Orlando: WFTV enters a lawsuit against Florida Department of Children and Family to publish public records

Orlando, Florida – Lawyers for Eyewitness News have filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Children and Families in Florida because they have not published any public records.

After Channel 9 has spent more than a year, it comes to examining problems with a department and the website of children and families, of which millions of floridians are dependent on advantages such as food brands and drug insurance.

The lawsuit submitted on behalf of WFTV calls on the state to enforce Florida's public recording law and immediately publish the records on Channel 9.

It is another attempt by WFTV to get answers to hundreds of Floridians who have tried to achieve critical advantages that they need to feed their families and cover their health care.

“Why is that not repaired? Why is that going over a year? Why do you keep saying that the system works? “Said Jodie Martinez, a resident of Volusia County who has to struggle with the system.

Martinez is one of several Floridians who have repeatedly disappeared to maintain the website for maintenance to technical errors and documents that have come across problems.

Early this month, Canal 9 shared her story. She said she was fighting against cancer and a growing bunch of unpaid bills because the documents that Medicaid had to do would not upload her bills through the system.

Vanessa Brito is a topic that the community lawyer Vanessa Brito said she had seen several times.

Brito told Channel 9 since the new Myaccess portal started in December 2023 that she heard from Almost two thousand people Dealing with several technical problems.

“The ball is in her farm to be honest with people transparent with people,” said Brito.

In the meantime, Lynn Hearn, the lawyer and the director of interests of the Florida Health Justice Project, also informed Channel 9 that this was a “frequent, persistent problem”.

Your organizations have helped hundreds of Floridians to navigate the Medicaid system, which is already complex without the technical problems.

“Unfortunately I don't see any signs of a systemic solution in progress and we certainly want that,” said Hearn.

9 Investigates has tried to get answers to eternal problems with the MyAccess portal, told the story of the history of Floridians who fight for advantages or are not able to get them at all.

Families have announced Channel 9 that they have become hungry for Snap that uses the same portal.

However, DCF rejected the repeated inquiries from Eyewitness News for an interview.

Instead, the department sent statements Users of the errors are responsible for the errors – Myaccess works 99.7% of cases.

In the meantime, the public recording submitted over a year ago remains unfulfilled.

In February 2024, Channel 9 asked the state for internal e -mails via its MyAccess system.

In August, the state confirmed that it received our payment for the records in which the request was processed.

9 Investigations have repeatedly investigated the request, but Channel 9 had not yet received the records by October, and the lawyers of the station were involved.

On Tuesday, WFTV lawyers submitted a lawsuit in which a judge was asked to force DCF to meet the law on public records and to present the records immediately.

On Wednesday, a spoke person for DCF sent us this explanation in response to the lawsuit:

“The department is working on the completion of the editorial offices on the more than 6,000 pages of records. We expect General Counsel's office to complete this immediately and publish the documents. ” DCF also announced Channel 9 that it was “in the last phases of the editorial team” of the records at the end of October.

Florida has broad laws about public records that enable news agencies and the public to request information about state and local governments.

Since 2019, journalists and open state supporters have found that routine inquiries for public records will take months or years.

Channel 9 has also been waiting since July 2023 that information about how much it cost to send the law enforcement authorities to Texas to help at the border.

The Washington Post also sued Governor Desantis about his travel records and won, but the paper reports that they have not yet received exactly what they asked.

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