For City of St. Augustine residents sick of what our MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER admits to be "rampant corruption," help may now be on the way.
Congress will soon have the opportunity to investigate the shame of our Nation's Oldest City (and others like it), where illegal dumping was a way of life.
With subpoena power, Congressional Democrats can expose the truth and save our country and our city from the power of greed.
Our likely new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has great plans for the first 100 hours of the Democratic House of Representatives. As during the first 100 days of FDR's New Deal, Congress has an opportunity to save America.
I nominate the City of St. Augustine, Florida as the locus, focus and venue for Congressional investigations of:
1. Pollution and wetland destruction, in the context of federal, state and local governmental pollution and wetland destruction -- from federal nuclear weapons plants to Clay County and the cities of St. Augustine and Venice, Florida (which pled guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, agreeing to help prosecute its former City Manager and "The Executive Group" who mismanaged the City of Venice). Will government officials finally be held accountable for pollution?
2. Possible securities fraud in selling bonds to investors while Mayor GEORGE GARDNER is now falsely claiming that our City never intended for bonds to pay the cost of the $22 million parking garage. See below Were federal securities laws violated in the sale of the bond or were voters deceived by MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER in his re-election campaign? (See below)
3. Possible corruption in March 2005 trip to NYC by MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER and eleven (11) others, accepting meals, liquors and other valuable things from Standard & Poors and three bonding companies, when experts told the St. Augustine Record that the bond rating (an A) could have been obtained by fax. Our city officials previously referred to their "class trip" to NYC. This trip (as well as other trips to Spain, Germany, etc.) Must be scrutinized.
4. Government purchasing wasting your money on overpriced and unneeded items, from unneeded or overpriced buildings to diesel fuel -- bought not on long-term contracts and sealed bids -- based on telephone quotes from local oil jobbers, exploring the need for federal standards for municipal and county governments receiving federal funds. Congress must consider rewriting and/or better enforced
5. Lack of protection for "ethical resisters" and victims of threats by City officials (including alleged sexual harassment victims and persons knowledgeable about illegal dumping).
6. Refusal to protect workers with promised pay increases for firefighters (possible mail and wire fraud) and refusal to discuss Living Wage ordinance, at a time when MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER's wife was working for former Chamber of Commerce President James Pennington (see below).
7. Government official duplicity, including violations of Sunshine, Freedom of Information Act and other openness-in-government laws, raising questions about abuse of federal funds.
8. Possible violation of Civil Rights Laws, including renting City and State property to employers that do not employ African-Americans in a City that is 15% African-American, and having all-white Police Department (59 officers) and Fire Department (28 firemen).
9. Cable-TV and communications monopolies and self-censorship of real news, along with abuses in electronic voting machinery, both threats to republican and democratic values. Time-Warner's local manager Mark Russell told our City Commissioners he was against public access because former County Commissioner "Bubba" Rowe used it to criticize government officials, risking in his opinion the possibility that some businessman watching in his hotel room might not invest in our community. Meanwhile, City Commissioners chose not to televise two budget hearings (conducted without benefit of prayer or flag salute and refusing to answer citizens' questions). They held meetings on October 13 & November 8, 2006 without prior public notice on their website and without being televised. The Philistine's Veto over cable television broadcasting must be halted and new federal standards must be adopted to stop consumer exploitation by cable monopolies no longer regulated by the likes of the St. Augustine City Commission, which rubbers-stamped Time-Warner's franchise renewal, ignoring testimony from every single public hearing witness who testified/
10. Lobbyist domination of local government, with flippers/speculators/developers ruling our governments. (See below). Our local situation is not unlike Washington, D.C., where the profusion of lobbyists has grown to resemble an assemblage of maggots on top of a NYC garbage can in the midst of a sanitation workers' strike in summertime.
See below.
With watchdogs soon on duty in Congress again, we'll be a better country.
Let's hope Congress investigates our City of St. Augustine.
Local governments too often waste federal grants, wasting federal funds.
Fully 45% of the people of the City of St. Augustine voted for change and against what MAYOR GEORGE GARDNER admits to be "rampant corruption" in City Hall. (See below).
As United Senator Albert Gore, Sr. said on election night 1970, "the truth shall rise again."
Let's be America again.
Let's make the City of St. Augustine "a shining city on a hill," in the words of John Winthrop.
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