"SPIN CITY" – HOW ST. AUGUSTINE CITY COMMISSIONERS LEARNED LAST NIGHT OF COURT INJUNCTION FINDING OUR CITY VIOLATED THE FIRST AMENDMENT (AGAIN).

WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS)
Photo credit: J.D. Pleasant

"SPIN CITY" – HOW ST. AUGUSTINE CITY COMMISSIONERS LEARNED LAST NIGHT OF COURT INJUNCTION FINDING OUR CITY VIOLATED THE FIRST AMENDMENT (AGAIN).

Spinning like mad in public, City of St. Augustine elected and appointed officials were a joy to behold last night at the City Commission meeting.

In Jimmy Breslin's Watergate book, How the Good Guys Finally Won, he profiles how people who were underestimated (night law school graduates like Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill and Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter Rodino) were "saving the country" from fascist President Richard Milhous Nixon.

Here in St. Augustine, our City government has kicked around visual artists and buskers for years, repeatedly violating the First Amendment.

Those good people, likewise underestimated by the City, have just triumphed again, with a constitutional crisis hanging over the City of St. Augustine like a shroud.

Ordinarily, covering the coverup-prone City of St. Augustine requires a combination of skill sets – the patience of the Biblical Job; the steely determination of an 82nd Airborne Division. paratrooper the night before D-Day; the soul of a Jesuit priest-psychiatrist conducting an exorcism; and the eye of an eagle crossed with a jeweler's eye (to detect political truths).

For four years now, I've been regularly taking it all in, asking questions (God, they hate that) and actually trying to understand what's going on behind closed doors, in secret, in our government. This is, after all, one of the most mismanaged City Halls in America, one that habitually violates the First Amendment and pollutes with impunity (and seeming immunity)..

While I never worked for the State Department, my Georgetown Foreign Service School course work prepared me for Kremlinology and political analysis in hostile situations where there are few outward clues. CIA and State Department mavens formerly scrutinized everything, looking for inferences, including who stood (or sat) where on the Kremlin Wall during the annual May Day Parade.

Last night's City Commission meeting left clues that what Robert F. Kennedy would have called "the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance" are tumbling down, the subject of continuing work by citizen-activists..

Last night's City Commission meeting could have used an operatic score, not unlike one of the classic "West Wing" episodes.

The meeting began innocently enough, with well-deserved honors for citizen-activist Linda James and for graduating high school seniors for civic involvement.

The meeting continued with revelations about how the City was going to have to tap into its $4 million water/sewer reserve fund for a $1.7 million sewage aeration improvement. Only loans are available (no grants) because, a City memo states, of our Nation's Oldest City "having documented environmental violations."

Then, amid the usual pre-programmed show, a note of spontaneity sent visual shudders from one end of the room to another. An E-mail was sent from the Federal District Court to St. Augustine's lawyers, who were not poker faces.

During a discussion of the Crawfish Festival, Assistant City Attorney CARLOS E. MENDOZA, an erstwhile Assistant State's Attorney, urgently called City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN into the courtyard adjoining the Alcazar Room, where the City Commission was meeting.

From RONALD WAYNE BROWN's anguished look, I had a hunch that it had to be a decision in the artists' case. BROWN ordinarily looks fat, happy and sassy, one of the charter members of the Smirking Turkey Society (STS).

Ironically, BROWN had only a few minutes earlier given his smirky report to Commissioners and actually said because of a four week delay by the U.S. District Judge, it "does not seem to have the level of urgency...." Oops. BROWN soon had to wipe that smile off his red face.

As BROWN walked up the aisle to use a cellular telephone, I looked BROWN in the eye and asked him, "Has justice been done?" BROWN did not respond. BROWN's eyes betrayed him. I saw and smelled fear.

The House of Cards that is the ancien regime in City Hall was rocked by what it would not yet let the public read. Learned Hand said one should not "ration justice," but our City's cognitive misers wouldn't share the decision with citizens, even as they were making materially false representations about the content of the decision.

The Police Chief, City Manager, Assistant City Manager, City Attorney and others breathlessly read the Judge's order, which was duly shared it with languid St. Augustine Record reporter PETER GUINTA long before the moment when City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS) finally "fessed" up and told Commissioners that he couldn't let adjourn yet and that he had some news for them...

Loyal City of St. Augustine lapdog-reporter PETER GUINTA sat behind City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS throughout the entire meeting, arriving on time and staying until the end. GUINTA did not appear to fall asleep and actually read materials on the meeting. What a difference four days and a few choice complaints to MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS makes.

Homophobic City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS had his arm around PETER GUINTA during one recess. City Attorney RONALD WAYNE BROWN got touch-feely with GUINTA too. So did CARLOS E. MENDOZA, Assistant City Attorney, who leaned over as GUINTA read the decision and MENDOZA led him through it, as if he were tutoring his girlfriend.

What a load of wasted effort – back at the Record, Assistant News Editor Richard Prior was downloading the decision from the PACER website, writing a news story worth of the name.

Copies of the decision were provided to Commissioners and City staff, who read it in real time, with Commissioners discussing it with the City Attorney and City Manager, Not one of them was much of a poker face. The satraps who arrested artists have reaped the whirlwind, slapped with a 23-page order finding their arresting and taking artists to the pokey is unconstitutional.

A copy of the decision was provided (free) to the St. Augustine Record's louche reporter/stenographer, PETER GUINTA, so I asked Assistant City Attorney CARLOS MENDOZA, City Public Affairs Director PAUL WILLIAMSON and Assistant City Manager TIMOTHY BURCHFIELD for a copy of the decision. They refused to provide one to me during the meeting, or to anyone else other than City Commissioners and staff (and pet rock PETER GUINTA, who impassively read the decision under the close and touch-feely tutelage of CARLOS E. MENDOZA, erstwhile Assistant State's Attorney)..

They were unfriendly. They showed their posteriors, yet again. I wear their scorn as a badge of honor.

Of course, none of the drama of last night's meeting made it into PETER GUINTA's story. City officials were so obviously spinning to him that he missed the real story – the spinning.

These City managers are part of a peculiar institution. These are kiss-up, kick-down kind of people. These overstuffed, overpaid, stuffed-shirts are in the habit of arresting artists, threatening law-abiding citizens with arrests for First Amendment protected activity, abusing police powers, stiffing citizens on records requests, refusing to fax or E-mail documents, charging citizens for documents when the Record is not charged, and threatening citizens with arrest. So mean-spirited is this collection of louts and loonies that they participate in KKK-style websites attacking public participation in St. Augustine, using City time and equipment.. They're like the cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

These City managers have been known to laugh and mock citizens, talk and read newspapers while citizens are speaking to Commissioners, mocking them, showing no class (they're all paid more than $80,000 per year and it is your money).

So vindictive is Flagler College graduate MARK LITZINGER, the City's Comptroller, that he once demanded that I had back the fancy $10 full-color budget propaganda booklet after a workshop, while giving one for free to KATI BEXLEY, the hungover Record reporter who barely even looked at the brochure. When I asked LITZINGER if I could keep mine, he speed-dialed the Chief of Police.

So bigoted is the City of St. Augustine that it required an actual federal court order to fly Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions, when every other group (including Flagler College) got to fly its flags on our Bridge (even the Broward Yacht Company). Judge Henry Lee Adams noted that Flagler College wasn't historical, but was allowed to fly its flags 59 days during 2004-2005.

So lawbreaking and cynical is the City of St. Augustine that it has repeatedly been found by federal judges to have violated the First Amendment. So vicious is the City of St. Augustine that its poor police training left Marshal Burns a quadriplegic, while the officer who did it is still on the force, after taxpayers had to pay $1.5 million above the cost of insurance to pay for the $3.5 million settlement with Burns (after the then-City Attorney said the case was only worth $100,000).

Seeing our City lose another First Amendment case left me with a warm glow all night and all day today.

Once again, people of courage and commitment have made us proud to live in St. Augustine, a place where no matter how noisome the government, the citizens will always fight back (and win) just as we did on the Rainbow Flags and illegal dumping.

Commissioners seemed to warm up to the idea of a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parkway Act as Mayor Boles reported on how there are no state or federal funds for preserving historic buildings.

After learning of the visual artists' victory, several of our City Commissioners showed admirable common sense in approaching the judge's decision. Commissioners Donald Crichlow and Leeana Freeman both said they wanted to see artists — Commissioner Freeman said that she wanted to see them in the "park" (not Plaza or Square). Mayor Boles said he didn't want to schedule any special meetings or take precipitous action.

Upon passing the Plaza de la Constitución earlier today, riding in a car with the enlightened co-author of www.staugustinegreen.com, I resolved to be kinder and gentler to the discourteous people who work for our City government.

Jesus said to love your enemies (even as he kicked the moneychangers out of the temple).

Most City of St. Augustine satraps can't help it if they have brain boogers – they were hired to work for a virtual dictator, City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS, as mean-spirited an authoritarian as ever made a bureaucrat sweat bullets. At City Commission meetings, notice how HARRISS gives little hand signals, like a conductor telling his horns when to play and when to shut up. The look on the countenance of MARK ALAN KNIGHT when present at the microphone is one of utter fear -- he looks as though he thinks HARRISS has a gun in his boot and might shoot if he is too candid with City Commissioners..

As a whistleblower attorney trying cases across America, I've seen employees bossed by booze-addled dictators and workplaces mired in fear before. I've seen places where employees go to die, their souls shriveling up as they're forced to work unsafely and unethically (or in the alternative retaliated against for speaking the truths, careers ruined, reputations destroyed).

It must be tough working for the City of St. Augustine and City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS). There's no whistleblower policy, and the chances of one passing through the City Manager for a vote by Commissioners is not unlike the chances of a snowball in Hell.

I've seldom seen a dictator more destructive than WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS).

HARRISS inspires fear in all of his employees.

HARRISS picks managers who are insecure and will do his bidding no matter what -- even when he tells them to dump 40,000 cubic yards of solid waste in the Old City Reservoir or dump semi-treated sewage effluent in our saltwater marsh. They'd do anything HARRISS told them to, like gang members in some sort of perpetual initiation rite. That's why everyone in town calls them HARRISS' HEYBOYS – because all HARRISS has to do is say, "HEY, BOY" and they not only jump, but ask how high they should jump.

The thought of second-rate minds (like TIMOTHY BURCHFIELD or JOHN REGAN) having an original thought, or disagreeing with City Manager WILL HARASS is as likely as one of Stalin's henchmen (like Lavrentia Beria) doing the same.

These timid souls hate democracy (and Democrats). They can't stand criticism (or competence).

Their idea of being "cute" is putting solid waste in the Old City Reservoir and thinking no one would ever find out.

Their idea of a "fun" day is probably something like this: waking up, discriminating against African-Americans before breakfast, ordering artists arrested before lunch, awarding no-bid contacts after a long lunch, harassing the homeless, then going home early in their bid black SUVs (courtesy of a $275/month car allowance for navigating about our small town), then laughing all the way to the bank as they cash their engorged paychecks (twelve white men make more than $80,000), then going to a fancy Black Tie dinner (the Noche de Gala at your expense) in honor of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, our City's founder (and author of the first hate crime in North America, back in 1566).

They love secrecy and palace intrigue, like so many Mordrids around a Kafkaesque Castle.

HARRISS' April 13, 1998 hiring was done only through a Sunshine violation.

HARRISS' 2006 hiring of crony RONALD WAYNE BROWN as City Attorney (first temporarily and then permanently) was done only through two (2) successive Sunshine violations, un-prosecuted by the mediocrities in ex-State's Attorney John Tanner's office and Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who won't prosecute white collar crimes in the suites (or any crimes by public officials). Crookedness or incompetence?

HARRISS' hiring of Republican lawyer MICHAEL KAHN has wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars and given our City another well-deserved black eye from a Federal Court. Our City has been illegally arresting artists.

Think of it: arresting artists. How gauche. How Banana Republic (but no, Latin countries love artists, and Commissioners travel to Spain and see artists there every year).

As President Clinton said in his Second Inaugural Address, "Nothing great was ever accomplished by being small."

How indescribably detrimental to small town values and national tourist expectations – people come here for the buskers and the artists and our City Administration is so addlepated and insane that it attacks the artists who attract tourists.

RONALD WAYNE BROWN slyly said he doesn't know what visual art means.

Arresting artists – that's like what President Obama said at the correspondents' dinner about former Vice President RICHARD CHENEY's autobiography, tentatively titled "How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People."

Like RICHARD B. CHENEY, is WILLIAM B. HARRISS a sociopath and unfit to lead?

Like RICHARD B. CHENEY, does WILLIAM B. HARRISS deserve to be prosecuted criminally?

Like RICHARD B. CHENEY, WILLIAM B. HARRISS has never had a performance appraisal – you don't give the boss a performance appraisal, and HARRISS is obviously the Boss – the reason why everyone cowers in fear (including Commissioners).

There's nothing wrong with the City of St. Augustine that democracy won't cure – that and a swift kick in the pants and firing City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a WILL HARASS).

Then we can refer him to the United States Attorney and the FBI for criminal prosecution without his having an ex-prosecutor in his stable as his newest defense attorney..

Then RONALD WAYNE BROWN can work elsewhere, perhaps sweeping up after the horses on the Avenida Menendez. BROWN already showed great familiarity with the noiseome horse deposits he was emitting last night.

My favorite RONALD WAYNE BROWN quote was that the Plaza de la Constitucion was now going to be "unprotected" for several months because of the Federal Judge's orders. That dog won't hunt.

No, BROWN, No. The Plaza de la Constitucion is protected by the federal judge's order – she's protected it from the haters and hubris, the hecklers and hitmen, who do everything that WILLIAM B. HARRISS says, including violate free speech and pollute.

No, BROWN, No. The Federal Judge has protected the Plaza – she gives a hoot. You don't, BROWN. You and HARRISS just howl, like a wolf pack baying at the moon. Now go away, and don't let the City Hall door hit you in your fat butts.

The majesty of the law is winning against the rampantly "corrupt" government of our City of St. Augustine. (At the Lighthouse Community Center in 2006, then-Mayor George Gardner conceded there was "rampant corruption." Gardner now publishes a newsletter as a city contractor, paid $1250/month to help spin the unspinnable for the unforgivable).

Glory, Hallelujah! As in the "Battle Hymn of the Republic, the majesty of the law is "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored"

The majesty of the law is triumphing over the corrupt government of our City of St. Augustine — from punishment for dumping to injunctions against First Amendment violations.

Now's the time to adopt a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Parkway, protecting St. Augustine forever, in the spirit of the latest Federal Judge to find our City has violated citizens' constitutional rights, again finding our City has violated visual artists' rights.

We're proud of our City (not our City government). We'll be prouder still when we have a national park, seashore and scenic coastal highway to add to our superlatives

We will be prouder when we have a new City Manager who respects diversity and liberty, one selected through national search rather than promoting the next Stalinist in line).

What do you reckon?