Orange County mayor Teresa Jacobs is being sued over alleged violations of Florida’s open government laws.
The lawsuit filed Friday by Organize Now, a local community organization, claims Mayor Jacobs and the County are denying constituents access to public records.
The complaint refers to public records stored on Dropbox, a cloud based electronic file storage and sharing system.
The lawsuit claims "it appears records were deleted immediately following Plaintiffs’ public records request."
Organize Now director Stephanie Porta says the lawsuit seeks answers to who has access to the mayor’s Dropbox files and what its contents are.
Porta says the information released so far is "rife with deletions and redactions."
Orange County communications manager Ann Marie Varga said the accusations are entirely baseless.
"Orange County has spent an extensive amount of staff time and resources trying to satisfy the requests of Organize Now, including personal meetings and detailed technology research," said Varga in a statement.
"We continue to work in good faith to fulfill their requests.”
The County released a statement from Mayor Teresa Jacobs in which she said she is “100% confident that we will win this case quickly."
"This is an attempt to discredit Orange County government and me," said Jacobs.
"With less than 40 days to the November elections, this is a politically motivated attack about whether county races will continue to be non-partisan."