GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

Professing Transparency Without Doing It

From the PEDC’s bare-bones website to a children’s trust agenda posted two days before the meeting to a county administrator who canceled a board discussion about live-streaming—Escambia’s public boards keep talking about transparency more than they practice it.

At Tuesday’s meeting of the Pensacola-Escambia Promotion & Development Commission (PEDC), two citizens voiced concerns over the lack of information on the PEDC’s website. The PEDC is a nine-member, quasi-governmental public corporation created by the Florida Legislature to drive economic growth, job creation, and industrial development in Escambia County. FloridaWest Economic Development Alliance provides its administrative support.

• One speaker put it plainly: “I’ve noticed that on the website that there are no minutes for these meetings, and I think that would help repair the relationship with the public.” She pointed to FloridaWest CEO Chris Platé’s own remarks at Wednesday’s Board of County Commissioners meeting, where he acknowledged a disconnect with the public over information.

Francesca Yabraian, a candidate for House District 1, pressed the same point from a different angle: “If your goal is to bring jobs to Pensacola, talking about what those jobs bring is that when you do bring it up in the upfront, putting that on the website, I think that’s part of that transparency.”

“Yes, our website is not great, so we’re going through some renovations to that thing.” — FloridaWest CEO Chris Platé

• Platé didn’t push back. He agreed the website needs work and said renovations are underway. That’s a start, but it’s worth asking why an agency built to sell Escambia County to outside investors can’t manage to post its own meeting minutes for the people who actually live here.

The PEDC isn’t alone. Look around the same week, and the pattern repeats.

• The Escambia Children’s Trust has a program committee meeting scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday, June 26—but the agenda and meeting packet weren’t uploaded to its website until June 24, leaving the public less than a day to review what’s on the table. Re
• The Visit Pensacola Board of Directors met Wednesday. No agenda was ever posted on the county’s website.
• County Administrator Wes Moreno canceled the West Florida Public Libraries Board of Governance’s monthly meeting just hours before it would have convened. The agenda item the board never got to: a discussion of live-streaming its own meetings. Read 2026-06-22-library-bog-agenda. Had the October 27 meeting of the library board been live-streamed and recorded, Moreno wouldn’t have gotten away with his allegation that the board treated him and his staff rudely and hatefully.

Call for Change: Every county board, commission, and committee should have its meetings live-streamed and posted to YouTube—including the Santa Rosa Island Authority. There’s no good reason for a public body to operate this way in 2026. The technology is cheap, the precedent is everywhere, and the only thing standing in the way is whether the people running these boards actually want the public watching.

• Talking about transparency is easy. Posting the minutes, the agendas, and the video is what actually counts.