On WCOA this morning, State Rep. Alex Andrade said Form 6 is not “the be-all and end-all of financial disclosures and keeping government officials on the up and up.”
“At the same time, it’s the bare minimum of what public officials are expected to fill out and submit so that people can be aware of the investments you have in certain different businesses or what kind of interests you have and companies or ownership stakes you have in, land that you may be purchasing,” he said, noting that he has complete the form nine times.
“It’s a four-page document that you have to sign under oath,” Andrade said. “It’s not the most difficult document to fill out, but it’s also not the most difficult document to print and mail in.”
He explained the difference between incumbents and other candidates using Form 6, which is available online.
“If you are already an incumbent, there’s already an account for you at the Florida Commission on Ethics to fill out your Form 1 or Form 6 financial disclosures, and it’ll be publicly available,” Andrade said.
“What the Legislature did was say, because we’re trying to move all of this online and centralize it at the Florida Commission on Ethics, candidates who don’t have an account yet with the Florida Commission on Ethics, they can use that same online platform to fill it out instead of printing one out and filling it out by hand. That’s just for convenience.”
He added, “The requirement to turn in your full and public financial disclosure has never changed for candidates, and the requirement for constitutional officers to turn in their full and public financial disclosure to the supervisor of elections in whatever county they’re running in has never changed.”
According to the state lawmaker, candidates have been announced as qualified and then later found to meet the requirements in the Florida statutes in other counties. The next step after the qualification deadline is certification.
“The week after that qualifying period for candidates is the week where every office goes back through that paperwork and those documents, checks every box, crosses every T, dots every I before finalizing and ratifying its ballot to send to Tallahassee so that its ballots can be certified and printed,” Andrade said.
“I wasn’t surprised that someone was deemed not qualified during that qualifying during the ratification certification week. That’s not out of the ordinary. In fact, I called the Florida Secretary of State and asked the same question, ‘Did y’all have someone you listed on your website as qualified that turned out not to be qualified?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, we had a candidate. There was a clerical error, and the candidate didn’t turn in all their paperwork, so they ended up not being qualified.’”
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