Letter: Picture worth 1,000 words
Posted: June 26, 2013 - 12:48am
By Dr. Dorothy H. Israel
Secretary Fort Mose Historical Society
Editor: I applaud your recent article (June 23) regarding the re-enactment of the Battle of Bloody Mose that occurred at Fort Mose Park. The information presented was informative and broadened an understanding of history not generally known. Although African Americans fought bravely in the battle, none were shown in your article. The fact that black settlers at Fort Mose were the first line of defense for the city of St. Augustine should have been reflected in your photos. I hope in the future that this fact will be kept in mind in your presentation of Fort Mose.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
St. Augustine Record re: no African-Americans shown in Record page one photo on Fort Mose article
Letter: Picture worth 1,000 words
Posted: June 26, 2013 - 12:48am
By Dr. Dorothy H. Israel
Secretary Fort Mose Historical Society
Editor: I applaud your recent article (June 23) regarding the re-enactment of the Battle of Bloody Mose that occurred at Fort Mose Park. The information presented was informative and broadened an understanding of history not generally known. Although African Americans fought bravely in the battle, none were shown in your article. The fact that black settlers at Fort Mose were the first line of defense for the city of St. Augustine should have been reflected in your photos. I hope in the future that this fact will be kept in mind in your presentation of Fort Mose.
Keep Asking Questions
In a democracy, we have the right to ask questions.
In St. Augustine Beach, when citizens ask questions, there are answers.
In St. Augustine Monday night, Commissioners apologized after Mayor Boles told a lady concerned about the mobile vender ordinance that she could not ask questions, only comment.
The apology is appreciated.
The practice of refusing to answer questions is contrary to the genius of a free people.
Our Founders fought and died for hte right to question authority.
Under former City Managers, questions were never answered, as with the hundreds of questions on Environmental Justice and illegal dumping. I was even excoriated by a former Mayor for asking too many questions. (I feel their pain: when I was a child, my mother had a rule: "No questions after 8 PM.")
Questions were forbidden under Tennessee Valley Authority Chairman Marvin Runyon (formerly of Nissan USA, later head of the U.S. Postal Service). Under TVA Chairman S. David Freeman, questions were allowed, and they were how journalists and activists learned the truth.
Question authority.
Question any authority who purports to ban questions.
As Barry Farber always ended his radio broadcasts, "Keep asking questions."
Bridge lighting project will light up our town
Commissioner Donald Crichlow's persistence is about to pay off.
Expect to see a demonstration of under-bridge lighting on several sections of our historic Bridge of Lions commencing July 3rd and 4th. Funds will be raised (some $224,000). The project will be a significant legacy of our Nation's Oldest City's 450th anniversary.
The Bridge lighting technology will allow any color combination, including pink for breast cancer awareness month and Rainbow colors for Gay Pride week.
Internationally-respected lighting artist William Brennan of JustLighting has worked on lighting forSuperbowls and the St. Augustine Nombre de Dios cross, but this is his first bridge. He and his family moved here several years from Utah, after falling in love with St. Augustine (as so many cool people have, and they keep moving here).
Welcome, and thank you, Mr. Brennan.
Three cheers for Commissioner Crichlow's persistence.
Expect to see a demonstration of under-bridge lighting on several sections of our historic Bridge of Lions commencing July 3rd and 4th. Funds will be raised (some $224,000). The project will be a significant legacy of our Nation's Oldest City's 450th anniversary.
The Bridge lighting technology will allow any color combination, including pink for breast cancer awareness month and Rainbow colors for Gay Pride week.
Internationally-respected lighting artist William Brennan of JustLighting has worked on lighting forSuperbowls and the St. Augustine Nombre de Dios cross, but this is his first bridge. He and his family moved here several years from Utah, after falling in love with St. Augustine (as so many cool people have, and they keep moving here).
Welcome, and thank you, Mr. Brennan.
Three cheers for Commissioner Crichlow's persistence.
It Takes A Village to Save Two Alleys
Proposals to privatize two alleys in the Lighthouse Park neighborhood were rejected by St. Augustine City Commissioners, by votes of 4-1 and 3-2 at the last two City Commission meetings (June 10 and June 24).
The landgrabbing proposals were opposed by neigbhors (and me), and never reported in the St. Augustine Record.
The process is called "vacation" -- the City has in the past allowed landowners to take over City-owned alleys, without just compensation to the City. The vacated land goes on the tax rolls, but no sale of the land -- the process is a giveaway to favored landowners, and a stench in the nostrils of our City.
The votes on the two Lighthouse Park alleys end the practice of giving away alleys.
One alley provides public access to Little Beach. The vote was 4-1 on June 10, affirming a vote 22 years ago, where opponents included the late musician Gamble Rogers (for whom a state park is named). His eloquent words were before Commissioners when they denied hte application.
The other alley was sought for a for-profit preschool's retention pond; the vote was 3-2: instead there will be a revocable license from the City to the landowner.
The vote will have the effect of saving the neighborhood from expansion of a nonconforming use, while saving two 200 year old oak trees.
Democracy is on the march in St. Augustine.
Once upon a time in St. Augustine, Commissioners voted in lockstep, and disrespected residents.
Today, our Commissioners think for themselves, ask good questions, and listen.
Vive le differance!
The landgrabbing proposals were opposed by neigbhors (and me), and never reported in the St. Augustine Record.
The process is called "vacation" -- the City has in the past allowed landowners to take over City-owned alleys, without just compensation to the City. The vacated land goes on the tax rolls, but no sale of the land -- the process is a giveaway to favored landowners, and a stench in the nostrils of our City.
The votes on the two Lighthouse Park alleys end the practice of giving away alleys.
One alley provides public access to Little Beach. The vote was 4-1 on June 10, affirming a vote 22 years ago, where opponents included the late musician Gamble Rogers (for whom a state park is named). His eloquent words were before Commissioners when they denied hte application.
The other alley was sought for a for-profit preschool's retention pond; the vote was 3-2: instead there will be a revocable license from the City to the landowner.
The vote will have the effect of saving the neighborhood from expansion of a nonconforming use, while saving two 200 year old oak trees.
Democracy is on the march in St. Augustine.
Once upon a time in St. Augustine, Commissioners voted in lockstep, and disrespected residents.
Today, our Commissioners think for themselves, ask good questions, and listen.
Vive le differance!
Monday, June 24, 2013
HATRED 101: Facebook Refuses to Remove "Death to Israel" Page
My friend Terry called last night from Texas, telling me that Facebook refuses to remove a page entitled "Death to Israel," claiming it is not "hate speech" under its "community guidelines." He sent me the screen capture evidencing this malreasance by Facebook.
This refusal to remove hate speech is contrary to the genius of a free people.
Take a moment today and contact the Federal Trade Commission and report this dereliction of duty as a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act -- Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices. Contact the German and French Embassy Commercial Counsellors and report Facebook for criminal prosecution -- those countries take hate crimes more seriously than our own, it would appear.
This refusal to remove hate speech is contrary to the genius of a free people.
Take a moment today and contact the Federal Trade Commission and report this dereliction of duty as a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act -- Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices. Contact the German and French Embassy Commercial Counsellors and report Facebook for criminal prosecution -- those countries take hate crimes more seriously than our own, it would appear.
HATRED 102: Catholic League President Defends President Obama Remarks -- He Was Talking About Segregation, Not Catholic Education
This morning's St. Augustine Record carries a letter written by an angry bird, accusing President Obama of being anti-Catholic, or anti-Catholic schools, because he spoke in Belfast about segregation. Taking a snippet out of context, the way known Republicans looove to do, it appears she is not part of the reality-based community.
While right-wingers are spewing the out-of-context quote on the Internet, no less an authority than the President of the Catholic League said President Obama was denouncing segregation in education and housing in Northern Ireland, and that the Reagan Coalition and Catholicvote.org are "insane" to suppose he wanted to abolish Catholic schools.
As Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
I'm against segregation, and I'm embarassed that the St. Augustine Record would print this carping harpy's letter.
Meanwhile, the Record is guilty of only recently refusing to print an "adversarial" letter about discrimination by tthe St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- malpractice in marketing tourism in our Nation's Oldest City.
As admitted May 14, 2013, VCB is refusing to advertise in Miami, refusing to target African-American families, refusing to provide information on GLBT-friendly places, refusing to target youth, writing off the lower 50% of income earners, tourism "redlining," in probable violation of our federal and local Fair Housing laws. VCB's consultant invited competitors to raise their prices, a per se violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section 1.
Today's hate letter in the Record typifies the genre. dumbing down debate and feeding the fires of hatred.
As Senator Robert Kennedy said in the Indianapolis ghetto on April 4, 1968, the night that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis: "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."
While right-wingers are spewing the out-of-context quote on the Internet, no less an authority than the President of the Catholic League said President Obama was denouncing segregation in education and housing in Northern Ireland, and that the Reagan Coalition and Catholicvote.org are "insane" to suppose he wanted to abolish Catholic schools.
As Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
I'm against segregation, and I'm embarassed that the St. Augustine Record would print this carping harpy's letter.
Meanwhile, the Record is guilty of only recently refusing to print an "adversarial" letter about discrimination by tthe St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- malpractice in marketing tourism in our Nation's Oldest City.
As admitted May 14, 2013, VCB is refusing to advertise in Miami, refusing to target African-American families, refusing to provide information on GLBT-friendly places, refusing to target youth, writing off the lower 50% of income earners, tourism "redlining," in probable violation of our federal and local Fair Housing laws. VCB's consultant invited competitors to raise their prices, a per se violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, Section 1.
Today's hate letter in the Record typifies the genre. dumbing down debate and feeding the fires of hatred.
As Senator Robert Kennedy said in the Indianapolis ghetto on April 4, 1968, the night that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis: "What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Restoring buskers to their rightful place in St. Augustine
Even after 1964, St. Augustine struggled under the vestiges of "Jim Crow" law and undue influence by the Whetstones and other commerical landlords.
During the sorry Administration of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (1998-2010), our City of St. Augustine wasted considerable resources harassing and intimidating artists, musicians and entertainers. The latest effort involves a mere 83 feet of Hypolita Street, set for discussion at tomorrow night's Commission meeting.
Selective, undated photos are not "evidence."
Merchant complaints claiming cusomters complained are rank unreliable hearsay.
Attacking buskers makes us look small, and is bad for our branding.
Those tortured souls who hate musicians do not speak for us.
Suggestion: make clear, from this day forward, that St. Augustine is busker-friendly, and that artists, musicians and entertainers have a right to exist. Let them set up on City-owned property, including the courtyard of the Casa de Hidalgo.
What would people rather see and hear? Authentic Spanish classical guitar, or canned music?
Real art, or tacky t-shirt shops?
Real change, or another trip to the Bryan Simpson Federal Courthouse in downtown Jacksonville, for yet another First Amendment victory over prejudice in our City of St. Augustine.
You tell me.
During the sorry Administration of City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS (1998-2010), our City of St. Augustine wasted considerable resources harassing and intimidating artists, musicians and entertainers. The latest effort involves a mere 83 feet of Hypolita Street, set for discussion at tomorrow night's Commission meeting.
Selective, undated photos are not "evidence."
Merchant complaints claiming cusomters complained are rank unreliable hearsay.
Attacking buskers makes us look small, and is bad for our branding.
Those tortured souls who hate musicians do not speak for us.
Suggestion: make clear, from this day forward, that St. Augustine is busker-friendly, and that artists, musicians and entertainers have a right to exist. Let them set up on City-owned property, including the courtyard of the Casa de Hidalgo.
What would people rather see and hear? Authentic Spanish classical guitar, or canned music?
Real art, or tacky t-shirt shops?
Real change, or another trip to the Bryan Simpson Federal Courthouse in downtown Jacksonville, for yet another First Amendment victory over prejudice in our City of St. Augustine.
You tell me.
Happy birthday, Edward Snowden
Edward Snowden is a national hero for disclosing massive Fourth Amendment violations by NSA. His 30th birthday was June 21st. Happy birthday, and Godspeed! From your new location -- asylum in a democratic country -- please continue to help us heal the wounds of 9/11, which are turning our country into a military dictatorship, spying on Americans like J. Edgar Hoover on steroids, or the East German Stasi (where 10% of the people were spying on the rest of them).
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Did you know?
Where is the largest free classical music festival in America?
St. Augustine, Florida, in our Cathedral Basilica.
The first three days concluded tonight to a packed house.
The free concerts continue next Thursday through Saturday, June 27-29, 7:30 PM.
St. Augustine, Florida, in our Cathedral Basilica.
The first three days concluded tonight to a packed house.
The free concerts continue next Thursday through Saturday, June 27-29, 7:30 PM.
IN HAEC VERBA: June 20, 2013 E-mail to SJC, VCB and TDC on Wrongful Withholding of Documents on Antitrust and Civil Rights Compliance Policies
Dear Ms. Ross and Messrs. Goldman, Wanchick, McCormack and Hastings:
1. VCB meetings must be open to the public under the Florida Sunshine laws -- when is VCB's next board meeting? Meanwhile, all requested VCB records, and those of MMGY and other contractors and subcontractors, must be released today. Please start with VCB's Antitrust and Civil Rights Compliance Policies, which I requested on May 20, 2013.
2. I wrote you a fortnight ago about violations of Florida's Open Records and Sunshine laws.
3. You did not respond. Neither VCB nor anyone else with the County ever responded substantively to my June 7 2013 E-mail. This is deeply troubling, and offensive.
4. However, your lack of response is inculpatory -- it is an an "admission by silence."
5. VCB is covered by the Sunshine and Open Records laws. St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Lester Boles, Jr., St. Johns County Commissioner Priscilla Bennett (a/k/a "Rachel" Bennett), and St. Augustine Beach Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien -- three (3) elected government officials -- serve on VCB's board. They serve by annual appointment of the St. Augustine City Commission, St. Johns County Commission and St. Augustine Beach City Commission. Mayor Boles, Commissioner Bennett and Vice Mayor O"Brien are all serving as board members in their capacity as government officials.
6. VCB is delegated a County function and is closely monitored by three (3) elected government officials on its board.
7. VCB would not exist, and VCB could not survive, without tens of millions of dollars in county funding for eighteen (18) years. The efficacy of VCB's work, and its contractors work, is a matter of public concern -- VCB is obstructing access to government records and chilling First Amendment rights to criticize VCB and learn about its nature, structure and performance. .
8. VCB member and County Commissioner Priscilla "Rachel" Bennett dealt directly with the County Attorney's office in procuring the putative legal opinion that says what she wanted it to say. It is flummery, based upon ignoring the "Delegation test." See below. The CA's and VCB's putative legal analysis is deeply flawed, omitting the Delegation Test and contorting facts. For example, until 2009, VCB was housed in the County Administration Building. Mr. Goldman omitted this material fact. (See below). Why?
9. When I offered mediation -- either through the Seventh Judicial Circuit or the State Atorney General's office -- VCB did not respond.
10. Like the Lucky Strike tobacco ad, evidently VCB would "rather fight than switch."
11. VCB's apparent Antitrust and Civil Rights violations are a matter of public concern.
12. We have a Right to Know about possible government-funded Antitrust and Civil Rights violations by VCB, which has three (3) of our elected officials on its board of directors.
13. They're our elected officials, spending our money. This is The People's Business.
14. VCB's and MMGY's secretive actions are contrary to the genius of a free people. We have a Right to Know what VCB has done in our name, with our money. Enough stonewalling.
15. I asked you to direct preservation of documents. Did any of you do so?
If so, please provide evidence by return E-mail.
If not, why not? Please do so immediately.
16. Kindly agree to provide access for us to inspect all of the requested VCB, MMGY and TDC records today. Then we'll be done.
Please govern yourselves accordingly.
Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed
Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
(904) 377-4998
1. VCB meetings must be open to the public under the Florida Sunshine laws -- when is VCB's next board meeting? Meanwhile, all requested VCB records, and those of MMGY and other contractors and subcontractors, must be released today. Please start with VCB's Antitrust and Civil Rights Compliance Policies, which I requested on May 20, 2013.
2. I wrote you a fortnight ago about violations of Florida's Open Records and Sunshine laws.
3. You did not respond. Neither VCB nor anyone else with the County ever responded substantively to my June 7 2013 E-mail. This is deeply troubling, and offensive.
4. However, your lack of response is inculpatory -- it is an an "admission by silence."
5. VCB is covered by the Sunshine and Open Records laws. St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Lester Boles, Jr., St. Johns County Commissioner Priscilla Bennett (a/k/a "Rachel" Bennett), and St. Augustine Beach Vice Mayor Richard O'Brien -- three (3) elected government officials -- serve on VCB's board. They serve by annual appointment of the St. Augustine City Commission, St. Johns County Commission and St. Augustine Beach City Commission. Mayor Boles, Commissioner Bennett and Vice Mayor O"Brien are all serving as board members in their capacity as government officials.
6. VCB is delegated a County function and is closely monitored by three (3) elected government officials on its board.
7. VCB would not exist, and VCB could not survive, without tens of millions of dollars in county funding for eighteen (18) years. The efficacy of VCB's work, and its contractors work, is a matter of public concern -- VCB is obstructing access to government records and chilling First Amendment rights to criticize VCB and learn about its nature, structure and performance. .
8. VCB member and County Commissioner Priscilla "Rachel" Bennett dealt directly with the County Attorney's office in procuring the putative legal opinion that says what she wanted it to say. It is flummery, based upon ignoring the "Delegation test." See below. The CA's and VCB's putative legal analysis is deeply flawed, omitting the Delegation Test and contorting facts. For example, until 2009, VCB was housed in the County Administration Building. Mr. Goldman omitted this material fact. (See below). Why?
9. When I offered mediation -- either through the Seventh Judicial Circuit or the State Atorney General's office -- VCB did not respond.
10. Like the Lucky Strike tobacco ad, evidently VCB would "rather fight than switch."
11. VCB's apparent Antitrust and Civil Rights violations are a matter of public concern.
12. We have a Right to Know about possible government-funded Antitrust and Civil Rights violations by VCB, which has three (3) of our elected officials on its board of directors.
13. They're our elected officials, spending our money. This is The People's Business.
14. VCB's and MMGY's secretive actions are contrary to the genius of a free people. We have a Right to Know what VCB has done in our name, with our money. Enough stonewalling.
15. I asked you to direct preservation of documents. Did any of you do so?
If so, please provide evidence by return E-mail.
If not, why not? Please do so immediately.
16. Kindly agree to provide access for us to inspect all of the requested VCB, MMGY and TDC records today. Then we'll be done.
Please govern yourselves accordingly.
Thank you.
With kindest regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Ed
Ed Slavin
Clean Up City of St. Augustine, Florida
www.cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
(904) 377-4998
Forgive them
You might call them the Confederate News Network.
Between Michael Gold's Historic City News and Morris Communications' St. Augustine Record, there have been quite a few racist postings in recent months. Historic City News has also had several homophobic postings, from the usual KKK types, spewing hatred at Mayor Joseph Boles, Vice Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline and other City of St. Augustine officials for voting to protect human rights (December 10, 2013 Fair Housing ordinance amendment adding "sexual orientation" as protected class.)
Tonight, Michael Gold's HCN shows its true hate site colors, with twin postings by local haters Doug Russo and Stanton Tedder, Sr., both angry at commmunity plans to commemorate the 1964 Civil RIghts Act in Lincolnville.
"Preacher" Doug Russo wrote, "more bleeding heart hussein lovers, pushing a lie." Tedder wrote, "Nothing but lies (sic) has (sic) been told about 1964, and I know they are lies!!!!" (original punctuation in haec verba).
Forgive them.
Doug Russo and Stanton Tedder, Sr. were among the KKK-style pickets against our St. Augustine Gay Pride Day on June 11, 2005, as reported in the Record, complete with hateful signs.
Purporting to be a "Christian," filled with anything but love, Doug Russo made hateful anti-Gay statements at the December 10, 2012 City Commission meeting, then heckled Commissioners as "reprobates," stating "you're fired!"
Why? Because Commissioners unanimously voted to add "sexual orientation" as a protected class to our Fair Housing ordinance, rejecting bigotry that carried the day in Jacksonville last August, with Jacksonville City Council rejecting Gay rights. Earlier, Russo heckled the Mayor while I was speaking in favor of the ordinance, because the Mayor granted me a few extra seconds to conclude my remarks. Mayor Boles gavelled Russo, saying he could have asked for more time if he wanted it. Doug Russo's heckling led to:
(a) security enhancements that take effect at the Commission meeting on June 24th; and
(b) Mayor Boles stating after Russo called him and other Commissioners "reprobates," "Would someone please escort that idiot out of the room?"
Forgive Russo & Co.
Russo and his Tea Party gang may be found on St. George Street with inauthentic colonial garb, a "Don't Tread on Me" sign and signs stating "Obama is a Communist."
Here's video of Russo from YouTube, attacking our Commander in Chief:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbdsDDKM5o&feature=youtube_gdata_player
U.S. Secret Service please note: ask the FBI in Jacksonville about Doug Russo's activities here in St. Johns County, including threats to public officials and Gay activists.
Russo was one of two anti-Obama pickets at the January 20, 2009 Inauguration celebration at our Slave Market Square (a/k/a "Plaza de la Constitucion.").
"Preacher" Doug Russo and other Tea Party and KKK-type extremists viciously opposed a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
The extremist speakers at the November 1, 2011 St. Johns County Commission meeting were so abusive that they made gun gestures and gun noises, calling the late Robin Nadeau and other Park supporters Communists and Nazis, comparing us to Hitler, Goebbels and Stalin and saying it was all a United Natons plot!
They said our County Commissioners would be guilty of "treason" if they supported the National Park and Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
So much for reasoned public debate.
Our Commissioners did not enforce their own civility rules.
Our County Attorney did not provide any legal analysis of park legislation.
Our County Administration did not provide any information.
The other-directed platoon of loons so scared our County Commissioners they stopped thinking for themselves that day.
The Tea Party and KKK types -- social dominators -- so scared our County Commissioners so much that they voted not to endorse the Park and Seashore.
Forgive them all.
Venceremos! (We shall overcome).
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Another Victory for St. Augustine Residents
Citizens' and officials' telephone calls and letters to 7-Eleven and the Japanese Embassy worked: an eighteen-pump gasoline station and 24 hour convenience story planned for the corner of May Street and San Marco Avenue is dead.
So are several of the trees, which were cut pursuant to a promised development that now will hopefully not happen.
No archaeological investigation fee has been paid. The projuect is moribund. The land speculator's telephone is disconnected.
Once again, it appears that local residents have defeated devious "developers" and their legal hitman, controversial St. Augustine lawyer George McClure.
Yes, we can!
So are several of the trees, which were cut pursuant to a promised development that now will hopefully not happen.
No archaeological investigation fee has been paid. The projuect is moribund. The land speculator's telephone is disconnected.
Once again, it appears that local residents have defeated devious "developers" and their legal hitman, controversial St. Augustine lawyer George McClure.
Yes, we can!
In Appreciation of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach Commissioners and Their Fair Housing Ordinances
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just released a study of anti-Gay discrimination in housing. Federal law does not yet protect GLBT people in housing discrimination.
Ahead of federal law, our City of St. Augustine bans "sexual orientation" discrimination in housing. The vote was unanimous.
So does our City of St. Augustine Beach, which also bans "gender orientation" discrimination. The vote was unanimous.
Three cheers for progress!
Local jurisdictions also protect GLBT employee rights, including the Sheriff, State's Attorney's office and Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission of St. Johns County (first in 2009). St. Augustine Beach protects GLBT employee rights in the private sector.
There will be more progress.
We're way ahead of Jacksonville, whose City Commission rejected GLBT rights protections last August. We're leaving Jacksonville in our dust. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once called St. Augustine "the most lawless" city in America during the days of Jim Crow segregation. Yesterday marked the commemoration of the 49th anniversary of the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history -- their letter was eloquently read at the Bayfront (with no coverage by the St. Augustine Record or TV news crews).
We're changing history. Dr. King and the fifteen Rabbis would be proud!
Visitors and employers don't want to be in intolerant places -- increasingly, they look for diversity and respect for human rights.
In fact, when the Mumford & Sons musical group's "Gentlemen of the Road Tour" chose St. Augustine as one of only three (3) tour stops in the United States, it was our City's Fair Housing ordinance that helped win their hearts.
On December 10, 2013, the City of St. Augustine adoped the Fair Housing ordinance amendment adding sexual orientation as a protected class. The next day, the City of St. Augustine staff had a two-hour conference call with Mumford & Sons: City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E. mentioned the Fair Housing ordinance amendment, a fact that helped persuade Mumford & Sons to agree to come to St. Augustine.
Mumford & Sons shares our pride in St. Augustine becoming a tolerant, friendly place -- it's not 1964 any longer.
Today's St. Augustine Record carries an angry letter to the editor, decrying the St. Augustine Beach Commission as the "worst" in 24 years. The author was the only person to speak in opposition to the St. Augustine Beach Fair Housing ordinance, which he said was "not necessary" and already covered "by federal law." Mr. Robert Koehler is wrong on all three counts. St. Augustine Beach City Commission is much bettertoday than it was when it was run as a dictatorship.
From his inarticulate letter, it appears that Robert Koehler is angry that the City of St. Augustine Beach is now GLBT-friendly, and has a Fair Housing ordinance that is ahead of federal law. What do you reckon?
While Mr. Koehler and I recently agreed in opposing redlight cameras, I've found his heckling me (and others) when we are at the podium speaking to be a bit distracting. Forgive him.
Ahead of federal law, our City of St. Augustine bans "sexual orientation" discrimination in housing. The vote was unanimous.
So does our City of St. Augustine Beach, which also bans "gender orientation" discrimination. The vote was unanimous.
Three cheers for progress!
Local jurisdictions also protect GLBT employee rights, including the Sheriff, State's Attorney's office and Anastasia Mosquito Control Commission of St. Johns County (first in 2009). St. Augustine Beach protects GLBT employee rights in the private sector.
There will be more progress.
We're way ahead of Jacksonville, whose City Commission rejected GLBT rights protections last August. We're leaving Jacksonville in our dust. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once called St. Augustine "the most lawless" city in America during the days of Jim Crow segregation. Yesterday marked the commemoration of the 49th anniversary of the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history -- their letter was eloquently read at the Bayfront (with no coverage by the St. Augustine Record or TV news crews).
We're changing history. Dr. King and the fifteen Rabbis would be proud!
Visitors and employers don't want to be in intolerant places -- increasingly, they look for diversity and respect for human rights.
In fact, when the Mumford & Sons musical group's "Gentlemen of the Road Tour" chose St. Augustine as one of only three (3) tour stops in the United States, it was our City's Fair Housing ordinance that helped win their hearts.
On December 10, 2013, the City of St. Augustine adoped the Fair Housing ordinance amendment adding sexual orientation as a protected class. The next day, the City of St. Augustine staff had a two-hour conference call with Mumford & Sons: City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E. mentioned the Fair Housing ordinance amendment, a fact that helped persuade Mumford & Sons to agree to come to St. Augustine.
Mumford & Sons shares our pride in St. Augustine becoming a tolerant, friendly place -- it's not 1964 any longer.
Today's St. Augustine Record carries an angry letter to the editor, decrying the St. Augustine Beach Commission as the "worst" in 24 years. The author was the only person to speak in opposition to the St. Augustine Beach Fair Housing ordinance, which he said was "not necessary" and already covered "by federal law." Mr. Robert Koehler is wrong on all three counts. St. Augustine Beach City Commission is much bettertoday than it was when it was run as a dictatorship.
From his inarticulate letter, it appears that Robert Koehler is angry that the City of St. Augustine Beach is now GLBT-friendly, and has a Fair Housing ordinance that is ahead of federal law. What do you reckon?
While Mr. Koehler and I recently agreed in opposing redlight cameras, I've found his heckling me (and others) when we are at the podium speaking to be a bit distracting. Forgive him.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Celebrate Watergate Anniversary Today
During the presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan, during my clerkship for Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt, my mother visited me in Washington, D.C. My mother and I took a Tourmobile around the city.
We passed Watergate and our guide mentioned only that it was a hotel and shopping center. Nothing about the burglary there that led to the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon.
We asked the driver, and then the staff at the Tourmobile HQ at Arlington National Cemetery.
'We were told it was "too controversial."
The Department of the Interior and its contractor were guilty of censoring history. How "hopelessly provincial," as my mom would say -- we both laughed and laughed at the supercilious, supine government contractor employees for the Department of the Interior who emitted that falsehood.
Obviously, apparatchiks under Secretary James Watt censored the script.
Tourmobile guides were simply forbidden to say what happened at the Watergate building on June 17, 1972.
We survived Nixon and Reagan. We survived two Bushes.
Our democracy is still under attack today, as in Watergate.
Our democracy is under attack by overbearing Big Money and Big Government.
Here in St. Johns County, our one-party Republican misrule has taken our rights away.
Ask Sheriff David B. Shoar -- but wait, he won't even answer questions from the St. Augustine Record Editor about the Tom Manuel case.
Ask the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- but wait, the St. Augustine Record would not run a letter about its actions, saying it was too "adversarial," and the VCB itself refuses to provide any documents on antitrust and civil rights concerns, despite Florida's Sunshine and Open Records laws and the "Delegation Test" -- VCB is performing a traditional county government function, which has been delegated to VCB.
Ask St. Augustine Beach City Commissioners -- but wait, the SAB's charming Mayor, Sherman Gary Snodgrass, sometimes interrupts public comment speakers, saying people can't make "disparaging" remarks.
Oh, yes we can -- this is not Excelen or Commonwealth Edison.
This is America.
Our First Amendment guarantees our right to speak, ask questions and, if we want to be, to be "pests who never rest" when it comes to unaccountable institutions.
"Ye shall know the truth and it will set you free," scripture teaches us.
In the words of broacaster Barry Farber, "Keep asking questions."
That's how we should celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Watergate burglary today -- "Keep asking questions."
We passed Watergate and our guide mentioned only that it was a hotel and shopping center. Nothing about the burglary there that led to the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon.
We asked the driver, and then the staff at the Tourmobile HQ at Arlington National Cemetery.
'We were told it was "too controversial."
The Department of the Interior and its contractor were guilty of censoring history. How "hopelessly provincial," as my mom would say -- we both laughed and laughed at the supercilious, supine government contractor employees for the Department of the Interior who emitted that falsehood.
Obviously, apparatchiks under Secretary James Watt censored the script.
Tourmobile guides were simply forbidden to say what happened at the Watergate building on June 17, 1972.
We survived Nixon and Reagan. We survived two Bushes.
Our democracy is still under attack today, as in Watergate.
Our democracy is under attack by overbearing Big Money and Big Government.
Here in St. Johns County, our one-party Republican misrule has taken our rights away.
Ask Sheriff David B. Shoar -- but wait, he won't even answer questions from the St. Augustine Record Editor about the Tom Manuel case.
Ask the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau -- but wait, the St. Augustine Record would not run a letter about its actions, saying it was too "adversarial," and the VCB itself refuses to provide any documents on antitrust and civil rights concerns, despite Florida's Sunshine and Open Records laws and the "Delegation Test" -- VCB is performing a traditional county government function, which has been delegated to VCB.
Ask St. Augustine Beach City Commissioners -- but wait, the SAB's charming Mayor, Sherman Gary Snodgrass, sometimes interrupts public comment speakers, saying people can't make "disparaging" remarks.
Oh, yes we can -- this is not Excelen or Commonwealth Edison.
This is America.
Our First Amendment guarantees our right to speak, ask questions and, if we want to be, to be "pests who never rest" when it comes to unaccountable institutions.
"Ye shall know the truth and it will set you free," scripture teaches us.
In the words of broacaster Barry Farber, "Keep asking questions."
That's how we should celebrate the 41st anniversary of the Watergate burglary today -- "Keep asking questions."
Peter Ellis' Questions for Sheriff David B. Shoar Still Require Answers
St, Augustine Record Editor Peter Ellis asked excellent questions of Sheriff David B. Shoar about the Tom Manuel case. Sheriff Shoar never answered them. Shoar has not been held accountable by the St. Augustine Record or the politicians in St. Johns County, alll of whom require spinal implants. In the words of Barry Farber, "Keep asking questions." Click here.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau, Inc. and St. Johns County Administrator Michael Wanchik Are Still "Stonewalling It" On Sunshine and Open Records
When will they ever learn?
Since May 20 -- that's 28 days tomorrow -- the St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau, Inc. has been "stonewalling it," never providing a copy of its Antitrust and Civil Rights Compliance Policies, or anything else.
Wonder why?
At a May 14, 2013 meeting, in the presence of 100 witnesses, in a county-owned Convention Center, St. Johns County tourism promotion contractor SJCVCB, Inc. and its consultant, Dr. Peter Yesawich of multinational consultant MMGY, disgraced themselves by:
A. Pricing discussions in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act --Yesawich recommended price increases (see articles and letters, below); and
B. Elitist racist, homophobic "Jim Crow: marketing that leaves out Miami, African-Americans, GLBT people, youth and eschews the lowest 50% of American income earners, violating the Fair Housing laws of the United States of America, the State of Florida, and the Cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach.
We've got only 59% average motel occupancy here in St. Johns County, but VCB's effete corps of anti-intellectual snobs continue targetting rich white golfers, with offensive racially-targetted literature wiht 199 images of white people, zero Native Americans, four apparent Hispanics (including actor Chad Light playing Ponce de Leon), and eleven African-Americans (mostly happy slaves).
We're not playing to our strengths -- this is the first cultural melting pot in America -- the first Hispanics, first Catholics, first African-Americans (free and slave) and first Jews arrived here on September 8, 1565. VCB does not advertise this history, or even understand it, it seems.
Welcome to 1953 St. Augustine, Florida -- it's like no one at VCB has heard that St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach have adopetd Fair Housing ordinances, unanimously, in 2012 and 2013..
June 17th marks the 41st annivesary of the Watergate burglary. Richard Nixon and other dangerous Republicans subverted our democracy.
Our democracy here in St. Johns County is being subverted, in Nixonian fashion, by Republican appointees to the Visitor and Convention Bureau and their international advertising agencies -- they seemingly don't give a fig about our history, our rights and our culture, who take government funds for a government function and stiff the public when we ask for records pertinent to illegal price-fixing meetings and discrimination.
Our local officials serving on VCB are not even allowed to vote. Why?
It's our money. We want to see our documents.
We want to hear the truth.
Is that too much to ask?
What are the Antitrust and Civil Rights Compliance policies of the VCB (if any):?
What is the history of discussions of Jim Crow marketing, which continues to leave off Miami, even as we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida, and 450th anniversary of St. Augustine?
Whar are the records of VCB meetings where competitors engage in anticompetitive practices?
Healing requires full compliance with Open Records and Sunshine laws.
Healing requires an end to price-fixing discussions at VCB meetings, or anywhere else.
Healing requires diversity marketing, and no more Fair Housing violations.
It's our money. It's our time. It's our town.
If VCB won't come clean, respond to Open Records and answer questions, then:
A. St. Johns County must cancel its contract with VCB for material breach;
B. St Johns County and local governments should spend the 4% bed tax money directly, instead of through hired hands who lack vision, experience and common sense (VCB's contract expires September 30, 2013 at 11:59 PM);
C. Our State's Attorney, R.J. Larizza (see below) must exercise his prosecutorial discretion and consider prosecuting VCB Executive Director Richard Goldman for violating our Florida Open Records laws.
What do you reckon?
VCB Executive Director Richard Goldman
St. Johns County Attorney Patrick McCormack
(His new nickname should be "Delay")
Oversees $500 million annual budget, allows VCB to violate Open Records law
$18 million St. Johns County Administration Palace (a/k/a Taj Mahal), location of June 17, 2013 meeting of the Tourist Development Council (1:30 PM)
$16.9 million St. Johns County Convention Center,
scene of possible May 14, 2013 antitrust crimes
involving recommendation to increase prices in possible violation of
Sherman Antitrust Act
(as well as prejudiced discussion of refusal to advertise to Miami, African-Americans, GLBT people, youth and the lower 50% of American income-earners -- possible violations of local and federal Fair Housing laws)
Antitrust crime scene?
Watergate crime scene
Watergate crime scene
"Keep asking questions."
What do you reckon?
Imagine
Imagine if dodgy local public officials were afraid to peculate for fear of prosecution?
Imagine if crooked businessmen were prosecuted for consumer fraud?
Imagine if concerned citizens were always treated with dignity, respect and consideration when they contact prosecutors about government wrongdoing?
Imagine if polluters feared prosecution?
We could have a State's Attorney's office that fulfilled the functions Florida's Constitution had in mind.
I was privileged, during the 1980s, to cover as a young newspaper editor the office of James Nelson Ramsey, the District Attorney General for Anderson County, Tennessee (in Tennessee, since 1796, local DA's have generally been called "General").
General Ramsey refused to cower to power, earning dozens of disciplinary complaints -- my favorite complaint was from Sheriff Dennis O. Trotter,who complained that General Ramsey called him a "crooked SOB" to Johnny Ray Morgan, who was Sheriff Trotter's bagman, a pistol-packing ruffian with a fourth grade education who threatened my publisher and who would show up at our office after someone embellished and told him about one of my news stories.
Our Appalachian Observer newspaer receptionist, Vicki, who was formerly with FDLE, would calmly and sweetly say, "he's across the street, in the Courthouse, Mr. Morgan," knowing full well I was just up the hall, behind a hollow core door.
Sheriff Dennis O. Trotter and Bagman Johnny Ray Morgan both went to federal prison for their crimes. Bagman Morgan was so violent that the federal judge kept him in prison until his guilty plea, based on surveillance tapes where he spoke of his threats and violent crimes. Morgan was so bold that he was heard by one of our reporters entering the Sheriff's office proclaiming, "Bagman's here. Here come the bagman."
General Ramsey revealed horrific jail conditions, working to improve them.
General Ramsey questioned police corruption and brutality and routine beatings of suspects.
General Ramsey believed racism was an institutional force in Oak Ridge and Anderson County, and sought to undo it -- he had picketed the segregated Oak Ridge movie theatre as a boy, in the company of scientist Waldo Cohn. As an adult, he made it his business to know which police officers were KKK members, and to be on guard for racist prosecutions and racist police techniques (e.g., Oak Ridge had only one surveillance camera, located in the African-American community).
General Ramsey ended law enforcement crookedness, flummery and dupery, such as the scheme by which bad check charges were never filed, with successive Anderson County Sheriffs and their henchmen pocketing the filing fees and court costs by the bad check writers.
Gerneral Ramsey prosecuted payroll-padding, embezzlement and no-show jobs.
General Ramsey prosecuted an Oak Ridge Police Captain and former UT All-American Basketball player for arson and insurance fraud involving Oak Ridge Motors.
A card-carrying ACLU member, a Democrat (and both a Unitarian and Church of Christ member), General Ramsey was an atypical DA.
He allowed defense attorneys to present exculpatory evidence to the Grand Jury.
He plea-bargained in my presence -- he had nothing to hide and the defense lawyers were okay with it. How many reporters have ever been able to observe the secret process of plea-bargaining? (A bemused and amusing General Ramsey did eventually have the Courthouse staff construct a half-door with Christmas bells, dubbing it "the Slavin barrier," so that he would know when I was approaching his inner sanctum.
General Ramsey helped empower honest lawmen to do their jobs without fear or favor -- he took risks.
General Ramsey identified with the people, not the powerful -- he was not the DA for the 1%. He was elected with significant union support (after the school superintendent busted the school bus driver union by contracting out busses to his cronies).
He helped empower activists and journalists. We ran off a crooked school superintendent, helped imprison a crooked sheriff and exposed nuclear weapons plant pollution, including the world's largest mercury pollution event at the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant.
General Ramsey joined with what he called "The Gang of Four" -- two County Attorneys and two District Attorneys for Anderson and Roane Counties -- to plan on bringing a sworn, verified public nuisance action against Union Carbide and the Department of Energy's Y-12 nuclear weapons plant over pollution. (They dropped the idea when the State Attorney General filed an historic federal court action).
General Ramsey did not win all his cases. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't a knight in shining armor. Like a lot of lawyers and intellectuals, he could be lazy, overbearing and egotistical. But he was heroic, and fun to watch.
He taught activists the value of courage. He was my first law professor, de facto, if not de jure -- he told me about legendary corruption and how to fight it.
General Ramsey's papers are at Dartmouth University. Some day, someone will write a book on him. Flawed though he was, he was heroic in a very dangerous place -- Appalachia, in a place where hundreds of workers have died in coal and nuclear weapons industries.
Our times call for heroes, and not zeroes.
Imagine what it would be like to have a State's Attorney here more like General Ramsey and less like Boss Hogg.
What do you reckon?
State's Attorney Ralph Joseph Larizza and the Political Decision to Prosecute (or Not)
Under two successive elected officials, this office adamantly refused to prosecute white collar crime and corruption, refusing to prosecute former St. Augustine City Manager WILLIAM B. HARRISS for dumping 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste in our Old City Reservoir, refusing to prosecute Sunshine and Open Records violations, including irrefragable, videotaped Sunshine violations by of the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County Chair Barbara Bosanko (spouse of the former County Attorney Daniel Bosanko) and another Mosquito Control Commissioner, Charles Crist political appointee Linda Wampler. SAO's estimable and ungracious Deputy Bennett Ford once advised me to "call the Sheriff" about county government lawbreaking. Cute. Voters rightly rejected this smarmy smart-aleck when he ran for Public Defender.
The discretion to choose to prosecute or not to prosecute alleged crimes rests with an elected State's Attorney and his hired attorneys. Except in West Virginia, this discretion is absolute.
Not every technical crime is prosecuted.
So when I read yesterday of the prosecution of Michel Pawlowski, the father of a St. Augustine Beach Ciy Commissioner Undine Pawlwski, for registering to vote here for his daughter, I had to wonder -- why? Is this payback? Is this how Ralph Joseph Larizza and his henchmen choose to celebrate Father's Day?
Based upon the Michel Pawlowski prosecution, I seriously question the priorities, ethics, values and morality of the State's Attorney's office and Ralph Joseph Larizza.
Was this payback for Commissioner Undine Pawlowski winning a $10,000 judgment against former Commissioner Frank Charles for a client?
Was this payback for Commissioner Pawlowski winning unanimous adoption of both Fair Housing and employment nondiscrimination ordinances for St. Augustine Beach, including protection for GLBT people?
Was this prosecution requested by KKK and St. Augustine Rod & Gun Club members to keep GLBT people "in line" and discourage us from being "out" and active in politics?
I wonder.
St. Johns County was long run by racist, sexist homophobes, leading the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to call it the "most lawless" place in America, leading to the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history, on June 18, 1964.
Our overpaid St. Johns County Commissioners refused in 2008 to protect GLBT people in the proposed County Charter (we defeated the charter twice).
Our overpaid St. Johns County Commissioners have not yet ever even debated a Human Rights ordinance. The cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach, the Anastasia Mosquito Control District and Sheriff David Shoar are light years ahead of these lugubrious goobers (all known Republicans).
Our overpaid Republican State's Attorney Ralph Jospeh Larizza owes his election to the entrenched local political machine, and thus to KKK and Tea Party intolerance.
One need only read the homophobic reader remarks directed against Commissioner Undine Pawlowski on the St. Augustine Record website to ask the question -- is this a prosecution or a persecution?
We need an open public debate about the nature, structure and performance of our State's Attorney's office, its refusing to prosecute white collar crme and corrupon, and its now possibly being used as a bullet in the gun of racists, homophobes, political dirty tricksters and retaliators.
What policies, practices and procedures does the SAO have to prevent retaliatory prosecutions?
Does SAO have a nondiscrimination policy based on sexual orientation and gender identity?
If not, why not?
What do you reckon?
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
FDLE Arrests Sheriff
Eight (8) days ago, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested the Liberty County Sheriff, Nicholas Finch, a Republican, who was elected in 2012 with no party affilliation, opposing alleged local corruption. FDLE has charged Finch with intentional destruction of evidence concerning the detention of a man found to have a concealed weapon. In interviews with right-leaning segregationists and John Birch Society bloggers on the internet, Sheriff Nicholas Finch has claimed the right to destroy evidence because he supports "the Second Amendment." That dog won't hunt.
Upon his arrest, Sheriff Finch allegedly destroyed government records at the Liberty County Jail. Spoliation of evidence is a serious crime.
Sheriff Finch was rightly suspended from office by Florida Governor Richard Scott pendente lite (pending litigation). The Florida Governor has the power to remove elected officials from office when they are charged with crimes, and to remove them permanently upon conviction.
Here's Gannett's Tallahassee Democrat article about the arrest of Sheriff Nicholas Finch (which was evidently not considered newsy enough for more than a single sentence -- only one unilluminating sentence from AP -- by the conservative-Republican-leaning St. Augustine Record, whose credo is definitely not "All the News That's Fit to Print").
Liberty County Sheriff Finch arrested in alleged jail coverup
Written by Jeff Burlew Democrat senior writer
4, 2013 Tallahassee.com
Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch was arrested earlier today on charges he released a man from the county jail and tried to cover up his arrest by altering or destroying official documents.
Gov. Rick Scott suspended Finch from office and appointed Carl Causey, assistant special agent in charge of FDLE's Pensacola Region, as interim sheriff.
Finch, 50, of Bristol, was booked into the Liberty County Jail on a charge of official misconduct, a third-degree felony, and released on his own recognizance, said Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for FDLE.
According to court records, Finch's arrest stems from the March 8 arrest of another man, Floyd Eugene Parrish, on a charge of carrying a concealed deadly weapon.
Sgt. James Joseph Hoagland of the Liberty County Sheriff's Office arrested Parrish after stopping his car and finding a loaded semi-automatic pistol hidden in his pocket. Parrish was taken to jail and placed into a holding cell while jail workers began documenting his arrest and processing him, according to court records.
One jail worker told investigators that after Hoagland left the jail, Finch arrived with one of Parrish's family members and spoke with Floyd Parrish inside the holding cell. Finch then went into the jail control room, took possession of the arrest file and said Parrish would be released and no charges would be filed, according to court records.
Hoagland told investigators that several days later, he talked with Finch about Parrish's release, and Finch told him he "believed in Second Amendment rights."
Investigators said in court records that Parrish's name was whited-out from the county jail log. While Hoagland was able to provide a copy of Parrish's arrest affidavit, the original arrest record has not been found.
Liberty County Sheriff's Office workers also told investigators that Finch ordered the release of the confiscated pistol and another gun found in Parrish's vehicle from the evidence room.
Finch was elected sheriff last year. In a written statement, Gov. Scott said he's confident that Causey "will serve the families of Liberty County well during this interim term.” In addition to various FDLE posts, Causey, 53, of Gulf Breeze, also served 11 years with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.
Upon his arrest, Sheriff Finch allegedly destroyed government records at the Liberty County Jail. Spoliation of evidence is a serious crime.
Sheriff Finch was rightly suspended from office by Florida Governor Richard Scott pendente lite (pending litigation). The Florida Governor has the power to remove elected officials from office when they are charged with crimes, and to remove them permanently upon conviction.
Here's Gannett's Tallahassee Democrat article about the arrest of Sheriff Nicholas Finch (which was evidently not considered newsy enough for more than a single sentence -- only one unilluminating sentence from AP -- by the conservative-Republican-leaning St. Augustine Record, whose credo is definitely not "All the News That's Fit to Print").
Liberty County Sheriff Finch arrested in alleged jail coverup
Written by Jeff Burlew Democrat senior writer
4, 2013 Tallahassee.com
Liberty County Sheriff Nick Finch was arrested earlier today on charges he released a man from the county jail and tried to cover up his arrest by altering or destroying official documents.
Gov. Rick Scott suspended Finch from office and appointed Carl Causey, assistant special agent in charge of FDLE's Pensacola Region, as interim sheriff.
Finch, 50, of Bristol, was booked into the Liberty County Jail on a charge of official misconduct, a third-degree felony, and released on his own recognizance, said Gretl Plessinger, spokeswoman for FDLE.
According to court records, Finch's arrest stems from the March 8 arrest of another man, Floyd Eugene Parrish, on a charge of carrying a concealed deadly weapon.
Sgt. James Joseph Hoagland of the Liberty County Sheriff's Office arrested Parrish after stopping his car and finding a loaded semi-automatic pistol hidden in his pocket. Parrish was taken to jail and placed into a holding cell while jail workers began documenting his arrest and processing him, according to court records.
One jail worker told investigators that after Hoagland left the jail, Finch arrived with one of Parrish's family members and spoke with Floyd Parrish inside the holding cell. Finch then went into the jail control room, took possession of the arrest file and said Parrish would be released and no charges would be filed, according to court records.
Hoagland told investigators that several days later, he talked with Finch about Parrish's release, and Finch told him he "believed in Second Amendment rights."
Investigators said in court records that Parrish's name was whited-out from the county jail log. While Hoagland was able to provide a copy of Parrish's arrest affidavit, the original arrest record has not been found.
Liberty County Sheriff's Office workers also told investigators that Finch ordered the release of the confiscated pistol and another gun found in Parrish's vehicle from the evidence room.
Finch was elected sheriff last year. In a written statement, Gov. Scott said he's confident that Causey "will serve the families of Liberty County well during this interim term.” In addition to various FDLE posts, Causey, 53, of Gulf Breeze, also served 11 years with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.
The late Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor
MIAMI HERALD COLUMNIST FRED GRIMM ON PERVASIVENESS OF CORRUPTION IN FLORIDA
In My Opinion
Fred Grimm: Florida’s corruption knows no ethnicity
Fred Grimm The Miami Herald
By Fred Grimm
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com
After Miami Herald stories exposing corruption in Miami-Dade County, a familiar disparagement has become inevitable in the e-mail reaction and readers’ comments. “Nothing but a damn banana republic,” they complain, implying an ethnic superiority, as if local government was a pristine enterprise before an influx of Cuban exiles ruined South Florida’s fine Anglo ethic.
Smiling Jimmy Sullivan, the sheriff of Dade County excoriated by the 1950 Kefauver Commission for his lucrative ties to mobsters, would have been amused.
The tired, familiar references showed up in my e-mail in-box after last week’s column about election-rigging allegations against the campaign organizations of both U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia and his predecessor David Rivera. Not that jobbing the vote should be a forgivable transgression, but compared to the days when Smiling Jimmy was banking $75,000 a year off his $12,000 salary, this was tepid stuff. In the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, Miami-Dade College history professor Paul George reminds us, the Dade County Courthouse was widely known as the “steal” courthouse.
Sen. Estes Kefauver’s commission, during those explosive hearings into organized crime, discovered that legions of our local government officials were hired toadies for the likes of mobsters like Joe Adonis, Frank Erickson, Vincent Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alo, “Trigger Mike” Coppola, Sammy “Game Boy” Miller and Willie “Lefty” Bischoff, not to mention the casino kingpin brothers, Meyer and Jake Lansky. Al Capone, who owned a palace on Star Island and a throng of Miami politicians, had died, else he would have headed the list.
Not that the Kefauver findings were big news in Miami. A 1949 Dade County Grand Jury panel complained, “We could not see any purpose in repeating the work of our predecessor juries to discover officially and at great length that crime and corruption do exist here. Conditions have apparently not changed since the writing of the 1944 grand jury report. There is present in our community a large number of individuals of unsavory reputation. These persons are criminals of national stature. All forms of gambling are flourishing and there appeared to be little effort to curb them, although they were being carried on right under the eyes of the police.”
“I guess we were a mango republic before we were a banana republic,” said Paul George, who, as official historian of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, ought to know. Off the top of his head, he rattled off a long list of elected officials in Miami and Dade County nabbed for kickbacks and bribery and other malfeasances, long before the great Latin influx.
North of Dade, Sheriff Walter Clark took it even further. The Kefauver Commission noted that Broward’s most powerful elected official not only permitted 52 illegal mob-run casinos to operate in plain sight, he and his brother raked in a million bucks a year supplying these joints their slot machines. The sheriff called his little sideline the Broward Novelty Company.
“This is the reason I got out of Dade [Miami-Dade],” a reader e-mailed me last week, after the column about the unseemly allocations in Congressional District 26. He was e-mailing from that same Broward County, which he seemed to regard as a refuge from this insidious wave of Latin corruption. He must have forgotten the corruption convictions over the last six years of a Broward sheriff, a Broward state senator, two Broward County commissioners, one Broward school board member, the former mayor of Parkland and city commissioners from Hollywood, Miramar, Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach.
In the next Anglo refuge north of Miami’s corruption sump, four Palm Beach County commissioners and two West Palm Beach city commissioners and the former chairman of the South Florida Water Management District have gone down for various kickback and bribery schemes.
My own skepticism about the immigrant dimension to political corruption probably goes back to my own roots, in West Virginia, a state, 94 percent non-Hispanic, that in 1990 sent a three-term governor to prison to join two successive presidents of the State Senate, the former Senate majority leader and a member of the House of Delegates.
Two years before that, the Herald dispatched me to southern West Virginia, to Mingo County, 96.39 percent white, and the spectacularly corrupt town of Kermit, 99.5 percent white, and not a single person listed on the census as foreign born. Sixty city and county officials had just been busted. The police chief was nabbed for selling drugs. The fire chief for arson. The school board president was busted for bribing jurors. The head of the antipoverty agency was stealing program money. Federal investigators photographed a handwritten sign taped to a walk-up window by the Kermit police station: “Out of drugs. Back in 30 minutes.”
Federal investigators said Kermit’s convenient “drive-in, carry-out” became so busy peddling pot, cocaine, LSD, PCP — some of it filched from the Mingo County sheriff’s evidence locker — that the town cops had trouble finding a parking place.
The pervasiveness of official corruption in Mingo eclipsed anything we’ve seen lately in South Florida with three county commissioners and a city commissioner arrested, along with the sheriff, the police chief, a police captain, the county surveyor, the county public service commissioner, the county director of senior affairs, the county clerk. Even the cook at the county jail was convicted of bribing a public official.
The year before that, I was in East St. Louis, Ill., writing about an election in which three candidates running for mayor had done hard time for extortion, fraud, forgery, mail fraud and perjury, and one of the candidates was accused of attempting to arrange the murder-for-hire of a rival mayoral candidate.
At the time, East St. Louis was regarded as the most corrupt, dysfunctional city in America. Yet, no one employed the term “banana republic.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/08/v-fullstory/3440842/fred-grimm-floridas-corruption.html#storylink=cpy
Fred Grimm: Florida’s corruption knows no ethnicity
Fred Grimm The Miami Herald
By Fred Grimm
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com
After Miami Herald stories exposing corruption in Miami-Dade County, a familiar disparagement has become inevitable in the e-mail reaction and readers’ comments. “Nothing but a damn banana republic,” they complain, implying an ethnic superiority, as if local government was a pristine enterprise before an influx of Cuban exiles ruined South Florida’s fine Anglo ethic.
Smiling Jimmy Sullivan, the sheriff of Dade County excoriated by the 1950 Kefauver Commission for his lucrative ties to mobsters, would have been amused.
The tired, familiar references showed up in my e-mail in-box after last week’s column about election-rigging allegations against the campaign organizations of both U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia and his predecessor David Rivera. Not that jobbing the vote should be a forgivable transgression, but compared to the days when Smiling Jimmy was banking $75,000 a year off his $12,000 salary, this was tepid stuff. In the 1930s and ’40s and ’50s, Miami-Dade College history professor Paul George reminds us, the Dade County Courthouse was widely known as the “steal” courthouse.
Sen. Estes Kefauver’s commission, during those explosive hearings into organized crime, discovered that legions of our local government officials were hired toadies for the likes of mobsters like Joe Adonis, Frank Erickson, Vincent Jimmy “Blue Eyes” Alo, “Trigger Mike” Coppola, Sammy “Game Boy” Miller and Willie “Lefty” Bischoff, not to mention the casino kingpin brothers, Meyer and Jake Lansky. Al Capone, who owned a palace on Star Island and a throng of Miami politicians, had died, else he would have headed the list.
Not that the Kefauver findings were big news in Miami. A 1949 Dade County Grand Jury panel complained, “We could not see any purpose in repeating the work of our predecessor juries to discover officially and at great length that crime and corruption do exist here. Conditions have apparently not changed since the writing of the 1944 grand jury report. There is present in our community a large number of individuals of unsavory reputation. These persons are criminals of national stature. All forms of gambling are flourishing and there appeared to be little effort to curb them, although they were being carried on right under the eyes of the police.”
“I guess we were a mango republic before we were a banana republic,” said Paul George, who, as official historian of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, ought to know. Off the top of his head, he rattled off a long list of elected officials in Miami and Dade County nabbed for kickbacks and bribery and other malfeasances, long before the great Latin influx.
North of Dade, Sheriff Walter Clark took it even further. The Kefauver Commission noted that Broward’s most powerful elected official not only permitted 52 illegal mob-run casinos to operate in plain sight, he and his brother raked in a million bucks a year supplying these joints their slot machines. The sheriff called his little sideline the Broward Novelty Company.
“This is the reason I got out of Dade [Miami-Dade],” a reader e-mailed me last week, after the column about the unseemly allocations in Congressional District 26. He was e-mailing from that same Broward County, which he seemed to regard as a refuge from this insidious wave of Latin corruption. He must have forgotten the corruption convictions over the last six years of a Broward sheriff, a Broward state senator, two Broward County commissioners, one Broward school board member, the former mayor of Parkland and city commissioners from Hollywood, Miramar, Fort Lauderdale and Deerfield Beach.
In the next Anglo refuge north of Miami’s corruption sump, four Palm Beach County commissioners and two West Palm Beach city commissioners and the former chairman of the South Florida Water Management District have gone down for various kickback and bribery schemes.
My own skepticism about the immigrant dimension to political corruption probably goes back to my own roots, in West Virginia, a state, 94 percent non-Hispanic, that in 1990 sent a three-term governor to prison to join two successive presidents of the State Senate, the former Senate majority leader and a member of the House of Delegates.
Two years before that, the Herald dispatched me to southern West Virginia, to Mingo County, 96.39 percent white, and the spectacularly corrupt town of Kermit, 99.5 percent white, and not a single person listed on the census as foreign born. Sixty city and county officials had just been busted. The police chief was nabbed for selling drugs. The fire chief for arson. The school board president was busted for bribing jurors. The head of the antipoverty agency was stealing program money. Federal investigators photographed a handwritten sign taped to a walk-up window by the Kermit police station: “Out of drugs. Back in 30 minutes.”
Federal investigators said Kermit’s convenient “drive-in, carry-out” became so busy peddling pot, cocaine, LSD, PCP — some of it filched from the Mingo County sheriff’s evidence locker — that the town cops had trouble finding a parking place.
The pervasiveness of official corruption in Mingo eclipsed anything we’ve seen lately in South Florida with three county commissioners and a city commissioner arrested, along with the sheriff, the police chief, a police captain, the county surveyor, the county public service commissioner, the county director of senior affairs, the county clerk. Even the cook at the county jail was convicted of bribing a public official.
The year before that, I was in East St. Louis, Ill., writing about an election in which three candidates running for mayor had done hard time for extortion, fraud, forgery, mail fraud and perjury, and one of the candidates was accused of attempting to arrange the murder-for-hire of a rival mayoral candidate.
At the time, East St. Louis was regarded as the most corrupt, dysfunctional city in America. Yet, no one employed the term “banana republic.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/08/v-fullstory/3440842/fred-grimm-floridas-corruption.html#storylink=cpy
Friday, June 07, 2013
Progress!
This morning's Record brings cheerful news of two positive trends.
First, El Galeon, the 650 ton Spanish replica of Pedro Menendez' galleon, may stay in St. Augustine as its home port through the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine in 2015. Good news for those who love our history, and want to preserve amd protect it forever, making St. Augustine a shining beacon for showing off 11,000 years of history, including a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
Saturday night, I spoke to Tourist Development Council Executive Director Glenn Hastings, this year's chair of of Visit Florida, as he was photographing the 1586 Francis Drake Raid re-enactment in the Plaza de la Constitucion. We taked about El Galeon, and I said I wished there would always be a Spanish ship in our St. Augustine Harbor. He smiled knowingly -- turns out he and the City staff were already working on it! Good work.
Second, the "developer" who got our Florida legislature to carve a sleazy, last-minute exception for one 607 acre parcel in northwest St. Johns County -- and saw the legislature revoke the loophole unanimously repealed last month -- has dropped the oyster and left the wharf. The lawsuit is dropped. The project is defeated, dead as a doornail.
Good news for local environmental activists, who once again scored a major victory in halting sprawl and ugliness by tree-killing, wetland-filling "developers" and their foreign-funded monstrosity "developments."
This time, every single Florida legislator, in both houses, was on the side of St. Johns County and its residents. We were all duped in 2012 by Tallahassee trickery and legerdemain (which dupery included support for the loophole by the League of Cities and Association of Counties, who should be carefully scrutinized).
Our County Commission and County Attorney were prepared to file a lawsuit challenging the 2012 loophole as unconstitutional -- they issued a press release upon the developer dropping its lawsuit.
This is a new day, in a town and county that is in the process of throwing off the shackles of corruption and protecting our environmental and historic heritage.
Where once there were only a few "lone voices in the wilderness" -- Diane Mills, David Thundershield Queen, Louise Thrower, Robin Nadeau, Gina Burrell, Ellen Whittmer, Don Beattie, later joined by Nancy Sikes-Kline (now Vice Mayor, who valiantly helped to save the Bridge of Lions), et al. -- today, environmental and historic preservationists enjoy majority support, both here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County. We are being heard and heeded from City Hall to the County Administration Taj Mahal Palace to Tallahassee. It's a beautiful day. Enjoy!
Yes we can!
First, El Galeon, the 650 ton Spanish replica of Pedro Menendez' galleon, may stay in St. Augustine as its home port through the 450th anniversary of St. Augustine in 2015. Good news for those who love our history, and want to preserve amd protect it forever, making St. Augustine a shining beacon for showing off 11,000 years of history, including a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore. www.staugustgreen.com
Saturday night, I spoke to Tourist Development Council Executive Director Glenn Hastings, this year's chair of of Visit Florida, as he was photographing the 1586 Francis Drake Raid re-enactment in the Plaza de la Constitucion. We taked about El Galeon, and I said I wished there would always be a Spanish ship in our St. Augustine Harbor. He smiled knowingly -- turns out he and the City staff were already working on it! Good work.
Second, the "developer" who got our Florida legislature to carve a sleazy, last-minute exception for one 607 acre parcel in northwest St. Johns County -- and saw the legislature revoke the loophole unanimously repealed last month -- has dropped the oyster and left the wharf. The lawsuit is dropped. The project is defeated, dead as a doornail.
Good news for local environmental activists, who once again scored a major victory in halting sprawl and ugliness by tree-killing, wetland-filling "developers" and their foreign-funded monstrosity "developments."
This time, every single Florida legislator, in both houses, was on the side of St. Johns County and its residents. We were all duped in 2012 by Tallahassee trickery and legerdemain (which dupery included support for the loophole by the League of Cities and Association of Counties, who should be carefully scrutinized).
Our County Commission and County Attorney were prepared to file a lawsuit challenging the 2012 loophole as unconstitutional -- they issued a press release upon the developer dropping its lawsuit.
This is a new day, in a town and county that is in the process of throwing off the shackles of corruption and protecting our environmental and historic heritage.
Where once there were only a few "lone voices in the wilderness" -- Diane Mills, David Thundershield Queen, Louise Thrower, Robin Nadeau, Gina Burrell, Ellen Whittmer, Don Beattie, later joined by Nancy Sikes-Kline (now Vice Mayor, who valiantly helped to save the Bridge of Lions), et al. -- today, environmental and historic preservationists enjoy majority support, both here in St. Augustine and St. Johns County. We are being heard and heeded from City Hall to the County Administration Taj Mahal Palace to Tallahassee. It's a beautiful day. Enjoy!
Yes we can!
Thursday, June 06, 2013
St. Augustine Record letter: 450th Commission meetings must be open
Letter: Meetings must be open
Posted: June 6, 2013 - 12:08am
By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Letter: Meetings must be open
St. Augustine Record
Copyright 2013 St. Augustine Record.
Editor: On March 30, 2009, Congress and the president enacted a St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed the Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State’s Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Wilson; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis. This is a diverse and well-qualified Commission – exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to the then city manager’s demand for “affluent” members).
Hundreds attended the federal 450th Commission’s one public meeting in St. Augustine on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands. Last month, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau’s consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a positive impact on our economy. The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept.
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings/calls in probable violation of the sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from sunshine as an “operational committee.” It’s not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open. The people must be heard. It’s our town, our time and our money. Congress must act.
Posted: June 6, 2013 - 12:08am
By ED SLAVIN
St. Augustine
Letter: Meetings must be open
St. Augustine Record
Copyright 2013 St. Augustine Record.
Editor: On March 30, 2009, Congress and the president enacted a St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed the Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State’s Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Wilson; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis. This is a diverse and well-qualified Commission – exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to the then city manager’s demand for “affluent” members).
Hundreds attended the federal 450th Commission’s one public meeting in St. Augustine on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands. Last month, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau’s consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a positive impact on our economy. The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept.
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings/calls in probable violation of the sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from sunshine as an “operational committee.” It’s not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open. The people must be heard. It’s our town, our time and our money. Congress must act.
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
ED, RECKONING
Federal 450th Commission Must Hold Open Public Meetings
By Ed Slavin
Our community had high hopes for the federal 450th Commission. Where is it? What happened?
On March 30, 2009, Congress and the President created St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed thirteen Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State's Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Willis; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis.
This is a diverse and well-qualified group – “fairly balanced” in the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act – which is exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to then-City Manager William B Harris' demand that the Secretary of the Interior appoint only “affluent and influential” members of the federal 450th Commission).
This diverse and well-qualified group is now moribund, thanks to Tea Party control of the House of Representatives and refusal to authorize a mere $500,000 for the federal 450th Commission to have meetings and a small staff.
Hundreds of us took the day off, and attended the federal 450th Commission's one public meeting in St. Augustine, on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands.
The more people learn about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, the more they agree with Sheriff David Shoar, who told me after a Democratic Club meeting that it was a “no-brainer,” and would be the best way to protect our environment, rivaling Cape Code National Seashore in his native Massachusetts. The St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore would preserve and protect wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species, including right whales (350 left in the North Atlantic and they give birth here every year); turtles; bald eagles; beach mice and butterflies. It would prevent golf courses and other hair-brained “development” schemes in existing state parks and water management district lands, while saving tens of millions of dollars in operation and maintenance from state and local government budgets.
Last month, at a packed meeting of local tourism-related businesses at World Golf Village on May 14th, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau's longtime consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a “positive: impact on our economy. Yes we can! The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept. www.staugustgreen.com
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings and conference calls, in probable violation of the Sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from Sunshine as an “operational committee.” It's not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open.
This is non-negotiable. If DOI does not open up 450th meetings and records to public scrutiny, it can be successfully sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In 1993, I invoked FACA to force the Department of Energy to abolish its system of secretive advisory committees on nuclear cleanups, resulting in the creation of the Site Specific Advisory Committee at DOE sites. We didn't even have to sue – it was one 32-page letter to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary – that and the truth. Likewise, I raised concerns with the Department of the Interior's own industry-dominated San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program, resulting in greater attention to Interior scientists' concerns, and Sacramento Bee investigative articles.
There are some 1000 federal advisory committees, but none matters more to any of us here in St. Augustine, Florida. As required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, DOI must obey the law. Our St. Auguustine federal 450th Commission must “let the Sunshine in.” If not, the General Services Administration and Federal Courts can help focus DOI attorneys' attention on compliance, not defiance.
The people must be heard. It's our town, our time and our money..Congress must act.
What do you reckon?
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
Federal 450th Commission Must Hold Open Public Meetings
By Ed Slavin
Our community had high hopes for the federal 450th Commission. Where is it? What happened?
On March 30, 2009, Congress and the President created St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed thirteen Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State's Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Willis; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis.
This is a diverse and well-qualified group – “fairly balanced” in the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act – which is exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to then-City Manager William B Harris' demand that the Secretary of the Interior appoint only “affluent and influential” members of the federal 450th Commission).
This diverse and well-qualified group is now moribund, thanks to Tea Party control of the House of Representatives and refusal to authorize a mere $500,000 for the federal 450th Commission to have meetings and a small staff.
Hundreds of us took the day off, and attended the federal 450th Commission's one public meeting in St. Augustine, on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands.
The more people learn about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, the more they agree with Sheriff David Shoar, who told me after a Democratic Club meeting that it was a “no-brainer,” and would be the best way to protect our environment, rivaling Cape Code National Seashore in his native Massachusetts. The St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore would preserve and protect wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species, including right whales (350 left in the North Atlantic and they give birth here every year); turtles; bald eagles; beach mice and butterflies. It would prevent golf courses and other hair-brained “development” schemes in existing state parks and water management district lands, while saving tens of millions of dollars in operation and maintenance from state and local government budgets.
Last month, at a packed meeting of local tourism-related businesses at World Golf Village on May 14th, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau's longtime consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a “positive: impact on our economy. Yes we can! The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept. www.staugustgreen.com
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings and conference calls, in probable violation of the Sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from Sunshine as an “operational committee.” It's not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open.
This is non-negotiable. If DOI does not open up 450th meetings and records to public scrutiny, it can be successfully sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In 1993, I invoked FACA to force the Department of Energy to abolish its system of secretive advisory committees on nuclear cleanups, resulting in the creation of the Site Specific Advisory Committee at DOE sites. We didn't even have to sue – it was one 32-page letter to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary – that and the truth. Likewise, I raised concerns with the Department of the Interior's own industry-dominated San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program, resulting in greater attention to Interior scientists' concerns, and Sacramento Bee investigative articles.
There are some 1000 federal advisory committees, but none matters more to any of us here in St. Augustine, Florida. As required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, DOI must obey the law. Our St. Auguustine federal 450th Commission must “let the Sunshine in.” If not, the General Services Administration and Federal Courts can help focus DOI attorneys' attention on compliance, not defiance.
The people must be heard. It's our town, our time and our money..Congress must act.
What do you reckon?
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
Monday, June 03, 2013
Whatever happened to the federal St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission?
(From 1565Today, http://news.1565today.net/federal-450th-commission-must-hold-open-public-meetings/
ED, RECKONING
Federal 450th Commission Must Hold Open Public Meetings
By Ed Slavin
Our community had high hopes for the federal 450th Commission. Where is it? What happened?
On March 30, 2009, Congress and the President created St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed thirteen Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State's Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Wilson; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis.
This is a diverse and well-qualified group – “fairly balanced” in the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act – which is exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to then-City Manager William B Harris' demand that the Secretary of the Interior appoint only “affluent and influential” members of the federal 450th Commission).
This diverse and well-qualified group is now moribund, thanks to Tea Party control of the House of Representatives and refusal to authorize a mere $500,000 for the federal 450th Commission to have meetings and a small staff.
Hundreds of us took the day off, and attended the federal 450th Commission's one public meeting in St. Augustine, on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands.
The more people learn about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, the more they agree with Sheriff David Shoar, who told me after a Democratic Club meeting that it was a “no-brainer,” and would be the best way to protect our environment, rivaling Cape Code National Seashore in his native Massachusetts. The St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore would preserve and protect wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species, including right whales (350 left in the North Atlantic and they give birth here every year); turtles; bald eagles; beach mice and butterflies. It would prevent golf courses and other hair-brained “development” schemes in existing state parks and water management district lands, while saving tens of millions of dollars in operation and maintenance from state and local government budgets.
Last month, at a packed meeting of local tourism-related businesses at World Golf Village on May 14th, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau's longtime consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a “positive: impact on our economy. Yes we can! The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept. www.staugustgreen.com
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings and conference calls, in probable violation of the Sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from Sunshine as an “operational committee.” It's not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open.
This is non-negotiable. If DOI does not open up 450th meetings and records to public scrutiny, it can be successfully sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In 1993, I invoked FACA to force the Department of Energy to abolish its system of secretive advisory committees on nuclear cleanups, resulting in the creation of the Site Specific Advisory Committee at DOE sites. We didn't even have to sue – it was one 32-page letter to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary – that and the truth. Likewise, I raised concerns with the Department of the Interior's own industry-dominated San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program, resulting in greater attention to Interior scientists' concerns, and Sacramento Bee investigative articles.
There are some 1000 federal advisory committees, but none matters more to any of us here in St. Augustine, Florida. As required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, DOI must give and follow proper legal advice and open its meetings and records. Our federal 450th Commission must “let the Sunshine in.” If not, the General Services Administration and Federal Courts can help focus DOI attorneys' attention on compliance, not defiance.
The people must be heard. It's our town, our time and our money. Congress must act.
What do you reckon?
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
ED, RECKONING
Federal 450th Commission Must Hold Open Public Meetings
By Ed Slavin
Our community had high hopes for the federal 450th Commission. Where is it? What happened?
On March 30, 2009, Congress and the President created St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission. On April 14, 2011, Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar appointed thirteen Commissioners: former Senator/Governor Robert Graham; former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young; Cathedral Parish pastor Fr. Thomas Willis; St. Augustine Mayor Joseph Boles; billionaire-philanthropist Jay Kislak, Miami-Dade College President Eduardo Padron; historic preservationist Katherine H. Dickenson; Miami State's Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle; former Florida Secretary of State Bruce Smathers; former National Park Service Director Robert Stanton; Castillo de San Marco Monument Superintendent Gordon Wilson; and Professors Michael Gannon and Michael Francis.
This is a diverse and well-qualified group – “fairly balanced” in the terms of the Federal Advisory Committee Act – which is exactly what StAugustgreen requested the Secretary to do (by July 15, 2009 letter, objecting to then-City Manager William B Harris' demand that the Secretary of the Interior appoint only “affluent and influential” members of the federal 450th Commission).
This diverse and well-qualified group is now moribund, thanks to Tea Party control of the House of Representatives and refusal to authorize a mere $500,000 for the federal 450th Commission to have meetings and a small staff.
Hundreds of us took the day off, and attended the federal 450th Commission's one public meeting in St. Augustine, on July 18, 2011. There was applause when I called for creation of a St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, to preserve and protect what we love, including current state parks, forests and water management district lands.
The more people learn about the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore, the more they agree with Sheriff David Shoar, who told me after a Democratic Club meeting that it was a “no-brainer,” and would be the best way to protect our environment, rivaling Cape Code National Seashore in his native Massachusetts. The St. Augustine National Historical Park and Seashore would preserve and protect wildlife habitat for endangered and threatened species, including right whales (350 left in the North Atlantic and they give birth here every year); turtles; bald eagles; beach mice and butterflies. It would prevent golf courses and other hair-brained “development” schemes in existing state parks and water management district lands, while saving tens of millions of dollars in operation and maintenance from state and local government budgets.
Last month, at a packed meeting of local tourism-related businesses at World Golf Village on May 14th, St. Johns County Visitor and Convention Bureau's longtime consultant, MMGY Global Vice Chairman Peter Yesawich, said that a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore would have a “positive: impact on our economy. Yes we can! The 450th Commission must hold open meetings to discuss the National Historical Park and National Seashore concept. www.staugustgreen.com
But sadly, Congress has still not authorized funds for the 450th Commission, which conducts secret meetings and conference calls, in probable violation of the Sunshine requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. A maladroit federal attorney once opined the Commission was “exempt” from Sunshine as an “operational committee.” It's not “operating” anything. Meetings must be open.
This is non-negotiable. If DOI does not open up 450th meetings and records to public scrutiny, it can be successfully sued under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. In 1993, I invoked FACA to force the Department of Energy to abolish its system of secretive advisory committees on nuclear cleanups, resulting in the creation of the Site Specific Advisory Committee at DOE sites. We didn't even have to sue – it was one 32-page letter to Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary – that and the truth. Likewise, I raised concerns with the Department of the Interior's own industry-dominated San Joaquin Valley Drainage Program, resulting in greater attention to Interior scientists' concerns, and Sacramento Bee investigative articles.
There are some 1000 federal advisory committees, but none matters more to any of us here in St. Augustine, Florida. As required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, DOI must give and follow proper legal advice and open its meetings and records. Our federal 450th Commission must “let the Sunshine in.” If not, the General Services Administration and Federal Courts can help focus DOI attorneys' attention on compliance, not defiance.
The people must be heard. It's our town, our time and our money. Congress must act.
What do you reckon?
Ed Slavin
Box 3084
St. Augustine, Florida 32085-3084
904-377-4998
Whetstones' Spite Fence
Davis Shores and Anastasia island residents are right to protest VIRGINIA WHETSTONE-MAGUIRE's hideous fence, erected ON our restored 1927-style Bridge of Lions, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The solid wooden fence detracts from the view of our waterfront from the bridge -- wrought iron would have worked, as at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.
The ugly wood fence at the southeast end of the Bridge of Lions is nothing more than a "spite fence," retaliation by disgruntled frequent litigants, now suing the City, claiming the right to build another dock downtown.
Our City has rightfully spent more than $100,000 in legal fees defending against this bogus case: the WHETSTONE-MAGUIRE family is angry at the City for resisting her indecent demands. Again, the ugly wooden fence is nothing more than a "spite fence,' a stench in the nostrils of our Nation's Oldest City.
Uglier still are the hateful words directed by WHETSTONE-MAGUIRE's hey-boy against Davis Shores residents, which are being emitted by the Whetstone's hey-boy on a local hate site (Historic City News) MICHAEL GOLD is not only a local Republican fundraiser, he is a propaganda purveyor, political operative, private investigator and former $700,000 no-bid uniform seller to the City and Sheriff's offices, among other government agenices, who once listed his business address as the Whetstone's office (and previously a Whetstone storage unit).
Onee again, citizen-activists are being libeled and ridiculed by MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN," the man who raised $250,000 for Sheriff David Shoar to win in 2004 (with no opponents since that time). "Be not afraid."
Thankfully, St. Augustine City Manager John Patrick Regan wrote Ms. Whetstone and asked for a meeting.
Stay tuned.
The solid wooden fence detracts from the view of our waterfront from the bridge -- wrought iron would have worked, as at the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.
The ugly wood fence at the southeast end of the Bridge of Lions is nothing more than a "spite fence," retaliation by disgruntled frequent litigants, now suing the City, claiming the right to build another dock downtown.
Our City has rightfully spent more than $100,000 in legal fees defending against this bogus case: the WHETSTONE-MAGUIRE family is angry at the City for resisting her indecent demands. Again, the ugly wooden fence is nothing more than a "spite fence,' a stench in the nostrils of our Nation's Oldest City.
Uglier still are the hateful words directed by WHETSTONE-MAGUIRE's hey-boy against Davis Shores residents, which are being emitted by the Whetstone's hey-boy on a local hate site (Historic City News) MICHAEL GOLD is not only a local Republican fundraiser, he is a propaganda purveyor, political operative, private investigator and former $700,000 no-bid uniform seller to the City and Sheriff's offices, among other government agenices, who once listed his business address as the Whetstone's office (and previously a Whetstone storage unit).
Onee again, citizen-activists are being libeled and ridiculed by MICHAEL GOLD f/k/a "MICHAEL TOBIN," the man who raised $250,000 for Sheriff David Shoar to win in 2004 (with no opponents since that time). "Be not afraid."
Thankfully, St. Augustine City Manager John Patrick Regan wrote Ms. Whetstone and asked for a meeting.
Stay tuned.
Record Refuses to Print Truth About Visitor and Convention Bureau -- Who is Edward Albanesi and Why Does He Presume to Censor Record Readers Views?
The St. Augustine Record refuses to print a letter about antitrust and civil rights concerns arising out of our $4.6 million year tax-funded Visitor and Convention Bureau (similar to the blog post below), on the ground that it is too "antgonistic."
This is the same viewspaper prints mainly right-wing columnists, including obscene Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is as opportunistic and antagonistic a bigot as ever lived. Ann Coulter was fired by conservative intelletual leader William F. Buckley, Jr. and his National Review for anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11, when she called on us to kill and Christianize Muslims. Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot." Ann Coulter makes a living by writing smarmy columns and books about who she hates -- Democrats, liberals, unions, activists, Jews, Muslims and Mexicans. Ann Coulter is laughing all the way to the bank with money from syndication, part of which, dear Record readers, we pay every month.
The Record cannot excuse what VCB has done -- and not done.
It censors the news. Watch a government meeting and then read what the Record leaves out -- it boggles the mind.
Now it censors its readers' views.
The Record recently hired one Edward Albanesi as Opinion Editor.
Edward Albanesi is a longtime Public Relations man, who teaches PR to college students.
Edward Albanesi had two (2) letters printed in the Record. One Edward Albanesi letter supported Karen Stern (after her electoral defeat when she was about to be appointed to a board by Governor Charles Crist). The other Edward Albanesi letter opposed Amendment 4 (Hometown Democracy). Both letters may be construed by some as "antagonistic."
Edward Albanesi formerly edited FloridAgriculture, the Florida Farm Bureau's house organ.
Edward Albanesi evidently supposes that he is Cato the Censor, rather than Opinion Editor.
Edward Albanesi evidently thinks readers' views must agree with the hamhanded and subjective value preferences of a PR man (himself, Edward Albanesi)
Edward Albanesi evidently has the misimpression that readers' views must agree with him, or they will not be printed.
I have had 55 letters and columns in the St. Augustine Record since 2000.
The Record has long been a forum for free voices -- at least on the editorial pages.
Is that changing now because the Record hired an agribusiness PR man as its Opinion Editor?
I hereby issue a challenge to Edward Albanesi to debate the Record's Opinion page priorities -- what is the purpose of an editorial page, if not to print readers' views?
This is the same viewspaper prints mainly right-wing columnists, including obscene Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter is as opportunistic and antagonistic a bigot as ever lived. Ann Coulter was fired by conservative intelletual leader William F. Buckley, Jr. and his National Review for anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11, when she called on us to kill and Christianize Muslims. Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot." Ann Coulter makes a living by writing smarmy columns and books about who she hates -- Democrats, liberals, unions, activists, Jews, Muslims and Mexicans. Ann Coulter is laughing all the way to the bank with money from syndication, part of which, dear Record readers, we pay every month.
The Record cannot excuse what VCB has done -- and not done.
It censors the news. Watch a government meeting and then read what the Record leaves out -- it boggles the mind.
Now it censors its readers' views.
The Record recently hired one Edward Albanesi as Opinion Editor.
Edward Albanesi is a longtime Public Relations man, who teaches PR to college students.
Edward Albanesi had two (2) letters printed in the Record. One Edward Albanesi letter supported Karen Stern (after her electoral defeat when she was about to be appointed to a board by Governor Charles Crist). The other Edward Albanesi letter opposed Amendment 4 (Hometown Democracy). Both letters may be construed by some as "antagonistic."
Edward Albanesi formerly edited FloridAgriculture, the Florida Farm Bureau's house organ.
Edward Albanesi evidently supposes that he is Cato the Censor, rather than Opinion Editor.
Edward Albanesi evidently thinks readers' views must agree with the hamhanded and subjective value preferences of a PR man (himself, Edward Albanesi)
Edward Albanesi evidently has the misimpression that readers' views must agree with him, or they will not be printed.
I have had 55 letters and columns in the St. Augustine Record since 2000.
The Record has long been a forum for free voices -- at least on the editorial pages.
Is that changing now because the Record hired an agribusiness PR man as its Opinion Editor?
I hereby issue a challenge to Edward Albanesi to debate the Record's Opinion page priorities -- what is the purpose of an editorial page, if not to print readers' views?
Saturday, June 01, 2013
OPEN RECORDS, SUNSHINE, ANTIRUST AND CIVIL RIGHTS CONCERNS ABOUT ST. JOHNS COUNTY VISITOR AND CONVENTION BUREAU -- It's our money ($4.6 million/year)
First the good news – Peter Yesawich, Vice Chairman of MMGY Global consulting, says the St. Augustine National Hisorical Park and National Seashore will undoubtedly have a positive effect on local economy. See below. Yes, we can! www.staugustgreen.com
Now the bad news – St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach are missing opportunities to influence new guests to visit our town. The maladroit Visitor and Convention Bureau receives $4.6 in county funds to promote tourism, but rudely refuses to share documents – not even its Antitrust and Civil Rights compliance policies (if any).
VCB is not advertising the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida in Miami. VCB is also not focused on African-Americans, young people, or GLBT people, or on our Civil Rights history, our Spanish, Catholic, African-American, Jewish, Minorcan, Greek, Civil War and nautical history.
VCB's consultant (MMGY) is not showing our City's diverse face to the world. VCB's 2013 brouchure has 199 images of white people, eleven African-Americans (mostly happy slaves), zero Native American Indians, four “Hispanics” (one is actor Chad Light as Ponce de Leon). This may violate our Fair Housing laws.
VCB's consultant charged us some $300,000 for a Destination Master Plan whose first draft wanted a water slide for St. Johns County, while eschewing African-American and Civil Rights tourism.
They wrongfully write off half the American people, only polling the top 50% of income earners among travelers, eshewing working class families. That is neither the way of Saint Augustine. nor his two cities.
VCB misconceives of hospitality as if it were an “industry” with a “product,” which they don't appreciate. They don't share our values.
In fact, VCB's consultant May 14th advised 100 local tourism experts to raise prices (an invitation to criminal antitrust violations, with no Antitrust Compliance policy such as that of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association (FRLA), which issues stern warnings against price-fixing and other nnti-competitive practices at every meeting -- see below).
VCB's three-year county contract expires September 30th.
There must be open, competitive bidding, and investigations.
It's our money – $4.6 million/year.
Now the bad news – St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach are missing opportunities to influence new guests to visit our town. The maladroit Visitor and Convention Bureau receives $4.6 in county funds to promote tourism, but rudely refuses to share documents – not even its Antitrust and Civil Rights compliance policies (if any).
VCB is not advertising the 500th anniversary of Spanish Florida in Miami. VCB is also not focused on African-Americans, young people, or GLBT people, or on our Civil Rights history, our Spanish, Catholic, African-American, Jewish, Minorcan, Greek, Civil War and nautical history.
VCB's consultant (MMGY) is not showing our City's diverse face to the world. VCB's 2013 brouchure has 199 images of white people, eleven African-Americans (mostly happy slaves), zero Native American Indians, four “Hispanics” (one is actor Chad Light as Ponce de Leon). This may violate our Fair Housing laws.
VCB's consultant charged us some $300,000 for a Destination Master Plan whose first draft wanted a water slide for St. Johns County, while eschewing African-American and Civil Rights tourism.
They wrongfully write off half the American people, only polling the top 50% of income earners among travelers, eshewing working class families. That is neither the way of Saint Augustine. nor his two cities.
VCB misconceives of hospitality as if it were an “industry” with a “product,” which they don't appreciate. They don't share our values.
In fact, VCB's consultant May 14th advised 100 local tourism experts to raise prices (an invitation to criminal antitrust violations, with no Antitrust Compliance policy such as that of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association (FRLA), which issues stern warnings against price-fixing and other nnti-competitive practices at every meeting -- see below).
VCB's three-year county contract expires September 30th.
There must be open, competitive bidding, and investigations.
It's our money – $4.6 million/year.
Priorities
Poetic summary of the St. Augustine Record this week:
How many column inches this week over a misdemeanor bar fracas?
Dozens.
How many front page articles this week over a misdemeanor bar fracas?
Three.
How many column inches devoted to press releases?
Lots.
How many column inches investigating anything that matters (e.g., Big Business and Big Government)?
Nada. Zilch.
Having a newspaper that won't cover the news?
Priceless, if you're a developer or corrupt official.
Perilous, if you're a citizen in these trying times.
It's time to put the "news" back in newspapers.
What do you reckon?
How many column inches this week over a misdemeanor bar fracas?
Dozens.
How many front page articles this week over a misdemeanor bar fracas?
Three.
How many column inches devoted to press releases?
Lots.
How many column inches investigating anything that matters (e.g., Big Business and Big Government)?
Nada. Zilch.
Having a newspaper that won't cover the news?
Priceless, if you're a developer or corrupt official.
Perilous, if you're a citizen in these trying times.
It's time to put the "news" back in newspapers.
What do you reckon?