11/22/2024 DRAFT: "Remember the Greediest!" -- 2024 Financial Mismanagement Follies -- Our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County

Doe some of our American governments practice kakistocracy or kleptocracy?

Which of our local government board members voted its members a $1000 bonus on November 21, and why? 

Four (4) incurious, passive, Anastasia Mosquito Control District District Commissioners voted themselves $1000 Christmas bonuses. Others got bonuses, too. AMCD staff proposed $800, but controversial soon-to-be former Commissioner Catherine Brandhorst pushed to raise it to $1000, and three colleagues went along with her suggestion.  Full disclosure: Brandhorst failed to qualify to run for re-election, missing the deadline by two (2) minutes.   Thank God for small favors. 

This is the same Mosquito Control Commissioner Catherine Brandhorst whom four Commissioners asked Governor RONALD DION DeSANTIS to remove pursuant to Article IV, section 8 of our Florida Constitution for habitually missing monthly meetings, dozens of times.  

DeSANTIS ignored the request.  

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2022/10/governor-desantis-suspend-awol-st-johns.html

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2022/08/mosquito-board-asks-governor-to-fire.html

Wonder why? Our imperious bumptious Florida Boy Governor, DeSANTIS I, ostentatiously removed several prosecutors for disagreements on policy. But DeSANTIS I ignored a request to remove Brandhorst for taking $500/month to attend monthly meetings she missed -- thousands of dollars. It's our money. Brandhorst changed her party registration to Republican, after which DeSANTIS could not be bothered to acknowledge the Mosquito Control District's request to remove her. This same DeSANTIS I cracked at President Biden words to the effect he would not even appoint him to a Mosquito Control District. But all of Boy Gov. DeSANTIS' taste is evidently in his mouth, suffering and permitting Brandhorst to continue.” 

AMSD morion to ask DeSANTIS remove Commissioner Brandhorst was during an election cycle, Democratic Secretary of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried would have picked a new Commissioner,  Meanwhile, Ms. Brandhorst had changed her party registration to Republican, 

The 27th Amendment, drafted by James Madiso and enacted 202 years later, prohibits members of Congress from giving pay raises for members of Congress during their current terms.  But AMCD's four greedy guys Commissioners didn't give a fig.  They sought no legal opinions. They did not research.  Like trained seals, they responded to AMCD's staff crooked coaching.

Did Brandhorst and Commissioners Becker, Gardner and LeBlanc llegally give themselves an illegal pay raise?  The $1000 bonus exceeded the pay cap under Florida law.

388.141 Commissioners; compensation.— (1) Members of the board of commissioners of independent special tax districts may each be paid a salary to be determined by unanimous vote of the board which shall not exceed $4,800 for each commissioner during any one year; however, this section shall not be construed to limit compensation of district commissioners where higher amounts have otherwise been authorized by special act or general act of local application. Said members may be reimbursed for expenses incurred in the performance of their duties as provided in s. 112.061. (2) No board member of a mosquito control district shall receive compensation except for per diem and travel expenses authorized pursuant to s. 112.061, for serving on more than one special district board in this state. All special districts, regardless of the existence of other specific provisions of law, shall comply with this subsection. History.—s. 2, ch. 59-195; s. 13, ch. 63-400; s. 5, ch. 86-203; s. 13, ch. 91-308.

Copyright © 1995-2024 The Florida Legislature • Privacy Statement • Contact Us

Our imperious bumptious Florida Boy Governor, DeSANTIS I, ostentatiously removed several prosecutors for disagreements on policy. But DeSANTIS I ignored a request to remove Brandhorst for taking $500/month to attend monthly meetings she missed -- thousands of dollars. It's our money. Brandhorst changed her party registration to Republican, after which DeSANTIS could not be bothered to acknowledge the Mosquito Control District's request to remove her. This same DeSANTIS cracked at President Biden words to the effect he would not even appoint him to a Mosquito Control District. But all of DeSANTIS' taste is evidently in his mouth, suffering and permitting Brandhorst to continue. 

Adding insult to injury, Brandhorst complained that she was underpaid for not attending all of those meetings.  She won the day, with a 4-0 vote to give everyone on the Board $1000 Christmas bonuses. How spectacularly selfish is that?

My father explained to the colloquial term "Christmas tree bill," referring to government actions around the holidays benefitting a select few. What can you say about a government agency whose board members vote to give themselves $1000 Christmas bonuses?  Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.  I was proud to clerk during law school for attorney Dan M. Norwood, who thrice successfully sued Memphis City Council for giving themselves illegal pay increases. 

Wasteful spending seems to be a feature, not a bug, in our independent County Bug Board. Especially around holidays.  

On December 12, 2006, our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County voted to spend $1.8 million on a no-bid luxury jet helicopter. Two days later, District Director Rudy Xue told two ladies from St. Augustine Beach and me that the no-bid "sole source" helicopter contract  was longtime Mosquito Control Commissioner Mary Tarver Willis's "Christmas present." At the behest of Mary Tarver Willis, AMCD also bought $3.2 million worth of swampland near I-95 and SR16 for its headquarters, buying it from the influential Usina family, with no appraisal, no survey and no competitive bidding. Stinky? You betcha. 

Is AMCD still run being run like a country store or a Third World dictatorship, after all these years?  

Even though We, the People exposed the no-bid contract, AMCD is still run by amateurs.  AMCD's Director is President of the American Mosquito Control Association and the Business Manager is President of the Florida Mosquito Control Association.  Together, some of their bad decisions reek of cronyism and impulse buying.

Four (4) AMCD Commissioners voted -- after 36% in cost overruns on what is now a $4.5 million Mosquito Museum -- voted November 21, 2024 to spend yet another $50,000 on the Mosquito Museum, refusing requests by Commissioner-elect T.J. Mazzotta and me to wait until December when Vice Chair Martha Gleason could attend. 

Those same four (4) elected officials also voted November 21 to give $1000 Christmas bonuses to themselves, while approving similar bonuses for some staff.  Florida law caps pay for Mosquito Control Commissioners at $400/month.  Our local District adds $100 a month for "expenses." But the extra $1000 beggars description. Is it an illegal pay raise?

As if conferring holiday gifts or spending oney like drunken sailors, or rebarbative politicians spending Other Peoples' Money, those four (4) Commissioners clicked their heels and followed the staff recommendation, raising an $800 bonus to.a $1000 bonus.  They have delusions of adequacy. 

Remember their names: recently re-elected Anastasia Mosquito Commissioners Gayle Gardner (Chair) and Gina LeBlanc, joined with lame duck, often AWOL Commissioner Catherine Brandhorst and second-term incumbent  Commissioner Pangiotta "Trish" Becker (whose term expires in 2026).  These four andof County Commissioners voted themselves and staff an $800 Christmas bonuses and elected to rush $50,000 closeout of two buildings, depriving Commissioner Gleason of a fair meeting and decision

By November 22, 2024 e-mail, Commissioner Martha Gleason is refusing to accept the $800 Christmas bonus that her colleagues voted themselves when she was unable tdeparting Commissioner Catherine Brandhorst, who missed dozens of meetings. o attend the November 21 meeting.  She's putting the money in gift cards, which she plans to give to non-management employees at the District's holiday party.

Martha Gleason, ill with bronchitis, with her mother having surgery, could not attend.  Four Commissioners refused to honor requests that they show comity and courtesy and waiting until December to vote on this $800 Christmas bonus and other items.  

The Christmas was full, including a controversial a $50,000 Christmas check for selected government contractors for work on the $4.5 million Mosquito  Museum, which has already seen a 36% cost overrun.

AMCD suffers from lax procedures and lackadaisical management.  During the project, Commissioners ineptly agreed to an arbitration clause, waiving our mosquito control district's Seventh Amendment rights to civil jury trial, then voted against invoking arbitration to enforce our contract.  

There's a level story in T. Harry Williams Pulitzer Prize winning biography about the late Louisiana U.S. Senator Huey Pierce Long's puppet Governor, Oscar K. Allen, a/k/a "O.K. Allen": Huey Long's brother Earl Long said of Allen, "A leaf blew into his window once, and he signed it."  Sound famliar, SJC?

Oscar Allen

  

As Brian said shortly after we moved here in 1999, "It's crooked around here!"  

Yes my friends, that's the way it is around here, where I've lived for 25 years.  with our local government mosquito control agency's staff and Board 

Mosquitos kill some 700,000+ people annually. 

Our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County needs public scrutiny, investigations, and a new Auditor and new Attorney. It's wasting our money (again) and avoiding public scrutiny.  Enough flummery, dupery and nincompoopery. 

During xxxxx

While I flunked accounting in college, I learned  about purchasing from my mother, visiting her office and learning from her wisdom and experience as a longtime purchasing secretary for Camden County College in Blackwood, N.J.  When our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County contemplated buying a $1.8 million luxury Bell Jet helicopter without competitive bidding.  

My late friend Robin Nadeau asked me to look into Mosquito Control's aerial program.  So I asked my mom if she would buy a $1.8 million helicopter. Mom advised: "Absolutely not!'"  xxxx

My late mentor, USDOL Chief Administrative Law Judge Nahum Litt would often advise me to ask,"Cui bono? (Who benefits?).   

Funded by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, I helped expose hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority overspending on coal from the business associates and friends of Senator Howard Henry Baker, Jr.  The semester when I was supposed to be taking an accounting course, I was too often focused on accounting for government waste and corruption. Taking Greyhound busses to Tennessee with law books in my backpack, I missed classes and then very foolishly took my accounting mid-term and the final on the same day.  While I flunked accounting, I was learning valuable lessons about about las internal controls.  See GAO report here: xxxx

My mother often said, "experience is a hard school, but fools know no other."  

For 25 years, I have lived in St. Johns County, suffering under one-party rule amidst overdevelopment, one of the most corrupt places in Florida, where the former County Commission Chair, THOMAS MANUEL, went to federal prison for bribery. His nemeses, like too many here, might as well have flunked accounting in real life (IRL) by lax internal controls, leading to $786,785 in embezzlement under longtime Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.  When SHOAR ran for State Senate in the 2024 closed Republican Primary, he got 25% of the vote in the district.

Our secretive, seemingly sneaky money-wasting Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County is an independent special taxing district, funded by property taxes, and recently also from grants from corporations and governments. In the past, AMCD came close to being abolished after public indignation over its mendacity and moronic money-eating ways, including that $1.8 million no-bid luxury Bell Jet helicopter. (We, the People got the contract cancelled, with a full refund of our deposit, back in 2007.) Full disclosure: in 2024 I received 55,600 xx votes running for Mosquito Control (38%). 

While Mosquito Control is a force for good, is it also a pusillanimous previcator or recididivs t perpetrator of waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance?

Local taxpayers have purchased a $5 million mosquito museum or education center,  fraught with delays, cost overruns, poorly drafted contracts, incurious counsel, and maladroit auditors.

Uninformed Mosquito Control Commissioners voted 4-1 to waive our sacred Seventh Amendment to jury trial and agree to an unconscionable mandatory arbitration provision (then-Commissioner Jeanne Jackson Moller, dissenting).

Remember the greediest!  (Inspired by 1970s tiny page one New York Times ads at holidays once exclaimed, "Remember the Neediest!)

While contemplating your SJC property tax bills & sales taxes here in Oligarch-ruled overdeveloping St. Johns County, let us remember at the holidays "Remember the Greediest!"

xxxxx