Without warning or a word to city officials, the Florida Department of Transportation sent work crews to Orlando with a directive: Blacken out the rainbow-colored crosswalk that marked where first responders carried the wounded and dying from the Pulse nightclub mass shooting that took 49 young lives.
This was sacrilege on sacred ground, and so close to the site of the 2016 massacre that workers would have been able to read memorial signs posted on the nightclub property itself.
Why the sneak attack? Why wasn’t Orlando given a chance to appeal as Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale and other cities were? Why did FDOT destroy a crosswalk it installed a few months before, complete with rainbow colors, and boasted about in social media posts, before it deleted them?
Silence from the state
When the Orlando Sentinel and other news outlets sought public records that would answer those questions, the state’s response was silence — even as the DeSantis administration escalated its unprecedented attack on street art.
This authoritarian vandalism seemed to come out of the blue, but there were hints of trouble.
On July 1, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote to all 50 states, declaring decorative elements on roads to be dangerous and distracting. It’s a theory he apparently pulled from thin air, since research suggests that road art actually makes intersections safer due to better visibility. A vaguely worded state memo echoed Duffy’s view but contained no specific instructions.
On Aug. 20, after FDOT warned Delray Beach and Key West about their rainbow decorations, an Orlando commissioner, Patty Sheehan, expressed confidence that the Pulse crosswalk would be safe, since the state had installed it just weeks before.
Orlando worked closely with the state to make sure the crosswalk was installed correctly and met all regulations. The result was compliant and striking: A standard crosswalk of white bars, each space marked by a different color of the rainbow.
Later that day, Sheehan talked with Key West’s mayor about ways that city might make its rainbow pavement markings acceptable to the state as well.
A devastating blow
Early the next morning, the Pulse crosswalk’s brightly colored squares of paint had been covered with black. It was a devastating blow.
Sheehan, Orlando’s first openly gay commissioner, was in office in 2016 when the massacre took place.
Along with other city leaders, she arrived on the scene in the predawn hours of June 12, 2016, and spent most of that day comforting families and struggling to make sense of an attack that killed 49 people.
By creeping into town surreptitiously in the dead of night to destroy the crosswalk, state leaders must have known they were reviving echoes of the original attack. Orlando’s wounds have not healed, though they have drawn many in the city closer together.
Mayor Buddy Dyer said the city has yet to receive an explanation, let alone an apology. That apology is long overdue, but we doubt Gov. Ron DeSantis can muster the grace to offer it.
The records are a different matter. By law, the public is entitled to them. But when the state stubbornly refuses to comply, the only recourse left is a lawsuit.
Four months and counting
The Orlando Sentinel is suing the state for records it requested four months ago.
It’s inconceivable that the state coordinated this horrific act without a single text, email, memo or legal opinion — especially since the desecration order apparently came from FDOT headquarters, not from the agency’s District 5 office in DeLand, where most state decisions are made affecting Orlando-area roads.
In our view, the plain language of Florida’s public records law gives the newspaper — and anyone else — the right to access these records. A judge in Orlando will decide. (The Sun Sentinel, like the Orlando Sentinel, is a Tribune Publishing newspaper, but is not a party to the lawsuit.)
The Florida news media works to hold accountable an administration that arrogantly treats public records as private and routinely ignores the public records law known as Chapter 119.
Most cities, counties, school districts and many other public entities routinely obey the law, but the state refuses.
After the Sentinel filed suit, the state grudgingly released several social media entries, including one dated July 8 that cited the crosswalk improvements and “decorative elements” at the Pulse site. How thoughtful.
The paper also requests internal memos, reports or other documents related to the decision to remove the crosswalk, and any work orders, cost estimates, bids and records of any meetings where the Pulse crosswalk was discussed. The state denies that any such records exist.
The Sentinel doesn’t believe that, and it’s ready once again to hold the state to account.
This editorial first appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. Contact us at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
