Maybe the best thing to say about former Attorney General Bob Shevin is that he'd never fit in with Florida politics today.

He believed in open government. And when he thought the state was wrong, he said so. Just because he had access to unlimited tax money, he didn't spend it defending the indefensible or running up the tab for people seeking public records . 

He could crusade for law and order with a zest that would make today's AG, Charlie Crist, look wishy-washy. In a video for the Press Corps skits one year, "Batman Bob" dressed up like the comic book character, dashing from his office to fight crime.

But what Shevin knew about crime came, in part, from finding his father beaten almost to death by a robber.

He came along at a turning point in state politics when court edicts and population trends moved power from the rural "Porkchop Gang" to the cities. Progress in civil rights and environmental protection would have happened anyway, but Shevin was among some near-forgotten Miamians - Murray Dubbin, George Firestone, Dick Stone, Marshall Harris - who did the work in the 1960s and '70s.

News stories about his death this week mentioned the "confession of error" that Shevin filed, clearing the way for a new trial in the notorious Wilbert Lee and Freddie Lee Pitts murder case. As attorney general, it was his job to defend criminal convictions but Shevin decided Pitts and Lee were railroaded. He wouldn't fight an appeal when he believed the state was wrong.

That wasn't the only time Shevin stood on principle. As a reporter coming here from Carolinas capitals with much cloudier "sunshine laws," maybe I was easily impressed. But Shevin stood for openness in everything.

That seems quaint at a time that governors and agency heads routinely insist everything has to go through their public-information offices, many of which stall and lie. But 30 years ago, it was good to have an attorney general who told some of the old legislative leaders and department bosses that public documents and meeting laws applied to them, too.

There was an 1868 law against publishing information about abortion, which virtually shrieked its unconstitutionality. A young Florida Alligator editor named Ron Sachs defied the law (and University President Stephen O'Connell) by publishing a list of counseling services in 1971 and a Gainesville prosecutor, doing his job, had him busted.

A circuit judge threw out the statute and freed Sachs. Shevin refused to fight it on appeal.

When the U.S. Supreme Court killed capital punishment in 1972, Shevin recommended legal ways to restore it. A day before the big news conference announcing his recommendations, I went to the print shop in the Old Capitol and asked for seven copies of Shevin's legal memo - knowing the printers would assume I was a state employee, picking them up for the governor and Cabinet.

Shevin was irked that my story was in the morning papers before his news conference, so I called and said I hadn't told the guys in the print shop I was a reporter. He said he wasn't firing anybody; employees gave a citizen a public document - why should they be punished for that?

As I said, he'd never fit in today.

In legal opinions, Shevin always sided with the public's right to know. If four county commissioners played golf and some public matter happened to come up, he said, that was legal. But if golfing was just a ruse to cover a secret meeting, that was illegal.

Shevin's simple approach was for public officials to assume that the public has a right to know what they are doing. He believed we should start with a presumption of openness and then decide which few records or events need to be closed, instead of operating in secret and deciding which few bits of sanitized information to "release."

As I said, he'd never fit in today.

While the nation watched Watergate, Florida had its own homegrown scandals - three Cabinet officers, a U.S. senator and some Supreme Court justices all leaving office under various legal and ethical clouds and, in a couple of cases, criminal convictions. Shevin, Stone (who physically removed the doors from the secretary of state's suite) and Gov. Reubin Askew were champions of full disclosure in a dark era.

When Shevin and Stone were elected in 1970, they pretty much ended the idea that Jewish candidates couldn't win statewide. Stone went on to the U.S. Senate four years later and Shevin was re-elected without opposition, but he fell short in the 1978 race for governor.

Shevin led Bob Graham in the first round but lost the runoff. That wouldn't happen today - there are no more runoffs - but Shevin also did something else you don't see much nowadays.

He put a "Graham Cracker" button on his lapel and promptly endorsed his party's nominee for governor. Defeat hurt, badly, but that was a classy gesture, typical of Bob Shevin.