lEditor's Note by Anne Schindler:
ANCIENT IDIOCY
How St. Augustine officials fell for a swindle of
historic proportions
With age comes wisdom, except perhaps
in the case of the Nation’s Oldest City.
Officials in this historic town are not only
obtuse but suckers, apparently, having sunk
$300,000 in taxpayer money into a fly-by-night
startup, with — shockingly — nothing
to show for their investment 10 months later.
It’s not so shocking, actually. The whole
episode was all-too predictable. We predicted
it. On Aug. 17, Folio Weekly reported that
St. Augustine officials had agreed “to pay an
untested business with no clear plan to put
on its 450th celebration.” €The story noted
that City Commissioners “unanimously
approved a contract with the hastily formed
First America Foundation Inc. to produce the
celebration, despite the fact that the group
has only existed since July, has never planned
even a birthday party and has offered no
specifics about how it might spend” taxpayer
dollars (read the story at
bit.ly/eUMVDh).
The reason the city made this seemingly
irrational decision was to avoid something
that officials found onerous and unreasonable:
the law. See, this incredibly sagacious bunch
believed it would be impossible to plan the
city’s 450th celebration while abiding by
the Sunshine Law, a state requirement that
government bodies meet in the open, properly
publicize meetings and record minutes.
Why the city thought this law would
impede their planning a party isn’t completely
clear, since it doesn’t prevent Florida local
governments from operating, fundraising,
partnering with private enterprise and,
yes, even planning parties. But even if
it did interfere, that’s no justification for
jettisoning the law. As Tallahassee-based First
Amendment Foundation lawyer John Rhea
noted in the August Folio Weekly story, “The
public has a constitutional right to access —
to records and to meetings. It doesn’t really
matter whether their representatives think
it is a ‘good idea’ that they have access. They
have a constitutional right.”
Oh, whatever! Silly little law! Anyhoo,
city officials, led by Mayor Joe Boles,
decided to give $300,000 to a group called
the First America Foundation, led by
Donald Wallis, an attorney and former
Chamber of Commerce chair who promised
the organization would be “very public”
and “transparent.” Which turned out to
be bullshit, frankly. Wallis held secret
meetings, offered no financial accountability
and enforced omerta among his board of
directors via a series of rambling emails,
recently made public.
“No one — absolutely no one … has
any authority or any right whatsoever to
communicate (orally or in writing) on
behalf of our organization about anything
whatsoever,” he wrote. “If it should ever come
to my attention that any member of our
board of directors has violated this policy, I
will see to it that our organization officially
and, to the fullest extent necessary, publicly
repudiates, disavows, corrects, or rescinds the
violating communication.”
Should that response “cause unavoidable
collateral damage in the form of
embarrassment,” he added darkly, “so be it.”
In case this code of silence wasn’t
abundantly clear, Wallis reminded board
members in a May 22 email of “your
complete lack of business authority to
communicate on behalf of FAF, Inc.” adding
that those who spoke publicly “will be ‘hung
out to dry.’”
Evidently, Wallis’ scare tactics were
enough to keep the city’s mayor in line, for
although Joe Boles sat on the foundation
board, and was privy to that organization’s
inept leadership and utter lack of progress, he
failed to mention either of these things to his
colleagues on the City Commission.
Wallis, who acknowledged in one email
having “lapsed into a profound, chronic
fatigue,” about five months ago, stepped down
June 3 — having accomplished exactly nothing.
€ e First America Foundation hasn’t raised a
dime, has no strategic plan, hasn’t even gotten
its needed designation as a 501c3 nonprofit. It
has, however, spent an estimated $100,000, and
there’s no reason to believe the city will get the
balance back. Although the group agreed late
last week to step back from planning the 450th,
there’s nothing in the contract between the city
and the foundation that provides for leftover
money to be returned.
“How logical is that, to turn over in
excess of a quarter of a million dollars to a
private organization and then be hands off?”
John Rhea asked in Folio Weekly last August.
“Is that good government? That is craziness
to me.”
Crazy? Or just stupid? Whatever the
answer, it’s clear this city hasn’t accrued
enough wisdom in the past 450 years to
deserve a celebration. Maybe by the time it
turns 500.
Anne Schindler
themail@folioweekly.com
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