that Carlson’s support for Maniscalco as Council Chair, followed by Maniscalco’s support, albeit brief, for Carlson as Public Safety Committee Chair, was not the result of some sort of brokering.

Even if the two men never spoke directly, and instead worked through some sort of proxy, it would still constitute a violation of Sunshine, which also bars communication regarding city business through a third party. Rumors swirled that there was a go-between, but no proof has materialized.

Michael Barfield, the Public Access Director at the Florida Center for Government Accountability, agreed there could be a Sunshine violation at play if City Council members were directly or indirectly communicating about city business or items that are “reasonably foreseeable to come before the Council.”

Asked about whether it would be a Sunshine violation if City Council members were using a third-party to facilitate negotiations, Barfield said  “the Sunshine law is construed to frustrate all evasive devices,” and said that using a third party to negotiate committee assignments or chairmanship votes “is certainly an evasive device” because Council members “cannot do indirectly that which is directly prohibited.” 

And that brings up a problem that is potentially more pervasive than just Carlson and Maniscalco. It’s well known among those with knowledge of city government operations that City Council aides often communicate with each other, information that easily makes its way back to their bosses.

Whatever happened, the optics are bad. It’s often said that the simplest answer is often the correct one. In this case, it makes far more sense for there to have been some sort of brokered deal than for all of last week’s drama to have been just a coincidence.

We all know these types of Sunshine violations happen. But knowing and proving are two very different things. And in this case, if a deal is struck in a back room and no one else is around to witness it, did it really even happen?

Voters probably deserve better, but for now at least, it appears Sunshine doesn’t always apply.