"What kind of place is this? Where you almost mean what you say? Where laws almost work? How can you live like that?" -- The former slave Cinque, in Steven Spielberg's film, Amistad (1997).
On November 19, 2024, three reform Commissioners will be a majority on our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. Clay Murphy and Ann Taylor will join reformer Krista Keating Joseph.
Three cheers!
What's next? How about:
1. Non-agenda public comment at the commencement of every County meeting, with minutes summarizing citizen concerns restored to our minutes. Amend rules to allow flexibility and encourage dialogue.
2. Full Sunshine and Open Records law compliance. "Secrecy is for losers," as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said it best. TRIM budget hearings must answer all of our questions, with no arbitrary time limits. No more disdainful staff refusal to answer written questions. Answer public questions during "question time" like the British Parliament, by adopting the "Mayor Gary Snodgrass rule" from the City of St. Augustine Beach, requiring public commenters' questions to be answered, instead of ignored. Make video record of all ex parte meetings with zoning applicants. No more secret ex parte meetings on overdevelopment and government business. "A public office is a public trust, " as Thomas Jefferson said.
3. Lobbying registration, full disclosure and ban on contingency fees. Commissioners have never responded to the clarion call for lobbyist disclosure, and it shows. Ban contingency fees for lobbyists. Require all registered lobbyists to wear County photo IDs.
4. Enact a tough County Ethics Ordinance and County Ethics Commission second to none. We need tough local laws, public hearings and enforcement to extirpate corruption, discrimination and secrecy.
5. Initiate an anti-bribery campaign.
6. Reform our Tree Protection ordinance to end deforestation and clearcutting.
7. Create , recruit , hireand inspire a a strong qualified county-wide environmental and land use planning staff to comply with all applicable laws and to help us preserve and protect what we know and love here, including our precious cultural and environmental heritage here in what we locals call "God's country."
8. Create a County Environmental Board with regulatory powers to halt or limit devious developers' wetland-filling, wildlife-killing, deforestation, clear-cutting
9. Preserve, protect and defend our public employee rights to report problems and remedy wrongdoing. Encourage and protect whistleblowers, to end corruption as we know it. Always hold accountable anyone who would presume to retaliate against a whistleblower. Inform employees and contractors of their rights. Adopt a County whistleblower protection policy, ordinance and resolution. Comply with collective bargaining agreements. Treat employees fairly, paying living wages. End favoritism, sexual harassment, secrecy and retaliation against ethical employee whistleblowers.
10. Require "Truth in Development." Full disclosure of scientific data and transparency in development, starting with disclosing the names of every single beneficial owner and investor in every single development project. Apply fair Rules of Evidence for administrative proceedings, including testimony sworn under oath and establishing citizens' rights to question developer witnesses. Don't allow "sandbagging" of citizens by withholding "expert" testimony until after citizens speak. A
11. One-year moratorium on residential development approvals, to allow We, the People, and our County Commissioners can work to understand the nature of our overdevelopment problem lawfully, legally, and protecting everyone's rights to property and to honest government. Then we can adopt revised laws to protect residents and property owners and adopt rational rules.
12. Reform our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. Provide for legislative assistants for each Commissioner, unwisely ended circa 2010. Provide for five single-member County Commission districts, like the School Board has, in order to reduce the influence of developers' Big Money and empower of citizen legislators. Add two at-large Commission seats, running county-wide. Adopt a working committee system, with committees to vet budgets and development proposals before proposals go to the full County Commission or City Commissions.
13. Create a County Charter Review Commission to evaluate and propose a better form of government, with greater efficiency, economy, transparency and checks and balances. Improve employee and citizen rights protections and a charter for limited government in the Sunshine. Put the Charter Review Commission's proposals on the ballot.
14. Require County jobs be posted and advertised and require people apply for jobs and conform to merit protection principles. Without either gentleman ever applying, SJC BoCC spent our money to hire a County Administrator (HUNTER SINCLAIR CONRAD) and the current County Attorney (RICHARD KOMANDO) who never so much as applied for their jobs, with no background investigation. (CONRAD was an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal bribery case when SJC BoCC picked CONRAD on November 19, 2019 upon the firing of MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK. County legal jobs must all be advertised in Florida Bar Journal: no excuses.
15. Preserve, protect and defend our history and nature. Restore and revive Cultural Resources Department and protect its integrity and independence.
16. Create an Ombudsman and Office of Open Government to assist citizens and taxpayers.
17. Focus on protecting public health from known environmental health hazards. There is no state OSHA legal protection for public employee safety in Florida since Jeb Bush helped abolish Florida OSHA in 2000. Florida should invite federal OSHA coverage for government employees.
18. Enhance the powers of our SJC Clerk of Courts Inspector General, with job protections and enhanced budget, with authority to investigate any local government agency, subject to a County Charter approved by the voters.
19. Reform government purchasing as we know it. Reform government contracting procedures. Report all instances of possible bid-rigging. Guard against government employees self-dealing (as with former Utilities supervisor fired for selling SCADA products to the County for years without criminal prosecution).
20. Stop giving tax holidays to corporations as "incentives," selling our soul to secretive unknown owners and investors for unknown reasons, including recently formed shell companies. Fully disclose all meetings with those who would seek tax holidays.
20. Restore and revive SJC's Intergovernmental relations committee: encourage local governments to work together to preserve and protect this magical place.
21. Support statewide legislation to revise impact fees as we know them. Stop subsidizing metastatic growth -- unchecked growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell
22. Housing crisis. Allow accessory dwelling units ("mother-in-law" or garage apartments.
23. Discuss affordable housing maturely, including a Public Housing Authority to help people get access to HUD Section 8 Housing Vouchers here, instead of only after burdensome out-of-county travel,
24. Improve County government internal controls and provide a public list of them, as I requested. $786,785 in embezzlement over more than five (5) years under former Sheriff DAVID SHOAR show that our public fisc must be protected from the insider threat.
25. Revise, reform and expand Neighborhood Bill of Rights to protect neighbors' reasonable expectations under the Bert J. Harris, Jr. Private Property Protection Act.
26. Consider Zero Based Budgeting, as President Jimmy Carter supported. Don't assume every department or office gets an increase. Some need to be cut. My late mentor, United States Department of Labor Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt, said any government budget could be cut by 10%. Every government needs to examine every expenditure with a gimlet eye, and stop extravagant spending on what President Abraham Lincoln would have called "flubdubs." For every spending request and every piece of legislation ask, "Is it based on need, or greed?" (As Senator Gary Hart asked his staff to evaluate every single legislative proposal as a freshman Senator in 1975).
26. xxxxx
What's next? You tell me.
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