Excellent Sunday, January 24, 2016 St. Augustine Record editorial agreed with me on sneaky County Administrator pay increase, which was not on the agenda of the January 19th meeting of the all-Republican St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. The pay raise was brought up in Commissioners' comments at the end of the meeting. The pay raise was rubber-stamped by 4-0 vote of the pathological pack of pompous prevaricating politicians.
Evidently our SJC BCC too often acts like a hypocritical hubristic herd of overpaid, pachyderms, not one of them capable of empathy for working people or sensitivity to the appearance of impropriety.
On Sunday, January 17, 2016, The St. Augustine Record printed a column in which I called for more Sunshine and more meaningful public participation and an end to "smarmy sneakiness" by local officials.
On Tuesday, January 19, 2016, a date that will live in infamy, four Republican County Commissioners voted raises for the County Attorney and County Administrator, even though residents B.J. Kalaidi and Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr. opposed the move, which was not on the agenda. The matter was pulled from the October 11, 2015 agenda, and from later Commission agendas.
It was not on the January 19, 2016 agenda and was brought up by Commission Chairman Jeb Smith.
Thanks to The St. Augustine Record for another fine editorial (below), agreeing with me on sneaky County Administrator and County Attorney pay raises, granted without being on the agenda.
The Record quotes the County's legal office's justification: (ready) because (drum roll): "We could." Sounds like President Clinton's excuse for L'affaire Lewinsky ("because I could.")
One correction: No grammarian or political scientist would ever consider either Mr. Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr. or Mr. B.J. Kalaidi to be a "hanger-on," as the Record mistakenly called them. (There were three speakers, the County Attorney supported the pay raises and Ms. Kalaidi and Mr. Reynolds opposed them.") Thus, the use of the term "hanger-on" as to two of the three speakers is a gross misuse of the traditional political clubhouse-courtouse-capitol meaning of the term "hanger-on."
Mr. Reynolds and Ms. Kalaidi are activists, not accomplices, acolytes or apparatchiks.
They are the opposite of hangers-on -- they are on the side of the angels, not the devious devilish Mr. WANCHICK, a snooty man with nothing to be snooty about, one who can't stand criticism and who caters to developers and won't ever return citizens' telephone calls. (In Boston, they once said, "The Lowells speak only to the Cabots, and the Cabots speak only to God.")
Otherwise, another fine Record editorial:
Editorial: Transparency's nice, but apparently not necessary
Posted: January 24, 2016 - 12:04am
Our government reporter, Sheldon Gardner, has a rule formed by experience on her beat. Depending upon the timeline of the agenda, she may not need to cover the beginning of a meeting — but she never leaves early.
That’s because county and city commission meeting both wind up with an exercise titled “commissioner comments.” These are an open-mic type of thing in which each commissioner gets time to share general thoughts or concerns. For instance, Tuesday night Commissioner Bill McClure wished everyone a happy new year and asked about a controversial Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Florida. Chairman Jeb Smith shared some good news about the uncommonly warm winter in his district and the positive effects on the winter vegetable crops and prices.
But in the middle of an hour of comments, a vote was called. It seems that new contracts for county administrator Mike Wanchick and county attorney Patrick McCormack had been languishing since October, when then-chair Rachael Bennett was in charge of the process of gathering evaluations from fellow commissioners.
Long story short, commissioners voted to give both men a raise Tuesday night.
We have no issue with giving either man his due. What we do have an issue with is how the vote was taken, without notice to the public.
The Sunshine Law is a bit of a misnomer. There are some legal points, but the larger document is really more a primer on transparency with general, common sense rules to follow.
There is no law, for instance, that the county or city publish an agenda — or even to draw one up. There’s no law against pulling an item from an agenda or adding one at the last minute. This is commonly done when some sort of deadline for action precludes waiting another two weeks for a decision. It’s called walking an agenda item through.
For the record, slipping what was certain to be a controversial topic into commissioner comments at the end of the meeting when most of the public had gone home was not illegal.
But it certainly wasn’t right.
When Chairman Jeb Smith brought the subject up, we assumed it was for discussion, awkwardly timed. It should have stopped there. The commissioners could, and should have, discussed the process, scoring and whatever they needed to in order to be comfortable with the issue — then placed a vote on the agenda two weeks hence.
There was no emergency, no time constraints. Both contracts were payable retroactively from October. Neither employee was losing any money, and no commissioners should have been losing any sleep over it.
We asked county legal about the odd vote and were told that the subject was researched and “we could.” And this is not the first time this has occurred.
The county website reads “The St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners is dedicated to building and maintaining public trust by keeping government open and accessible to the citizens it serves.”
We tell young reporters that, in general, if there’s a vote there should be public notice. The intent of the Sunshine Law is clearly to guarantee that the public receive “a reasonable opportunity” to speak on issues that affect it — such as top administration contracts. There were comments Tuesday night from a couple of hangers-on (sic) at the meeting’s end, but how many might have shown up or stuck around had they had any inkling of the vote to come?
Perhaps voting $377,000 in salary contracts to two employees isn’t enough to bother with noticing. But, by the county’s own reasoning, could they close Treaty Park or permit a new development without public notice ... because “they can?”
What this means to the public is open-ended. Where does it start? Where does it stop? For The Record, it means that our reporters may have a new mandate when covering meetings, “to stay until the end.”
That’s where the headlines too often lie buried.
And that’s a shame.
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