I am proud of leaders when they are willing to admit that they were wrong!

Come speak out to St. Johns County Commission meetings on conflicts of interest and lack of oversight.

There needs to be an agonizing reappraisal of contracting out the County Attorney function. Pray for our leaders to reject the notion of contracting out the County Attorney function to a corporate law firm, whose co-owner is a registered lobbyist for a large international development corporation. Now we know that former Senator ROBERT MILNER BRADLEY, JR. has an entire lobbying firm in Tallahassee, working for FOUNTAINEBLEAU DEVELOPMENT a giant international development corporation (think casinos and gambling).  Our Commissioners need to answer the question that the late Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Henry Baker, Jr. asked about President Richard Milhous Nixon: "What did [they] know and when did [they know it?" Check out all of the hostile comments and threats from supporters of this contract!

On April 30, 2025, I requested a meeting with SJC BoCC Vice Chair Clay Murphy to discuss the Commission's hiring a. law firm headed by a developer lobbyist and casino developer.  Vice Chair Murphy was assigned the duty to negotiate a contract with BRADLEY, GARRISON & KOMANDO. No negotiation was held.  No documents exist on any research.  NO MEETING YET. 

I am proud of leaders when they are willing to admit that they were wrong, as JFK did on the Bay of Pigs Invasion "I'm the responsible officer of the Government,"' and as Bill Clinton did when he regretted saying "I never inhaled" ("I was dumb as a post to say that." Or St. Augustine City Commission when they voted April 28, 2025 to cancel the art sculpture planned for the center of our May & San Marco roundabout.

I am not proud of leaders who refuse to admit that they were wrong I am not proud of Commissioners who would not consider creating a Public Housing Authority, based on a naked appeal to prejudice about people who receive HUD Section 8 Housing Vouchers by then-Chair CHRISTIAN (sic) WHITEHURST.

I am not proud of four-then Commissioners who, lacking legal basis, voted in louche lockstep to censure reform Commissioner Krista Keating-Joseph for First Amendment protected activity and falsely claimed she committed a crime for expressing her opinion. Senior U.S. District Court Judge Harvey Schlessinger ruled in her favor, finding her expression of her opinions about the 2024 election to be First Amendment protected activity. No apology. Sadly, my friend ISAAC HENRY DEAN made the bogus censure motion, which was not well grounded in law or fact. He was defeated for re-election in 2024. I told him that he was wrong, again and again. I advised him to apologize. He did not do so. I reckon he was defeated because of his appearing to be a developer lapdog, and amateur Cato the Censor. Also defeated for election in 2024 was DeSANTIS-appointed Commissioner ROY ALYRE ALAIMO, JR., a developer doormat. But two of the Commissioners who voted to censure her still encumber seats on SJC County Commission, CHRIStIAN WHITEHURST and SARAH ARNOLD. These two unjust stewards are an embarrassment to us all in St. Johns County.

I was proud indeed in 2007 when our Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County cancelled an illegal no-bid $1.8 million helicopter contract in 2007. (It was not unlike Twelve Angry Men with mosquitos and helicopters, and the debate went on for nine months until AMCD decided lawbreaking was not an option.).  This was after AMCD Chair Barbara Bosanko abuse her office, stating "I'm calling the cops" while former U.S. Army Captain Donald Girvan was at the podium calling for cancellation of the helicopter contract. (She was the wife of former County Attorney Daniel Bosanko). The vote to cancel the no-bid Bell Jet Helicopter contract was unanimous, 5-0.

I will be proud whenever our misguided St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners admit that they were wrong when they voted to hire a corporate law firm as County Attorney.  

Commissioners delegated to Commissioner Murphy to "negotiate" a contract.  

JFK said, "let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

No "negotiation." 

No research.  

Sloppy staff and Commissioner work?

You tell me. 

To Commissioner Murphy, let me say what I said to County Commission Chairman Thomas Manuel the night in June 2008 when we learned he was arrested by the FBI for taking a bribe from a developer: "DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!"

Tapes here: https://www.staugustine.com/story/news/local/2010/02/07/manuel-tapes/16130482007/

Vice Chairman Clay Murphy and citizens were never provided with a conflicts check.  

No client list. 

No outside attorney to advise the SJC BoCC on a contract with the Interim County Attorney.

Instead, we got legal advice from BGK, which got the contract.  That's a conflict of interest.

No excuses.  

As I wrote our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners on March 17, 2025 (items renumbered):

1. Conflicts of interest  must be scrupulously guarded against. See, e.g., United States v. Mississippi Valley Generating Co., 364 U.S. 520, 548 (1961)("the 'Dixon-Yates' case," involving TVA rivals' conflicts of interest in a proposed Memphis, Tennessee government-owned coal-fired powerplant), citing Matthew 6:24 -- "no [person] can serve two masters," holding that laws and rules preventing conflicts of interest are aimed "not only at dishonor but at conduct that tempts dishonor."   

2. All conflict of interest laws are based upon Matthew 6:24 ("A man cannot serve two masters"), which the unanimous Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren deemed to be both a "moral principle" and a "maxim which is especially pertinent if one of the masters happens to be economic self-interest." 

3. {Speaker-elect SAM GARRISON's law partner] Mr. [RICHARD CHRISTIAN] KOMANDO unilaterally refuses to disclose the identity of his law firm clients, not client confidences. His overbearing assertion of privilege is unadorned by any citation to any court or ethics opinions on lawyers who are government employees.  This flunks the "laugh test."  It also flunks the "smell test." Mr. KOMANDO said he would not apply for the permanent County attorney position.  Now, aving applied for the permanent position, Mr. KOMANDO is in no position to withhold information that is materially relevant to his suitability to be our St. Johns County Attorney. Mr. KOMANDO is acting as if he were the judge in his own case.  This is so wrong.

4. James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 10: "No [person] is allowed to be a judge in [his/her] own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time . . . ."

5. The United States Supreme Court held in In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955) (Black, J.), "[O]ur system of law has always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness. To this end no man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome."  See also TWA v. Civil Aeronautics Board, 102U.S. App. D.C. 391, 392, 254 F.2d 90, 91 (1958). Spencer v. Lapsley, 20 How. 264, 266 (1858); Publius Syrus, Moral Sayings 51 (D. Lyman transl. 1856) ("No one should be judge in his own cause."); Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, Letters and Opuscules 182 (Wight transl. 1859) ("It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause."). As William Blackstone wrote, "[I]t is unreasonable that any man should determine his own quarrel," 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 91 citing Dr. Bonham's Case, 8 Rep. 114a (C.P. 1610); see also City of London v. Wood, 12 Mod. 669, 687 (1701)(Lord Holt)(invalidating fine for refusal to serve as sheriff recovered by the city in its own court of Mayor and Aldermen). See also Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie, 475 U.S. 813 (1986)(overruling case where Chief Justice of Alabama Supreme Court wrongfully sat in judgment of case that would set precedent for his own pending case); Ward v. Village of Monroeville, 409 U.S. 57 (1972); Gibson v. Berryhill, 411 U.S. 564 (1973); Withrow v. Larkin, 421 U.S. 35 (1975); Cinderella Career and Finishing Schools, Inc. v. FTC, 425 F.2d 583 (D.C. Cir. 1970); American Cyanamid Co. v. FTC, 363 F.2d 757 (6th Cir. 1966); SCA Services, Inc. v. Morgan, 557 F.2d 110 (7th Cir.1977). 

6.  Being a secretive developer "team player" is not a bona fide occupational qualification in hiring a County Attorney. 

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2025/03/conflict-of-interest-st-johns-county.html

"I hate shallowness," as the FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in the movie, All the President's Men. 

Bullheaded bullshit artists in control of our governments sure do make a lot of "mistakes."  

The Vietnam War was a mistake.  How many Americans and Asians died from it?  

It was an unjust war. 

The late heroic Senator J. Wiliam Fulbright (D-Ark.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, wrote The Arrogance of Power about our foreign policy.  In his 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, Vietnam veteran John Forbes Kerry, later a U.S. Senator, eloquently asked, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

It was a breath of fresh air in 2006 when Nancy Sikes-Kline (now our Mayor) was elected to St. Augustine City Commission; she admitted when I asked her at the Tasting Room, "oh, it was a mistake." Eventually the 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste was removed and sent to a landfill.  HARRISS and the other Commissioners never apologized for the environmental injustices of dumping a landfill in a lake in West Augustine.  No one was ever indicted or charged for their environmental crimes against nature.

"They will say and do anything." So saith my late friend and mentor, the late photojournalist James David Pleasant.  If City Commissioners got away with their feculent City Manager dumping a landfill in a lake and blasting me for exposing it, do some misguided County Commissioners must figure they can hire a conflicted corporate law firm as County Attorney?  That's as subtle as a rubber crutch. 

On May 6, 2025, will the man who defeated ROY ALAIMO own up to his mistake in duking in duking in RICHARD CHRISTIAN KOMANDO as St. Johns County Attorney?  

Will SJC BoCC Vice Chairman Clay Murphy own up to his big fat mistake in moving to hire a conflicted corporate law firm as County Attorney?  

Will SJC BoCC Vice Chair Murphy & Co, admit error?  

Or will SJC BoCC Vice Chair Murphy compound Commission's hiring of ALAIMO's "friend" as County Attorney on recommendation of ROY ALYRE ALAIMO, JR.?

Rebarbarbative ROY ALAIMO was a former Congressional staffer for RONALD DeSANTIS.  As a PZA member, ALAIMO was a developer doormat.  As REC Chair, he issued a Gay-bashing fundraising letter.  As a County Commissioner, ALAIMO had delusions of adequacy.  DeSANTIS named ALAIMO to the Commission seat that was vacated after the COVID death of Commissioner Paul Waldron. 

No application. No background check.  No other applicants were considered. 

This compounded the reckless and fecklessness of hiring HUNTER SINCLAIR CONRAD as County Administrator in 2019.  CONRAD was an unindicted co-conspirator ("Clerk E") in federal bribery case in Chicago. Commissioners hired him without know that.

No application.  No background check. No other applicants were considered. 

To borrow a line from the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, our County is "smeared, teared and bleared" with overdevelopment. 

Our County politics is dominated by Big Money. 

Our Commissioners reward deforestation and sink at the ambitious power-hungry losers and posers.

They allow retaliation against ethical employees. 

In the words of the late courageous FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt to Bob Woodward: "Just follow the money."

Until the Times-Union reported the federal criminal conviction of the SLAUGHTER BROTHERS, We, the People never knew that the law firm of BRADLEY, GARRISON & KOMANDO represented corporate criminal defendants (convicted of tax fraud and workers compensation fraud) during the year that he encumbered the position of Interim County Attorney.  

Interim County Attorney RICHARD CHRISTIAN KOMANDO stiffed Commissioner Ann Taylor, refusing to list any of his firm's clients.  

Since February 17, 2025, the gentleman in quo has  avoided and evaded my records requests. 

He's no scholar and no gentleman.  

Character counts. 

Now we know that the Chair of the St. Johns County Water Management District, head of the law firm hired as St. Johns County Attorney, former Senator ROBERT MILNER BRADLEY, Jr. has an entire lobbying firm in Tallahassee, with clients that include FOUNTAINEBLEAU DEVELOPMENT, a giant international development corporation (think casinos and gambling). 

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2025/04/fountainebleau-development-is-one-of-ex.html

What's next?

Casino gambling in St. Johns County, brought to you by one-party rule?

President DONALD JOHN TRUMP's Chief of Staff, SUSAN SUMMERALL WILES, was a lobbyist for gambling interests that tried to foist off an illegal referendum on St. Johns County ballots. Thanks to Commission Chair Jeb Smith, now had of the Florida Farm Bureau, for stopping them in their tracks.

https://cleanupcityofstaugustine.blogspot.com/2016/07/louche-lobbyist-wiles-demands-slot.html

Now, the lobbying firm for FONTAINEBLEAU DEVELOPMENT, a multinational corporate casino developer, has its co-owner ROBERT MILNER BRADLEY's corporate law firm serving as County Attorney for St. Johjns County.

What's next?

You tell me. 

Will County Commissioners vote to correct their April 15, 2025 "mistake" at our May 6, 2025 County Commission meeting?

Quo vobis videtor?  (What do ya'all reckon?)