When it comes to their votes on transparency bills in the Florida Legislature, Tampa Bay-area lawmakers scored across the board, according to new "grades" put out by the Florida Society of News Editors on Wednesday.

How your local lawmaker fared was based on how many bills they supported that would allow for more exemptions to public records and meetings laws, or on the flip side how many they supported that would expand public access. The Florida Society of News Editors is made up of about three dozen news agencies, including the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald.

The grades bear no correlation with political party, as the addition of more public records exemptions added each year has been supported and fought by members across the aisle.

But one bill in particular, a part of the Legislature's sweeping response to the February school shooting in Parkland, brought nearly every lawmaker's score down this year. For some local legislators, like Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, and Sen. Dana Young, R-Tampa, their "F-" or "F" grades were due almost entirely to their actions on this bill.

SB 1940, which has since been signed into law, exempted from public record the identities of any school "guardians," the title given to school staff who opt to go through training and carry a gun on school campuses. It also exempted information submitted through the mobile app mandated in the post-Parkland bill, which students can use to report suspicious behavior to law enforcement, as well as portions of the meetings of the commission created to investigate the institutional failures that led to the Parkland shooting.

"Most if not all major urban areas in Florida are not going to be participating (in the guardian program) so I don't think keeping the names secret is going to be a problem," Young said. "This is similar to air marshals that protect us on flights — we don't know who those people are and the fact you don't know provides a level of security. That was the argument made on the floor for this and I thought it was plausible."

Galvano, who co-sponsored the bill and is the incoming president of the state Senate, also has previously said keeping the names secret is essential so that would-be school shooters don't know who in the school may have a gun to fight back.

Transparency advocates have argued that knowing the identities of school guardians will help the news media hold school staff accountable if things go wrong, similar to how the Miami Herald reported on the record of Scot Peterson, the school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, where 17 people were killed in February.

But even the lawmakers who opposed the guardian program, like Rep. Wengay "Newt" Newton, D-St. Petersburg, voted for SB 1940. Only two lawmakers in the entire Legislature voted against it, neither from the Tampa Bay area.

"I'm totally against putting more guns into schools, I'd rather have law enforcement do it," Newton said. "But if they're going to do it — and they had the votes to do it — the individuals' identity needs to be withheld because if people know, they're going to be targeted."

Newton received an "A" grade due to a long list of votes, including his sponsorship of a bill that would have strengthened the requirements for certain governmental board and commissions to allow the public to speak at their meetings. He said he noticed this problem when we served on the St. Petersburg City Council from 2007 to 2015.

"So you work for the public, plain and simple," he said. "If there's anything that should be impacting the public, it should be transparent."

The only area lawmaker with a higher grade was Rep. Ralph Massullo, R-Lecanto, who received an "A+" for sponsoring a bill that would have made it harder for government contracts to be kept secret if they include "trade secrets."

Newton also voted for a bill that would have prohibited government agencies from suing someone for making a public records request.

But a fellow St. Petersburg Democrat, Sen. Darryl Rouson, voted against that bill, saying it would tie the hands of local government from having recourse from people who "abuse the system" and cost taxpayers time and money with frivolous requests.

Rouson received an "F" on the scorecard.

He and others, including Newton, also voted for a controversial exemption bill in the House which would have removed any audio or video depicting someone being killed in a mass shooting from the public record. He also voted for certain juvenile criminal records to be sealed in cases where the charges were dropped or the child was found not guilty.

"I believe in my history that I've been a supporter of transparency and Sunshine issues," Rouson said. "If a juvenile makes a mistake of judgement and commits a crime at an early age, shouldn't there be an opportunity to forgive that? In instances where they don't reoffend and they're going for college or a job? … These were tough votes this year."

House members sometimes scored better than Senators simply because the House debated more transparency-related bills on the floor and thus there were more opportunities for them to cancel out negative points with pro-transparency votes."

Here are all of the grades for lawmakers representing districts in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties:

Rep. Larry Ahern, R-Seminole: B-

Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg: C

Rep. Ben Diamond, D-St. Petersburg: B

Rep. Daniel Burgess, Jr., R-Zephyrhills: C

Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O' Lakes: B

Rep. Janet Cruz, D-Tampa: B

Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton: F-

Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa: B-

Rep. Shawn Harrison, R-Tampa: B

Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill: C

Rep. Chris Latvala, R-Clearwater: B-

Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa: F

Rep. Amber Mariano, R-Hudson: B

Rep. Ralph Massullo, R-Lecanto: A+

Rep. Lawrence McClure, R-Dover: C

Rep. Wengay Newton, D-St. Petersburg: A

Rep. Kathleen Peters, R-Treasure Island: B-

Rep. Jake Raburn, R-Lithia: B

Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg: F

Rep. Sean Shaw, D-Tampa: B

Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby: F

Rep. Ross Spano, R-Dover: C+

Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor: B-

Rep. Jackie Toledo, R-Tampa: B-

Sen. Dana Young, R-Tampa: F