By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida
For months, Red Tape Florida has heard the same complaint from people who deal with Tallahassee’s permitting system: the City goes silent on email whenever things get sensitive.
Developers. Solar installers. Private providers. Commercial property owners. They all tell us the same thing: routine questions sometimes get answered by email, but the moment there’s a dispute, a code interpretation, a major correction, or anything controversial, staff suddenly insist on handling it by phone. No written explanation. No written directive. No written record.
This is not a customer-service quirk. It’s a transparency problem.
And it’s time for the City Commission to fix it.
What applicants are telling us
RTF has now spoken with multiple applicants who describe virtually identical experiences:
- They email the City with a detailed question about a code citation or plan review comment — and get no written answer.
- They ask for clarification on an unexpected requirement — and get a phone call instead.
- They push back on a questionable interpretation — and are told staff “can’t put that in an email.”
In the recent and now infamous “shed” case RTF covered, the City repeatedly avoided answering by email even as the applicant was told to withdraw and reapply — and threatened with daily fines. That’s not transparency. That’s control without accountability.
We are also hearing similar reports from other counties, where inspectors and plan reviewers shift sensitive issues off email specifically so the discussions are not discoverable through public records requests. RTF is looking into those cases now.
Why this matters
Permitting decisions affect property rights, construction budgets, financing, timelines, and livelihoods. When the City tells someone to change a building plan, withdraw an application, pay a new fee, redesign a structure, or face enforcement — that is the government exercising power.
Applicants deserve to know exactly what the City required and why. And the public deserves to be able to see it.
Phone-only directives make that impossible. They leave applicants guessing, private providers exposed, and citizens in the dark. They also undermine consistency: if instructions are not written down, nothing stops staff from changing the rules from applicant to applicant.
What the law expects
Florida’s public-records law is simple: communications made or received in connection with official business — including emails — are public records and must be retained. Nothing in the law says officials can avoid the public record by avoiding email. Tallahassee’s own policies acknowledge this by requiring electronic communications to be archived.
The law doesn’t force staff to use email. But it absolutely expects that the public’s business be conducted in a way that can be reviewed by the public. Directing a citizen to take costly action, with no written record, does not meet that expectation.
A fix the City Commission can implement now
RTF is calling on the Tallahassee City Commission to adopt a simple requirement:
Any material change in a permit — any directive that affects cost, timing, scope, code interpretation, classification, or potential fines — must be communicated in writing and placed in the permit file.
Staff can still use the phone for quick questions. But if it’s important enough to trigger work, cost, delay, enforcement, redesign, or legal exposure, it must be documented.
And the City should make clear that undocumented verbal instructions cannot be enforced against applicants. If it matters, write it down.
Sunshine shouldn’t disappear when a project gets complicated
The public has a right to know how decisions are made. Applicants have a right to consistency and clarity. Staff have a duty to operate in the open.
Tallahassee cannot preach transparency while allowing its most powerful permitting decisions to happen in the shadows.
RTF will continue investigating these patterns locally and elsewhere. In the meantime, the Commission can act now — by making sure that when the City wields its authority, the record reflects it.