The Secretary of the Interior's FOIA Officer called earlier, advising that our FOIA request about the St. Augustine 450th Anniversary Commemoration Commission has been expedited and granted a fee waiver.
He also told me that Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar will announce the members of the St. Augustine 450th Anniversary Commemoration Commission tomorrow.
On July 15, 2009, I wrote Secretary Salazar to complain that the City of St. Augustine had expressed the view (under then City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS) that it wanted rich and powerful people to serve on the St. Augustine 450th Anniversary Commemoration Commission -- people who were "affluent" and "politically influential." How gauche.
I advised Secretary Salzar that "St. Augustine’s 450th Commission needs Americans with expertise in national parks, civil rights, ethnic studies, museums, geography, ecology, history, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, tourism, business, and other relevant fields."
Was HARRISS' idea to hijack the Commission with rich white guys, thereby preventing meaningful discussion of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore and of the National Civil Rights Museum? Last year, Mayor Joe BOles told a Jacksonville TV news program that there were "white people" in St. Augustine who opposed the Civil Rights Museum. Those unenlightened "white people" apparently include hate site operator MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN" and his secretive backers.
By federal law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), the St. Augustine 450th Anniversary Commemoration Commission is required to have a "fairly balanced" membership. So it is written. So it shall be done.
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