If you've known me for a while you'll have heard me say that 'transparency' is BS, a fallacy. Organizations and individuals will try to be transparent, but only up till a point. If you're all about transparency, come to Florida and work in local government for a year or two.

My feelings are influenced by the open records laws in Florida, aka the Sunshine Law. In basic form (yes I'm oversimplifying quite a bit), communications and meetings between public officials is public record. That's transparency.

Looking for an example of this? Look at today's news about Legoland in Florida. The news breaks because of an e-mail sent to the local county commission....and yep, you guessed it, that's public record. Cat's out of the bag.

You might say, keep it out of e-mail, and you're probably right. However, if you wanted to meet with a few of the commissioners and tell them the news in person, you'd have to file public notice of said meeting....to keep it in the Sunshine :-)

The Sunshine Law has been a long-running issue, especially when corporations are looking to expand to Florida and are interested in tax breaks or other incentives. These discussions need to involve public officials from time to time. The corporation may be 'thinking' of moving, but of course they don't want that news getting out as they explore their options.

Transparency or the 'effort' can cut both ways. Next time you think you're being transparent in your communications efforts, think...how about we release all our e-mails? Didn't think so.

Oh yeah, we're getting a Legoland in our hometwon...like 5 minutes from my house. Woot!