Tampa will notify City Council of fed and state investigations. Secretly.

TAMPA — City Council members will be informed about federal and state civil rights investigations, but there’s a catch: They can’t tell anyone.

City Attorney Andrea Zelman offered “a workable compromise” to council members Thursday, who had complained that they had been kept in the dark about a U.S. Department of Justice probe that began in December 2021. They didn’t learn about it until Mayor Jane Castor mentioned it at a news conference the following April. The federal agency was investigating the Police Department’s crime-free housing program, in which landlords were encouraged to evict tenants who had been arrested.

City officials are concerned that publicizing an ongoing investigation could leave the city liable to lawsuits, scare away witnesses and hinder the ability of investigators to collect evidence.

As a general rule, Zelman said, “you don’t litigate a case in public.”

She suggested that council members be notified in one-on-one meetings with city officials. They would sign an agreement at the briefing not to disclose the information.

Council member Bill Carlson said the compromise was a “good solution” and thanked Zelman for devising it.

Council members asked Zelman to bring back a resolution for a final vote on April 20.

During the discussion, Zelman, who was deputy city attorney when the Justice Department investigation began, said she didn’t know about it until months later.

The only city employees who did know were part of a small team that had to assemble information to respond to investigators, she said.

Notifying council members about investigations while requiring them not to tell anyone was the best way to balance Florida’s open-records law and the confidentiality of investigations, Zelman said. No council member disagreed.