133. Sample Jury Instructions—18 U.S.C. § § 241
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 1
THE CHARGE
This is a criminal case brought by the United States government. The grand jury has charged the all defendants with conspiracy to violate constitutional rights, and has charged four of the defendants with specific instances of violating civil rights. The indictment is simply the description of the charge made by the grand jury against the defendant; it is not evidence of anything.
In order to help you follow the evidence, I will now give you a brief summary of the elements of the crime which the Government must prove to make its case:
To prove conspiracy, the Government prove that a defendant agreed with another defendant or other conspirator to interfere with the exercise or enjoyment of a specified constitutional rights of at least one inhabitant of California. The Government must prove that this conspiracy, or agreement, was to interfere with an inhabitant's right to be free from excessive force from a police officer, or the right to be free from having a police officer present false evidence, or the right to be free from having a police officer take property without due process of law.
To prove the specific violations of civil rights, the Government must prove that for a given count the charged defendant was acting under color of law at the time of the incident—that is, he was acting as a police officer, that the named victim was an inhabitant of California, that the defendant deprived the victim of a protected constitutional right, and that the defendant intended the result which constituted the violation of that right.
The rights which the indictment charges were violated in Counts Two through Nineteen include the three rights I mentioned above concerning excessive force, giving false evidence, and theft of money. Some of these counts also charge deprivations of the rights to be free from arrests without probable cause— that is, false arrests, and the right to have a police officer keep a person who is arrested or detained free from harm.
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Authority:
Section 1.02, Ninth Circuit Pattern Instructions, 1989 (modified)
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 2
DEFINITION OF REASONABLE DOUBT
As I have said many times, the government has the burden of proving the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Some of you may have served as jurors in civil cases, where you were told that it is only necessary to that a fact is more likely true than not true. In criminal cases, the government's proof must be more powerful than that. It must be beyond a reasonable doubt.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you firmly convinced of the defendant's guilt. There are very few things in this world that we know with absolute certainty, and in criminal cases the law does not require proof that overcomes every possible doubt. If, based on your consideration of the evidence, you are firmly convinced that the defendant is guilty of the crime or crimes charged, you must find him guilty. If, on the other hand, you think there is a real possibility that he is not guilty, you must give him the benefit of the doubt and find him not guilty.
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Authority:
Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions, Federal Judicial Center, No. 21, p. 27.
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 3
INDICTMENT: "AND" MEANS "OR"
Although the indictment alleges that the statutes in question were violated by various acts which are in the indictment joined by the conjunctive "and," it is sufficient for guilt if the evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt the violation of the statute by any one of the acts charged. For example, Count one charges that the defendants "combined, conspired, and agreed to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate inhabitants of California...." The proof need only establish that the defendants combined, conspired or agreed to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate inhabitants of California.
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Authorities:
United States v. Dinneen, 463 F.2d 1036, 1039 (10th Cir. 1972), and cases cited therein.
United States v. Troutman, 100 F.2d 628, 631 (10th Cir. 1938).
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 3A
SECTION 241
Count One charges the defendants with violating Section 241 of Title 18, United States Code. The relevant part of Section 241 reads as follows:
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any inhabitant of any State, Territory, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same . . . [they shall be guilty of an offense against the United States].
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Authority:
18 U.S.C. 𨵉
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 4
SECTION 241—ELEMENTS
Section 241 as charged by this indictment has three elements to be considered as to each defendant:
First: That the defendant conspired with one or more persons to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate one or more victims;
Second: That the defendant intended by the conspiracy to hinder, prevent, or interfere with persons' enjoyment of a right secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States; and
Third: That one or more of the intended victims was an inhabitant of California.
I will now explain further each of these three elements.
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Authorities:
ڈ.18, p 83, Fifth Circuit Pattern Instructions—Criminal Cases (1990)
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 5
CONSPIRACY—EXISTENCE OF AN AGREEMENT
A criminal conspiracy is an agreement or a mutual understanding knowingly made or knowingly entered into by at least two people to violate the law by some joint or common plan or course of action. A conspiracy is, in a very true sense, a partnership in crime.
A conspiracy or agreement to violate the law, like any other kind of agreement or understanding, need not be formal, written, or even expressed directly in every detail.
To prove the existence of a conspiracy or an illegal agreement, the government is not required to produce a written contract between the parties or even produce evidence of an express oral agreement spelling out all of the details of the understanding. To prove that a conspiracy existed, moreover, the government is not required to show that all of the people named in the indictment as members of the conspiracy were, in fact, parties to the agreement, or that all of the members of the alleged conspiracy were named or charged, or that all of the people whom the evidence shows were actually members of a conspiracy agreed to all of the means or methods set out in the indictment.
The government must prove that a defendant and at least one other person knowingly and deliberately arrived at some type of agreement or understanding that they, and perhaps others, would interfere with the protected Constitutional rights of inhabitants of Oakland by means of some common plan or course of action as alleged in Count One of the indictment. It is proof of this conscious understanding and deliberate agreement by the alleged members that should be central to your consideration of the charge of conspiracy.
The existence of the agreement may be inferred from the defendants' acts pursuant to the scheme, or from other circumstantial evidence.
The government is not required to prove any of the overt acts charged in Count One.
Once you have decided that the defendant was a member of a conspiracy, the defendant is responsible for what other conspirators said or did to carry out the conspiracy, whether or not the defendant knew what they said or did.
Unless the government proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a conspiracy, as just explained, actually existed as to a given defendant, then you must acquit that defendant.
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Authorities:
Devitt, Blackmar & O'Malley, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, 䅘.04 (Conspiracy—Existence of an Agreement) (modified with addition of fifth, sixth, and seventh paragraphs) (1990)
United States v. Disla, 805 F.2d 1340, 1348 (9th Cir. 1986) (the agreement may be inferred from the defendants' acts pursuant to the scheme, or from other circumstantial evidence.")
United States v. Skillman, 922 F.2d 1370, 1375-76 (9th Cir. 1991) (overt act not required under Section 241)
Ninth Circuit Model Instruction 8.05A (1989) ("Once you have decided that the defendant was a member of a conspiracy, the defendant is responsible for what other conspirators said or did to carry out the conspiracy, whether or not the defendant knew what they said or did.")
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 6
CONSPIRACY—KNOWING OF AND ASSOCIATION WITH OTHER CONSPIRATORS
A conspiracy may continue for a long period of time and may include the performance of many acts. It is not necessary that all members of the conspiracy join it at the same time, and one may become a member of a conspiracy without full knowledge of all the details of the unlawful scheme or identities of all of the other members. A single conspiracy may include subgroups or subagreements.
Even though a defendant may not have directly conspired with all the other defendants or conspirators in the overall scheme, the defendant would, in effect, have agreed to participate in the conspiracy if it is proved beyond a reasonable doubt that (1) the defendant directly conspired with one or more conspirators to carry out at least one of the objects of the conspiracy, (2) the defendant knew or had reason to know that other conspirators were involved with those with whom the defendant directly conspired, and (3) the defendant had reason to believe that whatever benefits the defendant might get from the conspiracy were probably dependent upon the success of the entire venture.
It is no defense that a person's participation in conspiracy was minor or for a short period of time.
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Authorities:
Ninth Circuit Pattern Jury Instructions, No. 8.05C
United States v. Patterson, 819 F.2d 1495, 1502 (9th Cir. 1987). ("A single conspiracy" may include subgroups or subagreements".)
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 7
ACTS AND DECLARATIONS OF CO-CONSPIRATORS
In determining whether or not a particular defendant was a member of the conspiracy, you may consider the evidence of his conduct and actions, together with his own statements and declarations. You may also consider and weigh the acts and declarations of other co-conspirators which were made during the course of the conspiracy and in furtherance of it, as bearing on the question of a delfendant's membership in the conspiracy.
United States v. Giese, 597 F.2d 1170, 1197 (9th Cir.) cert. denied, 444 U.S. 979 (1979).
GIVEN_____________________
NOT GIVEN_________________
GIVEN AS MODIFIED_________
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 8
GUILT OF SUBSTANTIVE OFFENSE—PINKERTON
A defendant may also be found guilty of an offense as a result of its commission by a coconspirator acting in furtherance of the conspiracy. If you find that the Government has proven a defendant guilty of the conspiracy charged in Count One, beyond a reasonable doubt, you should also find that defendant guilty of the crime alleged in any other count of the indictment in which he is charged, provided you find that the essential elements of that count as defined in these instructions have been established beyond a reasonable doubt and, provided further, that you also find beyond a reasonable doubt, that
First, the offense committed was committed by a member of the conspiracy charged in Count One of the indictment;
Second, the substantive crime was committed during the existence or life of and in furtherance of the goals or objectives of the conspiracy; and
Third, at the time that this offense was committed, the defendant was a member of the conspiracy.
Under these conditions a defendant may be guilty of a substantive count even if he did not participate in the acts constituting the offense as defined in the substantive count. The reason for this is that a co-conspirator is held to be the agent of the other conspirators.
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Authorities:
Section 28.10, Devitt and Blackmar, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, Fourth Edition, 1990 (modified)
United States v. Kato, 878 F.2d 267, 270-71 (9th Cir. 1989)
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 9
INJURE, OPPRESS, THREATEN, OR INTIMIDATE
The words "injure," "oppress," "threaten" or "intimidate" are not used in any technical sense, but may cover a variety of conduct intended to harm, frighten, punish, or inhibit the free action of another person. The type of conduct embraced by these words includes actions which constitute the abuse of power or authority, or actions which frighten or cause physical harm to another person.
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Authorities:
United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787 (1966).
United States v. Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966).
Miriam Webster Pocket Dictionary (1974)(oppress defined as "to crush by abuse of power or authority.").
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 10
ELEMENT TWO—PROTECTED RIGHT
The second element of the conspiracy offense is that the defendants intended by the conspiracy to interfere with individuals' rights which are secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
Count One charges that each of the defendants conspired to interfere with other individuals' free exercise and enjoyment of three specific rights protected by the United States Constitution. The rights named in Count One include the right (1) to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law, which includes the right to be secure in their persons, that is, the right to be free from the intentional use of unreasonable force by one acting under color of law; (2) to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law, which includes the right not to have false evidence knowingly presented against them by one acting under color of law, and (3) to be free from the deprivation of property without due process of law by one acting under color of law.
All persons in this country have the legal right, as set forth in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to be protected from unreasonable seizures, that is, to be free from any official use of force which is unreasonable or unnecessary. It has always been the policy of the law to protect the physical integrity of every person from the use of excessive force. No one, not even a person being placed under arrest, may be physically assaulted, intimidated or otherwise abused intentionally and unreasonably by someone acting under color of laws or in an official capacity. Accordingly, every person has a constitutional right to be secure in his person and to be free from unwarranted physical mistreatment by police officers. Unwarranted physical mistreatment is physical force used without a legitimate law enforcement purpose.
Every person also has a constitutional right, as established by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, to be free from a deprivation of liberty resulting from the intentional presentation of false evidence by someone acting under color of law. One does not receive due process of law when a police officer knowingly provides false testimony in a court proceeding.
Every person further has a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment not to be deprived of property without due process of law by someone acting under color of law. This includes the right not to have money permanently taken from him by a police officer or officers without adherence to the processes due under the law.
Thus, in this case, if you find that the conspiracy was directed against either (1) an inhabitant's right to be free from the use of excessive force by someone acting under color of law; (2) an inhabitant's right not to have false evidence knowingly presented against him by someone acting under color of law, or (3) an inhabitant's right to be free from the deprivation of property without due process of law by someone acting under color of law, then you may find that the conspirators agreed to interfere with a right secured by the Constitution of the United States.
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Authorities:
18 U.S.C. 𨵉
Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 109 S.Ct. 1865 (1989) (Claims that law enforcement official have used excessive force in the course of a "seizure" of a person are more properly characterized as invoking Fourth Amendment protection and must be judged by reference to Fourth Amendment "reasonableness standard").
United States v. Price, 383 U.S. 787, 800 (1966)(statute precludes interference with all rights protected by Constitution or federal statutes).
Napue v. Illinois, 360 U.S. 264 (1959)(presentation of false evidence).
Williams v. United States, 341 U.S. 97, 101 (1951)
("[W]here police take matters in their own hands, seize
victims, beat and pound them until they confess, there
cannot be the slightest doubt that the police have deprived the victims of a right under the Constitution.").
United States v. Patterson, 809 F.2d 244 (5th Cir. 1987) (Section 241 conviction upheld based on officers' false testimony).
United States v. Walker, 785 F.2d 1237 (5th Cir. 1986)(intentional arrest of victim by police officer without probable cause violates 18 U.S.C. 𨵊).
United States v. Alonso, 740 F.2d 862 (11th Cir. 1984)(theft of money from victim by police officers violates victim's constitutional right to be free from the deprivation of property without due process of law.).
United States v. Harrison, 671 F.2d 1159 (8th Cir. 1982)(excessive force by police officer)
United States v. McClean, 528 F.2d 1250 (2d Cir. 1976)(theft of money from victim by police officers violates victim's constitutional right to be free from the deprivation of property without due process of law.).
United States v. Wallace, 673 F.Supp. 205 (S.D. Texas 1987)(corrections officers who intentionally present false evidence against inmate in official proceeding violate 18 U.S.C. § 241.).
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 11
ELEMENT THREE: INHABITANCY
The third element of the offense requires that one or more of the intended victims be an inhabitant of California. An inhabitant of the State of California for purposes of the conspiracy statute means a person who would be physically present in the State of California at the time that the deprivation of his or her rights intended by the conspiracy would occur. Consequently, if you find that at least one of the intended victims of the conspiracy charged in Count One was to be physically present in the State of California at the time of the intended deprivation of rights, then the third element of the offense, inhabitancy, is satisfied.
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Authorities:
United States v. Otherson, 637 F.2d 1276 (9th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 840 (1981)(inhabitancy includes all persons physically present in the United States (Section 242)).
United States v. Konovsky, 202 F.2d 721 (1953)(by implication)(government not required to prove that each member of class set forth in indictment was an inhabitant).
Wilkins v. United States, 376 F.2d 552 (5th Cir. 1967)(by implication)(government not required to prove that each member of class set forth in indictment was a citizen).
GOVERNMENT'S PROPOSED INSTRUCTION NO. 12
COLOR OF LAW
Each of the rights named in Count One, which I have described above, protects individuals against actions of persons acting under color of law. Acting under color of law means that the defendant acted in his official capacity or else claimed to do so, even if he misused or abused his power by violating the law himself. In order to convict a defendant under Count One, you must find that the conspiracy contemplated that the actions which would accomplish the objectives of the conspiracy by interfering with constitutional rights would be done by persons acting under color of law.
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Authorities:
United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299, 326 (1941)(misuse of power, possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority
of state law, is action taken under color of law).
Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91, 107-11 (1945)(officers performing official duties, whether they misuse their lawful authority, act under color of law).
Williams v. United States, 341 U.S. 97, 99-100 (1951)(misuse of lawful authority can constitute action taken under color of law).
Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 183-187 (1961)("under color of
state law" includes misuse of power possessed by virtue of state law and made possible because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law).
Griffin v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 130 (1964)("If an individual is possessed of state authority and purports to act under that authority, his action is state action. It is irrelevant that he might have taken the same action had he acted in a purely private capacity or that the particular action which he took was not authorized by state law.").
Booker v. City of Atlanta, 776 F.2d 272 (11th Cir. 1985) Cir. 1985)(officers's presence aided unlawful repossession by giving repossession appearance of legality and by intimidating plaintiff into not exercising right to resist).
Monday, November 03, 2008
18 U.S.C. 241 (Conspiracy Against Rights) -- the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act
§ 241. Conspiracy against rights
How Current is This? If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death. Search this title:
How Current is This? If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death. Search this title:
ORLANDO WEEKLY MICA'S MILLIONS -- Unearned Millions From 1980s Federal Cellular Telephone Lottery Speculation Helped Propel John Mica Into Congress
ORLANDO WEEKLY MICA'S MILLIONS -- Unearned Millions From 1980s Federal Cellular Telephone Lottery Speculation Helped Propel John Mica Into Congress
John Mica: "I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems"
ORLANDO WEEKLY
11/12/1998
News
Mica’s millions
By Edward Ericson Jr.
John Mica is sitting pretty.
Re-elected last week as Florida’s 8th District congressman, Mica had campaign money to burn, no opposition from the Democrats and rides into a fourth term with a reputation -- carefully cultivated -- as a tough-talking political reformer.
He’s a crowd-pleaser on crime, steering federal money toward Central Florida as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area" and voting to try 13-year-olds as adults. And as the first and only representative of a heavily Republican district drawn in 1991, Mica has taken off the gloves to fight powerful interests such as ... average federal workers, with dramatic hearings on what he regards as wasteful labor-union activities performed on government time.
Mica also has been fiercely partisan in his attacks on President Clinton, co-sponsoring an early impeachment resolution and calling the president "the little bugger" from the floor of the House.
A member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Mica attacked the White House over an obscure miniscandal involving Indian tribes in Wisconsin. One tribe reportedly used its casino-generated money to block a nearby tribe’s efforts to open a competing gambling hall. The Interior Department officials who blocked the new casino were accused of taking their marching orders from the White House, which received big campaign contributions from the wealthy tribe. Then the bureaucrats quit their government posts to take lucrative lobbying contracts with the tribe. Mica was incensed.
"Under the Ethics in Government Act, what was done by [those bureaucrats] is prohibited except for one loophole," Mica fumed during a hearing on the matter last year. "Do you think that that’s right for folks to step right out of government and then into a position of conflict?"
Mica came to Congress on a platform built on such stands, equating his financial security with political independence. "I’ve made a lot of money and I don’t need the salary," he said.
Proud of his status as a self-made entrepreneur, Mica would like to privatize as many services as possible, including public education. He would convert foreign aid into aid for U.S. businesses for "export assistance." Last year he put your money where his mouth is by voting for taxpayer-subsidized loans to nations that import U.S. weapons -- but only after taking $14,200 from political-action committees associated with those weapons merchants, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But while championing welfare for Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Mica’s tightwad side rules his philosophy regarding government aid to poor people.
In a 1994 survey on welfare, Mica chose all the most restrictive options regarding welfare reform, endorsing mandatory work and a requirement that teen moms must live with a parent. Then he added: "Six-month maximum on welfare."
Mica even endured a moment of infamy in the spring of 1996 when he likened welfare recipients to reptiles. "Do not feed the alligators," he said. "We post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency."
The metaphor was denounced by many Democrats and caused even some Republicans to wince.
Yet few could know that at least $2 million of Mica’s own wealth had come from a government giveaway of a public resource. And nobody at the time noted the irony of Mica’s dependence on that taxpayer-sapping bonanza -- which one federal official likened to "one of the biggest welfare programs in the United States."
The giveaway
The man who said those words was former Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark S. Fowler, who was in charge of the giveaway. The date was March 30, 1985. Fowler was addressing a Senate subcommittee on communications, trying to get Congress to help him turn off the spigot of public money.
It was a frustrating time for Fowler; nothing was done, and the result was a five-year opportunity for a few thousand sharpies in and out of government. Fowler’s welfare program was John Mica’s ticket to easy millions.
It was called the cellular telephone service lottery.
On announced occasions, beginning in 1984, in a windowless room on the eighth floor of the FCC building, three big air-blown tanks full of pingpong balls were activated as groups of 30 to 50 anxious players looked on. Like Meyer Lansky or a Wisconsin tribe, the federal government was in the gambling business. But players of FCC Cellular Bingo, unlike the naive pigeons of Vegas, placed their bets for free or nearly free. And payoffs ranged from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions.
The prize was the right to use the radio spectrum between 800MHz and 920MHz, the frequencies cellular telephones use to communicate with each other and with wire lines. Conservative estimates at the time put the assets’ combined value at $20 billion.
The giveaway was supposed to spur competition. AT&T, whose Bell Labs had developed crucial cellular-switching technology two decades earlier, had just been dismantled by the largest antitrust action the U.S. government had ever undertaken. Regulators didn’t want a huge company to dominate the new service. Comparative hearings -- in which FCC bureaucrats weighed the merits of corporate proposals to provide service -- already had delayed widespread cellular service by 10 years. A call for proposals brought an avalanche of 5,000 -- a possible 20-year backlog -- in just a few days. "This was an inefficient system, and it delayed the delivery of new services to the public," remembers David Aylward, formerly an assistant to then-Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on communications.
By law the FCC could not sell public assets. A lottery was deemed the only fair thing.
To spur competition, the FCC divided the country into 734 regions, the largest 306 being outrageously valuable, city-based "Metropolitan Service Areas" (MSAs) and the remaining 428 deemed "Rural Service Areas" (RSAs), which ranged in value from perhaps $1 million to tens of millions of dollars. Each area or city would get two cellular providers: the local phone company and a newcomer. To discourage speculators, the FCC demanded 500-page applications packed with engineering reports. Applicants also had to submit a letter of credit attesting they had the million dollars it would take to build the system within five years.
But specialized "application mills" popped up immediately to do the paperwork for just a few thousand dollars. They knew that the right to use the radio spectrum, if won in the lottery, could be sold quickly to a big company like Southwestern Bell or Western Wireless that would build the actual towers and staff the billing and marketing departments. A lottery application, once created, could be duplicated for as many gamblers as would pay, making application services a profitable business in itself. Commercials appeared on the Financial News Network, urging folks to "roll the dice." Regulators were appalled. The FCC, Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to collar the mountebanks. Journalists reported the scandal; editorialists clucked tongues.
As the greed frenzy began, Mica was an administrative assistant to Florida Sen. Paula Hawkins, who sat on the key Senate communications subcommittee. Also working for Hawkins was John Dudinsky; following Hawkins’ defeat in 1986, the two men would find themselves in business together as lobbyists.
More important, Mica and Dudinsky also formed a partnership as MD Cellular. It was MD Cellular that -- two years after Mica left Hawkins’ employ -- would put Mica himself into the communications business.
A driven man
John Mica would be a millionaire today even without his cellular profits. But the millions he made in the lottery appear to have been his best return on investment. Mica takes pride in his attention to such things.
Mica has been a dedicated public servant, a stalwart for conservative causes, a tireless go-getter and a careful cultivator of his own financial garden for more than 30 years of public life.
"He is extremely energetic," says brother Dan, a former Democratic congressman who now heads the National Association of Credit Unions. "He eats breakfast early, works to 8 or 9 p.m., then he’ll go out to get a refrigerator or stove to install in the house, and do the installation before bed."
John Mica also is a deliberative and sharp thinker, his mind toned early by the high-school debating society. "For many, many years he held the record for the most points ever accumulated," says his brother, a fellow debating team member.
As a student at the University of Florida, John Mica raised the money to rebuild his fraternity house and even sketched the design for it himself, his brother says. He worked as a necktie salesman and dishwasher, and networked Republican circles as his brother moved in Democratic ones, although little separated them politically.
Shortly after graduation, John Mica landed a job as executive director of the Palm Beach and Orange County Government Charter Study Commissions, and sold the idea of charter government to the citizens of West Palm Beach. He then turned his charter knowledge into a minor franchise, selling his expertise to Pasco and Manatee counties as well.
In 1975 Mica hooked up with Orlando architect Robert Koch and formed MK Development, which 10 years later would build Koch’s office building and a small strip-mall on Temple Trail, eventually earning Mica more than $50,000 a year in rent payments.
Beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives from Orlando’s District 17 in 1976, Mica’s personal finances improved yearly. In 1977, he and developer Loren H. Roby borrowed about $110,000 to invest in two oceanfront lots on New Smyrna Beach. After the pair built condos on the site, both were on their way to financial security; by June 1980, Mica pegged his net worth at $302,550.
When Hawkins was elected to the U.S. Senate during the Reagan landslide of 1980, Mica followed her to Washington. After she lost her bid for re-election in 1986 to Bob Graham, Mica joined his friend Dudinsky as a lobbyist, working for such clients as American Specialty Chemical, Coopers & Lybrand and 3M Corporation. Mica built his five-bedroom, four-bath home on Via Tuscany in Winter Park just a few months after leaving Hawkins’ employ. The house is now assessed at $350,000.
Money was always important to John Mica, brother Dan says, and he was ambivalent at best about the value of public service in amassing suitable wealth. "For a while he questioned why I spent so many years in public service," says Dan, who served a decade each as a congressional staffer and as a congressman from Palm Beach County. "He said I might do better financially for my family."
Dan says he was surprised in 1991 when John announced he was running for the newly created House seat, until he said he had made his fortune and worried no longer about paying the mortgage. "John wanted to make sure he could be assured for his family," Dan says.
Mica lent himself $100,000 to run against Democrat Daniel Webster. Mica positioned himself as a reformer, and depicted Webster as a tool of trial lawyers and labor unions; Webster called Mica "the epitome of the professional politician." Webster did not make an issue of the cell-phone lottery, from which Mica divulged at least a million-dollar profit in financial disclosures filed four months before the election.
Mica won with 53 percent of the vote and went on to distinguish himself as a bold entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire who created jobs and opportunity. It was this image Mica put forth when first queried about his cellular deals.
"I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems from the ground up, now all part of a national system we take for granted," Mica replied early this year in a letter after Orlando Weekly began inquiring about his finances.
Yet a closer look reveals not a "pioneer" but a man whose luck made him rich with no work required.
‘Little appointee’
Mica refuses to say exactly how much he invested or earned in cellular, although the financial disclosure forms he filed as a congressman indicate a gross profit of at least $2 million. Because those forms list only income ranges, and because two of the three companies that eventually bought Mica’s phone interests refused to divulge the prices they paid, it’s impossible to be more precise.
But precision has not been a hallmark of Mica’s cellular business. In interviews and letters over many months, he gives varied and confusing explanations of his role, at first depicting himself as a wheeler-dealer and, more recently, as a "little appointee." From interviews and available public records, it appears the latter role is most accurate.
In fact, so informal was MD Cellular -- Mica’s first phone venture with Dudinsky and Carl Medei of Maitland -- that as far as the state of Florida is concerned, it was not even a legal business entity, having failed to register as required with the state.
The oversight was understandable. MD was less a business than a betting pool, Mica’s claims to the contrary.
"We were lucky. We were lucky. We were lucky," says Medei. "The FCC does a drawing, and if they pick you, you get money. And if they don’t, you lose."
Medei remembers little else about MD Cellular. He can’t say when it was begun -- "All that’s so long ago, I don’t think I even have the paperwork anymore" -- or what work Mica did on its behalf. He would not divulge the amount of his own investment or profit, although he says his was much smaller than that of his partners.
Mica says his duties as "managing general partner" included setting up the partnership, providing facilities and expensing the partnership. But he also says that another company, Genesis Management, did all the actual work.
And the $90,000 fee he reported in 1991 as the start of his cellular income?
That was an accountant’s creation, for tax purposes, Mica says. In fact, Mica now says MD was not a partnership at all. "Similar to thousands of other investor applicants, we retained a packager to prepare legal, engineering and financial applications to file with the FCC," Mica wrote in another letter. "Rather than form a formal partnership or corporation, as investors we signed Service Contract Agreements (forms used by nearly all cellular packagers) provided by Genesis, the Virginia-based cellular packager."
Chance encounters
Genesis Management founder Wladimir Naleszkiewicz was a Polish émigré who taught economics at Notre Dame before stints with the FCC and the White House office of telecommunications policy under presidents Ford and Carter. He had spent the early 1980s trying to assemble financing for a visionary direct satellite broadcasting system -- much like the one Bill Gates is invested in today. But Genesis, founded in 1986, was a much more modest enterprise, filling out complex FCC forms and grouping investors for the cellular lotteries in a subtle -- and sometimes blatant -- attempt to beat the system. The goal was to enter the lottery process under as many names as possible.
FCC rules and federal law forbade the submission of duplicate applications, threatening a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison for anyone caught doing so. But the FCC didn’t enforce the rule. And Naleszkiewicz was the engineer for several lottery syndicators, according to Mica, cranking out engineering specs for all comers. That gave packagers like Naleszkiewicz tremendous power, controlling which small investors were grouped with others and in some cases directing the whole profitable enterprise.
Some application mills would sign up anyone with a pulse, charge them next to nothing to enter, but require that if the applicant won, he or she would hire the packager -- at high cost, with perhaps a bit of equity -- as a consultant to set up the system. The other tactic was to charge unsophisticated investors high fees based on inflated claims about the chances of winning and the value of the asset to be won.
By mid-1986 FCC Chairman Fowler threatened to report "charlatan-type applications" to the Justice Department. But in the end the market ruled, and the speculators won. "We have seen that too many applicants have too little intention of actually providing telecommunications services and merely apply in order to sell out later to the highest bidder," Fowler complained in a speech to telecom industry officials. "Try as we might, we have no way to distinguish between authentic service providers and these racehorse Charlies."
Enter John Mica.
"We had done some research on packagers," says Mica. "Wladimir had the best reputation."
As the first of five RSA lotteries closed, Mica saw that instead of the expected thousands of applicants, only 800 to 1,200 people applied for each license. This created favorable odds for any savvy investor who could enter all of the remaining 340 drawings. Even if the number of applicants doubled -- which it nearly did -- the odds of winning still were better than seven to one.
By mid-1988, Mica had entered several hundred lotteries. By 1990 he had won three times.
MD Cellular was part of two groups that won RSAs. Those service areas were based in Front Royal, Va.; Aberdeen, S.D.; and Monroe, La.
Within weeks the partnership sold the Virginia RSA, which covered a six-county territory 100 miles from the Washington beltway -- prime territory -- to Southwestern Bell. "I didn’t want to sell Virginia," Mica says. "If we’d gotten stock for this, we’d be so rich I wouldn’t even be here. I’d be out on my yacht somewhere."
Mica did get some stock in the next RSA sold, a seven-county area in the northeast corner of Louisiana.
The partnership to which MD Cellular belonged was in turn controlled by a larger partnership, Tri-Coastal Cellular; in 1991 Tri-Coastal’s 18 partners formed a shell corporation, Monroe Cellular, to operate a cellular-phone company there. "We built the system in Louisiana," says Jim Arch of Maitland, one of the partners.
By "built," Arch doesn’t mean he actually flew down there with a tool belt around his waist and worked the cranes that erected the towers. He hired the people who hired the people who did that. Or rather, like Mica, he invested with people who hired people who hired people who did the work. But Mica’s role was such that, today, he can’t even remember the name of the company, or its owner, that the partnership hired.
Eventually New Jersey-based Centennial Cellular came calling, and in 1994 they paid $11.5 million for the property, according to Centennial Comptroller Tom Bucks. Mica’s share of that sale would have been $862,500; he took half of that in Centennial stock, which he eventually sold.
The final RSA -- comprising five counties in South Dakota -- was sold in 1995, also for an undisclosed sum, to Western Wireless. Mica reported a gain of between $100,000 and $1 million on that sale, but has said that his 12 percent stake in the Aberdeen property was his least profitable.
Mica entered the 1990s more than $1 million ahead in the cellular game. Real losses were almost unthinkable. Instead, the risks were associated with business partners shuffled into the deck by Genesis Management.
The riskiest would prove to be the packager himself, Wlad Naleszkiewicz.
In January 1989, Naleszkiewicz told 40 clients he had submitted to the FCC their cellular lottery application fees -- $200 each for 1,438 applications -- but he didn’t. "The last ones, he never filed," says Arch. "He put the applications in the garbage."
Naleszkiewicz pled guilty in federal court to two counts of mail fraud in connection with this failing. He told the court he kept the $287,600 to save himself embarrassment and "avoid financial difficulties." He and his wife, Nancy, were fined double damages, and Wladimir faced 10 years in prison, though he served just four months’ home detention. Genesis’ was the first and only criminal indictment to arise from cellular licensing application fraud.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in August 1993, claiming assets of $5,088 and liabilities of $1.4 million. Wladimir Naleszkiewicz died in February 1996. His wife could not be reached for comment.
Mica rests much of his credibility as a true cellular player -- and not a passive speculator -- on his choice of Genesis. "The firm had a reputation as the best engineering and packaging company for cellular applications," he wrote. "We researched the firm and found that all of the critical engineering studies required by the FCC for previously awarded MSA Cellular licenses and prepared by Genesis were approved."
But Genesis did not exist until 1986, well after the MSA process had gotten under way. And what was Naleszkiewicz doing immediately before then? He was vice president and director of economics for American National -- an application mill the FTC had shut down for fraud in 1985.
Mica says he knew nothing about that.
Tallying the costs
Today Mica is out of the phone business.
He’s coy about his income from the deals, noting that he put money into the systems he owned for years before deriving any profit. He says the cost of applications was high as well. "Application fees and packaging fees for engineering and legal work were costly," he wrote. "As I recall, just the FCC application for each block exceeded $80,000, not including packager fees for legal, engineering and financial application work."
But what did it really cost to get into the sweepstakes?
According to FCC records, the early lotteries were free. Later a $200 per application fee was instituted. Syndicators like Naleszkiewicz charged between $3 and $5,000 per application, depending on the worth of the properties being raffled off and what kind of deals they made with clients.
Mica’s real costs may never be known. But the aftermath of the Genesis fraud provides a glimpse at the figures.
In a letter dated May 15, 1997, Mica wrote to James Hanson, chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, regarding a payment Mica left off his 1996 financial disclosure statement. "In 1996 I received $7,502.23 as a court-ordered restitution (Naleszkiewicz Order of Restitution) from a case in which I and other investors were defrauded," Mica wrote. "Staff of the committee advised that this need not be considered ... for reporting purposes."
The restitution was for double the amount Naleszkiewicz collected from each applicant. That puts Mica’s cost for that final lottery, in which 83 RSAs were raffled, at $3,751.12. Multiplied by four application blocks, that represents an initial investment of less than $15,000 to make his first cellular million (or two).
Such speculation annoys John Mica, who doesn’t like to talk about his money.
Although he once pegged his net worth at $6 million and equated his financial independence with political independence, Mica is reticent about the details. "Someone might read that [I’m rich] and try to push down my door," he says.
So don’t ask him what he’s worth now. He’ll say only that it’s less than a few years ago. And don’t ask him to say just how much he invested, and earned, in the cellular-phone business.
He says he just doesn’t know.
John Mica: "I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems"
ORLANDO WEEKLY
11/12/1998
News
Mica’s millions
By Edward Ericson Jr.
John Mica is sitting pretty.
Re-elected last week as Florida’s 8th District congressman, Mica had campaign money to burn, no opposition from the Democrats and rides into a fourth term with a reputation -- carefully cultivated -- as a tough-talking political reformer.
He’s a crowd-pleaser on crime, steering federal money toward Central Florida as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area" and voting to try 13-year-olds as adults. And as the first and only representative of a heavily Republican district drawn in 1991, Mica has taken off the gloves to fight powerful interests such as ... average federal workers, with dramatic hearings on what he regards as wasteful labor-union activities performed on government time.
Mica also has been fiercely partisan in his attacks on President Clinton, co-sponsoring an early impeachment resolution and calling the president "the little bugger" from the floor of the House.
A member of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Mica attacked the White House over an obscure miniscandal involving Indian tribes in Wisconsin. One tribe reportedly used its casino-generated money to block a nearby tribe’s efforts to open a competing gambling hall. The Interior Department officials who blocked the new casino were accused of taking their marching orders from the White House, which received big campaign contributions from the wealthy tribe. Then the bureaucrats quit their government posts to take lucrative lobbying contracts with the tribe. Mica was incensed.
"Under the Ethics in Government Act, what was done by [those bureaucrats] is prohibited except for one loophole," Mica fumed during a hearing on the matter last year. "Do you think that that’s right for folks to step right out of government and then into a position of conflict?"
Mica came to Congress on a platform built on such stands, equating his financial security with political independence. "I’ve made a lot of money and I don’t need the salary," he said.
Proud of his status as a self-made entrepreneur, Mica would like to privatize as many services as possible, including public education. He would convert foreign aid into aid for U.S. businesses for "export assistance." Last year he put your money where his mouth is by voting for taxpayer-subsidized loans to nations that import U.S. weapons -- but only after taking $14,200 from political-action committees associated with those weapons merchants, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
But while championing welfare for Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Mica’s tightwad side rules his philosophy regarding government aid to poor people.
In a 1994 survey on welfare, Mica chose all the most restrictive options regarding welfare reform, endorsing mandatory work and a requirement that teen moms must live with a parent. Then he added: "Six-month maximum on welfare."
Mica even endured a moment of infamy in the spring of 1996 when he likened welfare recipients to reptiles. "Do not feed the alligators," he said. "We post these warnings because unnatural feeding and artificial care create dependency."
The metaphor was denounced by many Democrats and caused even some Republicans to wince.
Yet few could know that at least $2 million of Mica’s own wealth had come from a government giveaway of a public resource. And nobody at the time noted the irony of Mica’s dependence on that taxpayer-sapping bonanza -- which one federal official likened to "one of the biggest welfare programs in the United States."
The giveaway
The man who said those words was former Federal Communications Commission chairman Mark S. Fowler, who was in charge of the giveaway. The date was March 30, 1985. Fowler was addressing a Senate subcommittee on communications, trying to get Congress to help him turn off the spigot of public money.
It was a frustrating time for Fowler; nothing was done, and the result was a five-year opportunity for a few thousand sharpies in and out of government. Fowler’s welfare program was John Mica’s ticket to easy millions.
It was called the cellular telephone service lottery.
On announced occasions, beginning in 1984, in a windowless room on the eighth floor of the FCC building, three big air-blown tanks full of pingpong balls were activated as groups of 30 to 50 anxious players looked on. Like Meyer Lansky or a Wisconsin tribe, the federal government was in the gambling business. But players of FCC Cellular Bingo, unlike the naive pigeons of Vegas, placed their bets for free or nearly free. And payoffs ranged from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions.
The prize was the right to use the radio spectrum between 800MHz and 920MHz, the frequencies cellular telephones use to communicate with each other and with wire lines. Conservative estimates at the time put the assets’ combined value at $20 billion.
The giveaway was supposed to spur competition. AT&T, whose Bell Labs had developed crucial cellular-switching technology two decades earlier, had just been dismantled by the largest antitrust action the U.S. government had ever undertaken. Regulators didn’t want a huge company to dominate the new service. Comparative hearings -- in which FCC bureaucrats weighed the merits of corporate proposals to provide service -- already had delayed widespread cellular service by 10 years. A call for proposals brought an avalanche of 5,000 -- a possible 20-year backlog -- in just a few days. "This was an inefficient system, and it delayed the delivery of new services to the public," remembers David Aylward, formerly an assistant to then-Colorado Sen. Tim Wirth, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on communications.
By law the FCC could not sell public assets. A lottery was deemed the only fair thing.
To spur competition, the FCC divided the country into 734 regions, the largest 306 being outrageously valuable, city-based "Metropolitan Service Areas" (MSAs) and the remaining 428 deemed "Rural Service Areas" (RSAs), which ranged in value from perhaps $1 million to tens of millions of dollars. Each area or city would get two cellular providers: the local phone company and a newcomer. To discourage speculators, the FCC demanded 500-page applications packed with engineering reports. Applicants also had to submit a letter of credit attesting they had the million dollars it would take to build the system within five years.
But specialized "application mills" popped up immediately to do the paperwork for just a few thousand dollars. They knew that the right to use the radio spectrum, if won in the lottery, could be sold quickly to a big company like Southwestern Bell or Western Wireless that would build the actual towers and staff the billing and marketing departments. A lottery application, once created, could be duplicated for as many gamblers as would pay, making application services a profitable business in itself. Commercials appeared on the Financial News Network, urging folks to "roll the dice." Regulators were appalled. The FCC, Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission stepped in to collar the mountebanks. Journalists reported the scandal; editorialists clucked tongues.
As the greed frenzy began, Mica was an administrative assistant to Florida Sen. Paula Hawkins, who sat on the key Senate communications subcommittee. Also working for Hawkins was John Dudinsky; following Hawkins’ defeat in 1986, the two men would find themselves in business together as lobbyists.
More important, Mica and Dudinsky also formed a partnership as MD Cellular. It was MD Cellular that -- two years after Mica left Hawkins’ employ -- would put Mica himself into the communications business.
A driven man
John Mica would be a millionaire today even without his cellular profits. But the millions he made in the lottery appear to have been his best return on investment. Mica takes pride in his attention to such things.
Mica has been a dedicated public servant, a stalwart for conservative causes, a tireless go-getter and a careful cultivator of his own financial garden for more than 30 years of public life.
"He is extremely energetic," says brother Dan, a former Democratic congressman who now heads the National Association of Credit Unions. "He eats breakfast early, works to 8 or 9 p.m., then he’ll go out to get a refrigerator or stove to install in the house, and do the installation before bed."
John Mica also is a deliberative and sharp thinker, his mind toned early by the high-school debating society. "For many, many years he held the record for the most points ever accumulated," says his brother, a fellow debating team member.
As a student at the University of Florida, John Mica raised the money to rebuild his fraternity house and even sketched the design for it himself, his brother says. He worked as a necktie salesman and dishwasher, and networked Republican circles as his brother moved in Democratic ones, although little separated them politically.
Shortly after graduation, John Mica landed a job as executive director of the Palm Beach and Orange County Government Charter Study Commissions, and sold the idea of charter government to the citizens of West Palm Beach. He then turned his charter knowledge into a minor franchise, selling his expertise to Pasco and Manatee counties as well.
In 1975 Mica hooked up with Orlando architect Robert Koch and formed MK Development, which 10 years later would build Koch’s office building and a small strip-mall on Temple Trail, eventually earning Mica more than $50,000 a year in rent payments.
Beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives from Orlando’s District 17 in 1976, Mica’s personal finances improved yearly. In 1977, he and developer Loren H. Roby borrowed about $110,000 to invest in two oceanfront lots on New Smyrna Beach. After the pair built condos on the site, both were on their way to financial security; by June 1980, Mica pegged his net worth at $302,550.
When Hawkins was elected to the U.S. Senate during the Reagan landslide of 1980, Mica followed her to Washington. After she lost her bid for re-election in 1986 to Bob Graham, Mica joined his friend Dudinsky as a lobbyist, working for such clients as American Specialty Chemical, Coopers & Lybrand and 3M Corporation. Mica built his five-bedroom, four-bath home on Via Tuscany in Winter Park just a few months after leaving Hawkins’ employ. The house is now assessed at $350,000.
Money was always important to John Mica, brother Dan says, and he was ambivalent at best about the value of public service in amassing suitable wealth. "For a while he questioned why I spent so many years in public service," says Dan, who served a decade each as a congressional staffer and as a congressman from Palm Beach County. "He said I might do better financially for my family."
Dan says he was surprised in 1991 when John announced he was running for the newly created House seat, until he said he had made his fortune and worried no longer about paying the mortgage. "John wanted to make sure he could be assured for his family," Dan says.
Mica lent himself $100,000 to run against Democrat Daniel Webster. Mica positioned himself as a reformer, and depicted Webster as a tool of trial lawyers and labor unions; Webster called Mica "the epitome of the professional politician." Webster did not make an issue of the cell-phone lottery, from which Mica divulged at least a million-dollar profit in financial disclosures filed four months before the election.
Mica won with 53 percent of the vote and went on to distinguish himself as a bold entrepreneur, a self-made millionaire who created jobs and opportunity. It was this image Mica put forth when first queried about his cellular deals.
"I consider myself a pioneer in the cellular business, having helped to build two successful systems from the ground up, now all part of a national system we take for granted," Mica replied early this year in a letter after Orlando Weekly began inquiring about his finances.
Yet a closer look reveals not a "pioneer" but a man whose luck made him rich with no work required.
‘Little appointee’
Mica refuses to say exactly how much he invested or earned in cellular, although the financial disclosure forms he filed as a congressman indicate a gross profit of at least $2 million. Because those forms list only income ranges, and because two of the three companies that eventually bought Mica’s phone interests refused to divulge the prices they paid, it’s impossible to be more precise.
But precision has not been a hallmark of Mica’s cellular business. In interviews and letters over many months, he gives varied and confusing explanations of his role, at first depicting himself as a wheeler-dealer and, more recently, as a "little appointee." From interviews and available public records, it appears the latter role is most accurate.
In fact, so informal was MD Cellular -- Mica’s first phone venture with Dudinsky and Carl Medei of Maitland -- that as far as the state of Florida is concerned, it was not even a legal business entity, having failed to register as required with the state.
The oversight was understandable. MD was less a business than a betting pool, Mica’s claims to the contrary.
"We were lucky. We were lucky. We were lucky," says Medei. "The FCC does a drawing, and if they pick you, you get money. And if they don’t, you lose."
Medei remembers little else about MD Cellular. He can’t say when it was begun -- "All that’s so long ago, I don’t think I even have the paperwork anymore" -- or what work Mica did on its behalf. He would not divulge the amount of his own investment or profit, although he says his was much smaller than that of his partners.
Mica says his duties as "managing general partner" included setting up the partnership, providing facilities and expensing the partnership. But he also says that another company, Genesis Management, did all the actual work.
And the $90,000 fee he reported in 1991 as the start of his cellular income?
That was an accountant’s creation, for tax purposes, Mica says. In fact, Mica now says MD was not a partnership at all. "Similar to thousands of other investor applicants, we retained a packager to prepare legal, engineering and financial applications to file with the FCC," Mica wrote in another letter. "Rather than form a formal partnership or corporation, as investors we signed Service Contract Agreements (forms used by nearly all cellular packagers) provided by Genesis, the Virginia-based cellular packager."
Chance encounters
Genesis Management founder Wladimir Naleszkiewicz was a Polish émigré who taught economics at Notre Dame before stints with the FCC and the White House office of telecommunications policy under presidents Ford and Carter. He had spent the early 1980s trying to assemble financing for a visionary direct satellite broadcasting system -- much like the one Bill Gates is invested in today. But Genesis, founded in 1986, was a much more modest enterprise, filling out complex FCC forms and grouping investors for the cellular lotteries in a subtle -- and sometimes blatant -- attempt to beat the system. The goal was to enter the lottery process under as many names as possible.
FCC rules and federal law forbade the submission of duplicate applications, threatening a $10,000 fine and up to five years in prison for anyone caught doing so. But the FCC didn’t enforce the rule. And Naleszkiewicz was the engineer for several lottery syndicators, according to Mica, cranking out engineering specs for all comers. That gave packagers like Naleszkiewicz tremendous power, controlling which small investors were grouped with others and in some cases directing the whole profitable enterprise.
Some application mills would sign up anyone with a pulse, charge them next to nothing to enter, but require that if the applicant won, he or she would hire the packager -- at high cost, with perhaps a bit of equity -- as a consultant to set up the system. The other tactic was to charge unsophisticated investors high fees based on inflated claims about the chances of winning and the value of the asset to be won.
By mid-1986 FCC Chairman Fowler threatened to report "charlatan-type applications" to the Justice Department. But in the end the market ruled, and the speculators won. "We have seen that too many applicants have too little intention of actually providing telecommunications services and merely apply in order to sell out later to the highest bidder," Fowler complained in a speech to telecom industry officials. "Try as we might, we have no way to distinguish between authentic service providers and these racehorse Charlies."
Enter John Mica.
"We had done some research on packagers," says Mica. "Wladimir had the best reputation."
As the first of five RSA lotteries closed, Mica saw that instead of the expected thousands of applicants, only 800 to 1,200 people applied for each license. This created favorable odds for any savvy investor who could enter all of the remaining 340 drawings. Even if the number of applicants doubled -- which it nearly did -- the odds of winning still were better than seven to one.
By mid-1988, Mica had entered several hundred lotteries. By 1990 he had won three times.
MD Cellular was part of two groups that won RSAs. Those service areas were based in Front Royal, Va.; Aberdeen, S.D.; and Monroe, La.
Within weeks the partnership sold the Virginia RSA, which covered a six-county territory 100 miles from the Washington beltway -- prime territory -- to Southwestern Bell. "I didn’t want to sell Virginia," Mica says. "If we’d gotten stock for this, we’d be so rich I wouldn’t even be here. I’d be out on my yacht somewhere."
Mica did get some stock in the next RSA sold, a seven-county area in the northeast corner of Louisiana.
The partnership to which MD Cellular belonged was in turn controlled by a larger partnership, Tri-Coastal Cellular; in 1991 Tri-Coastal’s 18 partners formed a shell corporation, Monroe Cellular, to operate a cellular-phone company there. "We built the system in Louisiana," says Jim Arch of Maitland, one of the partners.
By "built," Arch doesn’t mean he actually flew down there with a tool belt around his waist and worked the cranes that erected the towers. He hired the people who hired the people who did that. Or rather, like Mica, he invested with people who hired people who hired people who did the work. But Mica’s role was such that, today, he can’t even remember the name of the company, or its owner, that the partnership hired.
Eventually New Jersey-based Centennial Cellular came calling, and in 1994 they paid $11.5 million for the property, according to Centennial Comptroller Tom Bucks. Mica’s share of that sale would have been $862,500; he took half of that in Centennial stock, which he eventually sold.
The final RSA -- comprising five counties in South Dakota -- was sold in 1995, also for an undisclosed sum, to Western Wireless. Mica reported a gain of between $100,000 and $1 million on that sale, but has said that his 12 percent stake in the Aberdeen property was his least profitable.
Mica entered the 1990s more than $1 million ahead in the cellular game. Real losses were almost unthinkable. Instead, the risks were associated with business partners shuffled into the deck by Genesis Management.
The riskiest would prove to be the packager himself, Wlad Naleszkiewicz.
In January 1989, Naleszkiewicz told 40 clients he had submitted to the FCC their cellular lottery application fees -- $200 each for 1,438 applications -- but he didn’t. "The last ones, he never filed," says Arch. "He put the applications in the garbage."
Naleszkiewicz pled guilty in federal court to two counts of mail fraud in connection with this failing. He told the court he kept the $287,600 to save himself embarrassment and "avoid financial difficulties." He and his wife, Nancy, were fined double damages, and Wladimir faced 10 years in prison, though he served just four months’ home detention. Genesis’ was the first and only criminal indictment to arise from cellular licensing application fraud.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 in August 1993, claiming assets of $5,088 and liabilities of $1.4 million. Wladimir Naleszkiewicz died in February 1996. His wife could not be reached for comment.
Mica rests much of his credibility as a true cellular player -- and not a passive speculator -- on his choice of Genesis. "The firm had a reputation as the best engineering and packaging company for cellular applications," he wrote. "We researched the firm and found that all of the critical engineering studies required by the FCC for previously awarded MSA Cellular licenses and prepared by Genesis were approved."
But Genesis did not exist until 1986, well after the MSA process had gotten under way. And what was Naleszkiewicz doing immediately before then? He was vice president and director of economics for American National -- an application mill the FTC had shut down for fraud in 1985.
Mica says he knew nothing about that.
Tallying the costs
Today Mica is out of the phone business.
He’s coy about his income from the deals, noting that he put money into the systems he owned for years before deriving any profit. He says the cost of applications was high as well. "Application fees and packaging fees for engineering and legal work were costly," he wrote. "As I recall, just the FCC application for each block exceeded $80,000, not including packager fees for legal, engineering and financial application work."
But what did it really cost to get into the sweepstakes?
According to FCC records, the early lotteries were free. Later a $200 per application fee was instituted. Syndicators like Naleszkiewicz charged between $3 and $5,000 per application, depending on the worth of the properties being raffled off and what kind of deals they made with clients.
Mica’s real costs may never be known. But the aftermath of the Genesis fraud provides a glimpse at the figures.
In a letter dated May 15, 1997, Mica wrote to James Hanson, chairman of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, regarding a payment Mica left off his 1996 financial disclosure statement. "In 1996 I received $7,502.23 as a court-ordered restitution (Naleszkiewicz Order of Restitution) from a case in which I and other investors were defrauded," Mica wrote. "Staff of the committee advised that this need not be considered ... for reporting purposes."
The restitution was for double the amount Naleszkiewicz collected from each applicant. That puts Mica’s cost for that final lottery, in which 83 RSAs were raffled, at $3,751.12. Multiplied by four application blocks, that represents an initial investment of less than $15,000 to make his first cellular million (or two).
Such speculation annoys John Mica, who doesn’t like to talk about his money.
Although he once pegged his net worth at $6 million and equated his financial independence with political independence, Mica is reticent about the details. "Someone might read that [I’m rich] and try to push down my door," he says.
So don’t ask him what he’s worth now. He’ll say only that it’s less than a few years ago. And don’t ask him to say just how much he invested, and earned, in the cellular-phone business.
He says he just doesn’t know.
Letter: Says Congress needs Faye Armitage
Letter: Says Congress needs Faye Armitage
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: Running for Florida's 7th Congressional District, Faye Armitage is facing daunting odds: winning against Winter Park's career politician, U.S. Rep. John Mica. He's seeking his ninth term.
A classic David vs. Goliath contest, Armitage's contributions $25,000. vs an ominous war chest of nearly $1 million, begs the question: Why does a sitting congressman spend $1 million to win? Mica's lock step voting record 93.7 percent with President Bush could be a predictor of same old, same old. Perhaps it's just not real money, to Mica? Way to go.
As a single mother with five children, Armitage knows first hand the meaning of hard work and will work to find solutions that give relief to families suffering under the economic meltdown. Her international experience, a master's degree in economics, and knowing where to look for answers will help bridge the gap between Wall Street and Main Street USA.
In its November edition, Esquire reviewed candidates.
Here is what it said about the Florida District 7 race between Armitage and Mica:
"Mica demands budgetary transparency from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) that's good. But over the past two years he's given a rubber stamp to every invasion of privacy the agency proposes while seeking to trim costs by keeping TSA workers' wages and job security at a minimum. That's dangerous.
Esquire endorses: Faye Armitage (D)"
Got questions? Ask Armitage. She is the real thing. www.fayeforcongress.com.
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
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© The St. Augustine Record
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: Running for Florida's 7th Congressional District, Faye Armitage is facing daunting odds: winning against Winter Park's career politician, U.S. Rep. John Mica. He's seeking his ninth term.
A classic David vs. Goliath contest, Armitage's contributions $25,000. vs an ominous war chest of nearly $1 million, begs the question: Why does a sitting congressman spend $1 million to win? Mica's lock step voting record 93.7 percent with President Bush could be a predictor of same old, same old. Perhaps it's just not real money, to Mica? Way to go.
As a single mother with five children, Armitage knows first hand the meaning of hard work and will work to find solutions that give relief to families suffering under the economic meltdown. Her international experience, a master's degree in economics, and knowing where to look for answers will help bridge the gap between Wall Street and Main Street USA.
In its November edition, Esquire reviewed candidates.
Here is what it said about the Florida District 7 race between Armitage and Mica:
"Mica demands budgetary transparency from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) that's good. But over the past two years he's given a rubber stamp to every invasion of privacy the agency proposes while seeking to trim costs by keeping TSA workers' wages and job security at a minimum. That's dangerous.
Esquire endorses: Faye Armitage (D)"
Got questions? Ask Armitage. She is the real thing. www.fayeforcongress.com.
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
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© The St. Augustine Record
St. JOHNS COUNTY REPUUBLICANS SHORT ON CASH
Did Republicans blown their money on trips to Minnesota and fighting libertarians?
Alcoholic beverages for their boozey meetings? Off-duty police officers? Political espionage?
In any event, there are darn few McCain-Palin signs here. A good sign.
McCAIN-PALIN signs are on sale, ten (10) for $65, plus stakes for $3/each.
Republicans are limited to ten (10) signs each.
Corrupt local Republican machine imploding, with Republican County Commission Chairman THOMAS G. MANUEL under arrest for bribery and School Board candidate Skeeter Key exposed in sex scandal: Priceless.
Alcoholic beverages for their boozey meetings? Off-duty police officers? Political espionage?
In any event, there are darn few McCain-Palin signs here. A good sign.
McCAIN-PALIN signs are on sale, ten (10) for $65, plus stakes for $3/each.
Republicans are limited to ten (10) signs each.
Corrupt local Republican machine imploding, with Republican County Commission Chairman THOMAS G. MANUEL under arrest for bribery and School Board candidate Skeeter Key exposed in sex scandal: Priceless.
Daytona News-Journal article calls Faye Armitage "Starry-eyed" -- we call the DBNJ "Cynical"
Our short-sighted Republican newspaper publishers in the Seventh Congressional District employ some really good reporters, on whose necks they stand whenever Congressman JOHN L. MICA is involved.
Wouldn't it it be nice if Male Chauvinist Pig (MCP) reporters wouldn't condescend to every Democratic woman candidate? As my mother always says, a woman has to be "twice as good to get half as far." Fortunately, Faye Armitage is thrice as good and in the process of beating a tawdry, tatterdemalion, mean-spirited, bigoted 16-year incumbent Congressman, JOHN L. MICA.
Wouldn't it be nice when local political reporters can write news without slanting. See the article below, calling Faye Armitage "starry-eyed."
Wouldn't it it be nice if Male Chauvinist Pig (MCP) reporters wouldn't condescend to every Democratic woman candidate? As my mother always says, a woman has to be "twice as good to get half as far." Fortunately, Faye Armitage is thrice as good and in the process of beating a tawdry, tatterdemalion, mean-spirited, bigoted 16-year incumbent Congressman, JOHN L. MICA.
Wouldn't it be nice when local political reporters can write news without slanting. See the article below, calling Faye Armitage "starry-eyed."
Definition" starry–eyed
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
Main Entry: star·ry–eyed
Pronunciation: \ˈstär-ē-ˌīd\
Function: adjective
Date: 1904
: regarding an object or a prospect in an overly favorable light ; specifically : characterized by dreamy, impracticable, or utopian thinking : visionary
Main Entry: star·ry–eyed
Pronunciation: \ˈstär-ē-ˌīd\
Function: adjective
Date: 1904
: regarding an object or a prospect in an overly favorable light ; specifically : characterized by dreamy, impracticable, or utopian thinking : visionary
Daytona Beach News-Journal: Newcomer challenges 8-term congressman
November 01, 2008
Newcomer challenges 8-term congressman
By JOHN BOZZO
Staff Writer
To change, or not to change.
That is the question in District 7 of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Whether to choose John Mica, R-Winter Park, the 16-year veteran, a national transportation expert and proven supporter of local needs.
Or to pick Faye Armitage, a Democrat from Fruit Cove and a starry-eyed political newcomer running as a long shot.
The winner will serve two years and get $169,300 a year to represent a district stretching from St. Johns County to Seminole County, including Flagler and most of Volusia.
John Mica
First elected in 1992 and seeking his ninth two-year term, Mica said he remains motivated to help people.
"I get to do some neat things to improve the community and people's lives," he said.
Mica has brought home federal support for a long list of projects, ranging from restoring Rose Bay to replacing pre-World War II public housing with new townhouses and helping an after-school program in DeLand's Spring Hill neighborhood.
"The No. 1 priority has got to be how to get the economy back on track," Mica said. "The big priority is to provide jobs."
A national transportation expert and the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Mica has been pushing for a five-year, $1.6 trillion plan to rebuild the country's highways, bridges, transit systems, ports, waterways and railways.
"A national strategic plan for highways hasn't been done since President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the highway system (which was approved in 1956)," Mica said.
He opposed the $700 billion economic bailout approved by Congress, as well as bailouts of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Mica authored provisions in a bill recently signed by President Bush to permit private development of high-speed rail along 11 corridors.
"I'm sort of the father of high-speed rail in the country," he said.
Mica remains committed to supporting commuter rail in Central Florida.
He backs "responsible" oil drilling and alternative energy.
Mica said he's a good man to have during emergencies, running interference with federal agencies on behalf of local communities.
"We've had fires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods," he said. "We've helped coordinate some of the relief efforts."
Faye Armitage
A real soccer mom, Armitage gained notoriety pushing for stem-cell research after her son was paralyzed playing the sport.
"Because I was an issue advocate, I felt I could use the skills I developed to help voters," she said.
Armitage said she relates to issues important to people, such as health care, "because I've had that experience."
She supports national health care under the Medicare for Everyone banner, eliminating insurance companies, which she said drive up costs.
Relying on employer-driven health care hurts women, because many of them work part-time jobs, which do not provide health care benefits.
"It's amazing that we're talking about nationalizing the financial services industry when we've balked at national health care," Armitage said.
She opposes offshore drilling and supports developing renewable energy sources, including algae farms to produce bio-fuel.
"We ought to be an example of capturing solar energy in the Sunshine State -- and wind too," she said.
Cutting taxes for the middle class and eliminating the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5 percent of income are two of her priorities.
"I have seen the damage done to this country by many ill-conceived policies that hurt our economy, and I see people working hard trying to keep up," she said. "We need to get away from benefits for the few at the expense of the many."
john.bozzo@news-jrnl.com
THE CANDIDATES
NAME: John Mica
AGE: 65
RESIDENCE: Winter Park
OCCUPATION: Congressman
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Elected to the U.S. House 7th District from Florida in 1992 and re-elected every two years. Mica is seeking his ninth term
PRIORITIES: Private development of high-speed rail, Central Florida commuter rail, a $1.6 trillion program to improve the highways, bridges, transit systems, ports, waterways and railways
FINANCES: Received $1,043,001 in contributions
NAME:Faye Armitage
AGE: 50
RESIDENCE: St. Johns County
OCCUPATION: Caregiver to paralyzed son, former economics professor and health care industry employee
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: First run for public office
PRIORITIES: Health care for everyone; a plan to withdraw forces from Iraq; break up large media corporations and a green technology initiative
FINANCES: Received $22,022 in contributions
THE JOB: The winner will serve two years and get $169,300 a year to represent a district stretching from St. Johns County to Seminole County, including Flagler and most of Volusia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2008 News-Journal Corporation. ® www.news-journalonline.com.
Newcomer challenges 8-term congressman
By JOHN BOZZO
Staff Writer
To change, or not to change.
That is the question in District 7 of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Whether to choose John Mica, R-Winter Park, the 16-year veteran, a national transportation expert and proven supporter of local needs.
Or to pick Faye Armitage, a Democrat from Fruit Cove and a starry-eyed political newcomer running as a long shot.
The winner will serve two years and get $169,300 a year to represent a district stretching from St. Johns County to Seminole County, including Flagler and most of Volusia.
John Mica
First elected in 1992 and seeking his ninth two-year term, Mica said he remains motivated to help people.
"I get to do some neat things to improve the community and people's lives," he said.
Mica has brought home federal support for a long list of projects, ranging from restoring Rose Bay to replacing pre-World War II public housing with new townhouses and helping an after-school program in DeLand's Spring Hill neighborhood.
"The No. 1 priority has got to be how to get the economy back on track," Mica said. "The big priority is to provide jobs."
A national transportation expert and the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Mica has been pushing for a five-year, $1.6 trillion plan to rebuild the country's highways, bridges, transit systems, ports, waterways and railways.
"A national strategic plan for highways hasn't been done since President Dwight Eisenhower proposed the highway system (which was approved in 1956)," Mica said.
He opposed the $700 billion economic bailout approved by Congress, as well as bailouts of mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Mica authored provisions in a bill recently signed by President Bush to permit private development of high-speed rail along 11 corridors.
"I'm sort of the father of high-speed rail in the country," he said.
Mica remains committed to supporting commuter rail in Central Florida.
He backs "responsible" oil drilling and alternative energy.
Mica said he's a good man to have during emergencies, running interference with federal agencies on behalf of local communities.
"We've had fires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods," he said. "We've helped coordinate some of the relief efforts."
Faye Armitage
A real soccer mom, Armitage gained notoriety pushing for stem-cell research after her son was paralyzed playing the sport.
"Because I was an issue advocate, I felt I could use the skills I developed to help voters," she said.
Armitage said she relates to issues important to people, such as health care, "because I've had that experience."
She supports national health care under the Medicare for Everyone banner, eliminating insurance companies, which she said drive up costs.
Relying on employer-driven health care hurts women, because many of them work part-time jobs, which do not provide health care benefits.
"It's amazing that we're talking about nationalizing the financial services industry when we've balked at national health care," Armitage said.
She opposes offshore drilling and supports developing renewable energy sources, including algae farms to produce bio-fuel.
"We ought to be an example of capturing solar energy in the Sunshine State -- and wind too," she said.
Cutting taxes for the middle class and eliminating the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5 percent of income are two of her priorities.
"I have seen the damage done to this country by many ill-conceived policies that hurt our economy, and I see people working hard trying to keep up," she said. "We need to get away from benefits for the few at the expense of the many."
john.bozzo@news-jrnl.com
THE CANDIDATES
NAME: John Mica
AGE: 65
RESIDENCE: Winter Park
OCCUPATION: Congressman
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Elected to the U.S. House 7th District from Florida in 1992 and re-elected every two years. Mica is seeking his ninth term
PRIORITIES: Private development of high-speed rail, Central Florida commuter rail, a $1.6 trillion program to improve the highways, bridges, transit systems, ports, waterways and railways
FINANCES: Received $1,043,001 in contributions
NAME:Faye Armitage
AGE: 50
RESIDENCE: St. Johns County
OCCUPATION: Caregiver to paralyzed son, former economics professor and health care industry employee
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: First run for public office
PRIORITIES: Health care for everyone; a plan to withdraw forces from Iraq; break up large media corporations and a green technology initiative
FINANCES: Received $22,022 in contributions
THE JOB: The winner will serve two years and get $169,300 a year to represent a district stretching from St. Johns County to Seminole County, including Flagler and most of Volusia.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2008 News-Journal Corporation. ® www.news-journalonline.com.
Collective Press: Issue # 8 / 2005 -- Meet Non-resident City Manager for Life WILLIAM B. HARRISS
Issue # 8 / 2005
Meet non-resident,
City Manager-for-life, Bill Harriss
Editorial by Ed Slavin
Meet non-resident, City Manager-for-life, Bill Harriss Controversial St. Augustine City Manager William B. Harris does not live in the City of St. Augustine. Harriss, who was long the Assistant City Manager under William Pomar, became City Manager pursuant to a controversial contract that forces the City to pay him two years pay if he is ever removed from office. Harriss is most noted for his hostility to First Amendment exercises of artists and entertainers on St. George Street.
In a more recent First Amendment case, Harriss thrice vetoed Gay Pride Flags on the Bridge of Lions, only to be TKOed by a TRO (temporary restraining order) from a United States District Judge on June 7th. A member of his household, Ms. Phyllis Harriss, confirmed July 1, 2005 to The Collective Press that the Harriss residence is not even in the City. A telephone message left for William Harris has never been returned. We will publish any response.
Speakers at St. Augustine City Commission meetings have been queried about their residences and forced to tell their addresses on live television. Members of Boards and Commissions are limited to City residents, with a recent exception made for the Historical Architectural Review Board (HARB), whose Chair lives in South Ponte Vedra.
Many cities require City Managers to be residents. In this case, St. Augustine's City Manager does not live in the City, does not receive City services and pays no City taxes.His "service," such as it is, should no longer be required.
Meet non-resident,
City Manager-for-life, Bill Harriss
Editorial by Ed Slavin
Meet non-resident, City Manager-for-life, Bill Harriss Controversial St. Augustine City Manager William B. Harris does not live in the City of St. Augustine. Harriss, who was long the Assistant City Manager under William Pomar, became City Manager pursuant to a controversial contract that forces the City to pay him two years pay if he is ever removed from office. Harriss is most noted for his hostility to First Amendment exercises of artists and entertainers on St. George Street.
In a more recent First Amendment case, Harriss thrice vetoed Gay Pride Flags on the Bridge of Lions, only to be TKOed by a TRO (temporary restraining order) from a United States District Judge on June 7th. A member of his household, Ms. Phyllis Harriss, confirmed July 1, 2005 to The Collective Press that the Harriss residence is not even in the City. A telephone message left for William Harris has never been returned. We will publish any response.
Speakers at St. Augustine City Commission meetings have been queried about their residences and forced to tell their addresses on live television. Members of Boards and Commissions are limited to City residents, with a recent exception made for the Historical Architectural Review Board (HARB), whose Chair lives in South Ponte Vedra.
Many cities require City Managers to be residents. In this case, St. Augustine's City Manager does not live in the City, does not receive City services and pays no City taxes.His "service," such as it is, should no longer be required.
STILL POLLUTING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
Perhaps the new County Commissioners will mpw see fit to empower the families and other residents who were hurt by APAC's pollution by autho0rizing the County Attorney to file a public nuisance lawsuit.
Under previous County Attorney DANIEL BOSANKO, lies were told to Commissioners by FDEP and an Assistant County Attorney, lies were told tp citizens by Commissioner KAREN STERN (who took samples that were never returned or analyzed) and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) did nothing except for tiny fines.
As my friend David Thundershield Queen puts it best, FDEP stands for "don't expect protection."
Make no mistake -- this APAC asphalt plant is a synecdoche (a part that stands for the whole) about corruption in St. Johns County. The public and private schools have ketp silent, the Commissioners have mostly kept silent and
Anywhere else in America, a residential neighborhood, public and private schools, nursing homes, residence and HUD public housing for seniors would not be coated with tarry black gook that sends people to the emergency room.
County Commissioners should be ashamed of themselves for not responding in 2005.
See below (4000 word article from Collective Press in 2005).
A later article documented how an arson fire by APAC caught the conveyor belt on line, requiring some 17 firemen and 12 pieces of equipment, whom ASHLAND sent on their way, calling it a "controlled burn."
The normal way of ridding a conveyor belt of asphalt is to use petroleum-based solvents, not fire.
The normal way of doing business in St. Johns County is to cover up for U.S. multinational corporations.
Now that APAC is owned by an Irish multinational corporation, residents need to call the Irish Embassy and oppose this continuing source of pollution and call it what it now is -- an international incident.
Under previous County Attorney DANIEL BOSANKO, lies were told to Commissioners by FDEP and an Assistant County Attorney, lies were told tp citizens by Commissioner KAREN STERN (who took samples that were never returned or analyzed) and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) did nothing except for tiny fines.
As my friend David Thundershield Queen puts it best, FDEP stands for "don't expect protection."
Make no mistake -- this APAC asphalt plant is a synecdoche (a part that stands for the whole) about corruption in St. Johns County. The public and private schools have ketp silent, the Commissioners have mostly kept silent and
Anywhere else in America, a residential neighborhood, public and private schools, nursing homes, residence and HUD public housing for seniors would not be coated with tarry black gook that sends people to the emergency room.
County Commissioners should be ashamed of themselves for not responding in 2005.
See below (4000 word article from Collective Press in 2005).
A later article documented how an arson fire by APAC caught the conveyor belt on line, requiring some 17 firemen and 12 pieces of equipment, whom ASHLAND sent on their way, calling it a "controlled burn."
The normal way of ridding a conveyor belt of asphalt is to use petroleum-based solvents, not fire.
The normal way of doing business in St. Johns County is to cover up for U.S. multinational corporations.
Now that APAC is owned by an Irish multinational corporation, residents need to call the Irish Embassy and oppose this continuing source of pollution and call it what it now is -- an international incident.
Pollution Partners: ASHLAND OIL and St. Johns County
Collective Press, Issue #6 / 2005
Pollution Partners: ASHLAND OIL and St. Johns County
by Ed Slavin
A controversial asphalt plant close to homes and businesses runs day and night. Choking on visible, black, sooty, air pollution, one local businessman telephoned "911" last year.
He and other St. Johns County residents have become sick, some even hospitalized, because of air pollution from an asphalt plant on SR 207. It is owned by ASHLAND INC., which is an $8 billion/year Fortune 500 company. ASHLAND is a polluter, convicted felon, and petroleum/transportation/construction/chemical company based in Covington, Kentucky. Its ASHLAND PAVING AND CONSTRUCTION (APAC®) subsidiary is America's largest asphalt paver, working for governments, developers and industrialists.
Asphalt plants have been associated with severe health problems (some studies suggest they bring losses of property value up to 56%). A Miami Township, Ohio Marathon-ASHLAND asphalt plant exploded March 20, 2004, requiring evacuation orders.
County residents are petitioning EPA investigators to probe why the plant was placed in a residential area -- and to decide whether to "suspend and debar" ASHLAND from all government contracts. Residents are asking the county to file a "public nuisance" lawsuit, to order the asphalt plant's removal, and for free public access to copies of the county's APAC® records.
In 2004, APAC® paid the State of Florida a $5250 fine/costs for its SR 207 air pollution. The St. Augustine Record carried front-page reports in 2004-2005 of air pollution, hospitalizations, respiratory illnesses, and a temporary plant shutdown.
ASHLAND Senior Vice President and APAC® President Garry M. Higdem, a Professional Engineer (also President and CEO of Transportation Construction), told me on February 8, 2005 that he took personal supervision in "considering" moving the plant (a trial balloon announced in a St. Augustine Record article on March 1, which spoke only of "smoke" and "odor," not pollution).
In response to community organizers, EPA and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ramped up enforcement activities. The DEP issued two warning letters and seemed likely to achieve a consent order/fine with ASHLAND. Rick Banks, Environmental Manager, Florida DEP, said February 18th that seven inspectors in recent weeks spent "half their time on this one plant" (one of 300 DEP-regulated facilities in nineteen area counties). They now report that ASHLAND is installing a larger "baghouse" to reduce its air pollution, but the plant shows no sign of moving.
On February 8th, ASHLAND's Higdem directed his staff to research "odorants" (substances that conceal odors). Ten days later, ASHLAND was still "researching." When told that odorants were easily available on the Internet, he called back shortly and said a "cherry-flavored" odorant will be used. Residents report ASHLAND once attempted to use LYSOL® to clean up its kiln odors (the manufacturer's Material Safety Data Sheet warns against heating LYSOL®). Higdem said, "It is absolutely not true."
"Grandfathered"
SR 207 citizens complained to the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners (SJCBCC) in April 2004. Then-Commissioner Marc Jacalone asked, "It's there legally, isn't it?" Commissioner Karen Stern agreed the plant was "legal." In 1999 ASHLAND asked -- and the county government allowed and approved -- locating an asphalt plant "grandfathered" in a residential neighborhood on SR 207 (just before county zoning laws changed to distinguish between "light" and "heavy" industrial uses). County Zoning Manager Rosemary Yeoman told me January 31st that the SJCBCC did not need to vote -- "it had proper zoning.... which permitted heavy industrial." Referring to a newspaper ad about the changes, Yeoman claimed "residents were given notice in 1983 when the rezoning went through."
ASHLAND's Higdem asked me February 18th, "Why would the county have had this county-zoned industrial" to allow asphalt, ready-mix, incinerators and other industrial plants in a residential neighborhood? Good question. (Higdem then said it was like "playing Monday morning quarterback" to question the plant's location.)
Since APAC®'s 1999 opening in a residential neighborhood, SJCBCC and other governments have awarded ASHLAND contracts. SJCBCC approved adding a rock crusher and other facilities.
Zoning Director Yeoman said, "I'm not aware of where the asphalt plants are -- I've not done research on where any asphalt plants are located." ASHLAND's Higdem claims there is an "incinerator" nearby, possibly contributing to the pollution. "I could not tell you the address," he said -- it's "anecdotal." Higdem suggested the pollution source "might" be railroad locomotives or a "ready-mix plant," asserting the "soot is not coming from this plant," never providing proof. Florida's DEP disagrees, and ASHLAND paid the fine in 2004.
Highway freight could double in 20 years, says former APAC® President Charles F. Potts, President of Heritage Paving, with operations as far away as China, currently Chair of the asphalt trade association, and who worked for sixteen years for Florida's Transportation Department. (An APAC® website brags of receiving "many¼awards for safety and quality" from the Florida Transportation Dept.) In 2004, Potts told paving executives about a $284 billion highway bill (passed by the U.S. House on March 10, 2005): "we must grab hold of the opportunity ... to set the stage for the kind of long-term vision that will not only keep our transportation system viable and vital" keeping America "prosperous, protected and strong." Meanwhile, SJC residents have trouble breathing.
Governmental Assurances Untrue
Writer David Thundershield Queen once opined that under Governor Jeb Bush, Florida DEP really stands for "Don't Expect Protection." For over five years, there was no sampling or continuous air monitoring. The DEP only measured the number of particles and their size, based on weak DEP regulations and severely limited in what it can do by the county's own questionable 1999 zoning decision.
On January 26th, Florida DEP inspector Christopher Kirts and Assistant County Attorney Laura Barrow inaccurately told SJCBCC that ASHLAND's subsidiary was "not violating its [air pollution] permit," postulating the problem "might" originate in "recent cold and windy weather." DEP's Kirts said Assistant County Attorney Barrow's presentation was "perfect," stating it was primarily "older people" affected because they're more "sensitive" to pollution. Barrow said there was a "problem with those folks claiming (sic) they have breathing problems."
Two days later, DEP inspected and found ASHLAND's kiln to be "cracked," with a "seam" contributing to illegal air pollution, leading to two warnings and work on a new enforcement action. Oops.
On January 26th, Ken Bryan (who recently opened an upholstery shop near the plant) told SJCBCC that he was sick three days the prior week, his "head hurting" and "throat hurting." He asked what the permit allows, but No one answered him. Rebutting the "old people" remark, Ken Bryan said he is a healthy, 56 year old, 36-year U.S. Justice Department employee who runs marathons. The Record never quoted him in its January 27 article and instead spun the issue toward pollution partners SJCBCC/APAC®, not naming ASHLAND. ASHLAND representatives sitting in the audience Jan. 26th never explained its position, Bryan reports.
Ms. Thelma Lewis, 75, believes ASHLAND is the problem, not the nearby Southern Villas senior citizens with respiratory problems who have required hospitalization. On March 1, the Record reported that she was circulating a petition "against" APAC®, never quoting its specific requests of EPA and the county (suspension, debarment and public nuisance litigation).
At the January 26th SJCBCC meeting, DEP's Kirts admitted ASHLAND's SR 207 asphalt plant is "a public nuisance," defined as causing "annoyance to the community or harm to public health," for which Florida law provides remedies, no matter what "permits" or regulations say. Called on January 28th, Barrow dismissed the possibility of a county nuisance suit on its citizens' behalf, incorrectly asserting to me the existence of state and federal "preemption" of public nuisance suits, despite precedents to the contrary (asserting her only "clients" were County Commissioners, not sick SR 207 residents).
Residents petitioned the county to file a "public nuisance" lawsuit to abate ASHLAND's "nuisance." Commissioner Stern met with residents and publicly supports moving ASHLAND's plant.
Commissioners were told on January 26th that there was no rush to award a new ASHLAND contract, with a need to prioritize Ponte Vedra road-building needs. There was time to "investigate."
Yet on February 23 Stern made a motion to award a new $1.2 million contract February 23rd. The vote was 5-0, with no mention of a public nuisance suit (or the enforcement of environmental provisions Stern had inserted in the previous contract). No one mentioned that ASHLAND was a convicted felon or discussed its worldwide record. Stern berated the (unnamed) author of an E-mail for stating the Commission was ill-serving Route 207 residents, stating she spoke to two ASHLAND lawyers and an Assistant County Attorney, claiming Ponte Vedra's asphalt would come from Jacksonville. There was no discussion of public opposition. There are over 175 signed petitions from Route 207 residents supporting suspension and debarment of ASHLAND from all government contracts. ASHLAND refused to attend a local broadcast TV debate with Ms. Thelma Lewis and Ken Bryan taped February 25th: program host Norma Sherry provided an empty chair for ASHLAND. Asked for copies of their board minutes discussing the plant, ASHLAND never provided them. Since January, the office of SJC Administrator Ben W. Adams, Jr. has stalled citizens on document and fee waiver requests and filing a nuisance suit.
In Harm's Way
Asphalt pollution became notorious thanks to the St. Augustine Record's reporting. In harm's way by APAC® are Osceola Elementary School, St. Joseph's Academy Catholic High School, Little League baseball fields, a nursing home, Southern Villas (federally-owned HUD senior citizens' apartments), a home for the retarded, and other residences and businesses. One asthmatic student assigned to Osceola was transferred elsewhere at their parents' request. Some seniors must stay indoors, breathing oxygen. Some people who have never had breathing problems were hospitalized.
People are collecting black sooty air pollution samples from their cars and air conditioner filters. Commissioner Stern reportedly promised to have them analyzed, but no results were revealed as of April 1.
Seemingly untouchable, APAC® has lucrative state and county paving contracts for I-95 and other roads. ASHLAND's Higdem said APAC® operates in fourteen Southern and Midwestern states with over 60 quarries and aggregate production facilities, 12 ready-mix concrete plants, 226 hot-mix asphalt plants, and over 7,000 pieces of mobile equipment.
A December 2004 Duke-University of North Carolina study found sixteen times higher suicide rates in communities with asphalt plants - compared to the statewide average according to psychiatrists working in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control, with 6.4 times higher brain cancer rates. Hydrogen sulfide, benzene, volatile organic compounds, and other dangerous chemicals were believed responsible.
Asphalt fumes are known poisons, and the EPA reports that asphalt-processing facilities are "major sources of hazardous air pollutants such as formaldehyde, hexane, phenol, polycyclic organic matter, and toluene. Exposure may cause cancer, central nervous system problems, liver damage, respiratory problems and skin irritation." ASHLAND's Higdem disagrees but never said why.
Asked if she would like to read the December 2004 UNC-Duke study on suicide rates in neighborhoods with asphalt plants, County Zoning Manager Yeoman told me January 31st, "No sir, I really wouldn't -- it's not a function of this department -- I would not have any reason to -- it's allowed...under the regulations of the county." She also added, "this department handles zoning -- public health is not part of our purview." She then wanted to know "why you're asking these questions?" On February 8th & 18th, ASHLAND's Higdem had not yet seen the study and had no comment, observing on the 18th, there are "lots of studies that get done."
Yeoman told me, "Not all rezonings have been approved." She was unable to name one single rezoning that had not been approved. Diane Rodgers, Special Projects Editor for the St. Augustine Record, investigated and reported that developers won 147 of 149 votes before SJCBCC in 2003, approving the clearing of “more than 33,000 acres and build[ing] tens of thousands of homes in the next ten years.” That’s a lot of asphalt.
ASHLAND A Convicted Felon
When SJCBCC awarded a new contract on February 23rd, Commissioners did not discuss the fact that ASHLAND has a long criminal history:
In 2003, found guilty of air pollution in Minnesota and put on probation (possibly violated by asphalt pollution here)
Pled guilty to bid rigging in Tennessee and Virginia in 1982, agreed not to engage in collusive bidding activities in the future, fined $7.8 million
Made $100,000 illegal campaign contribution to President Richard Nixon
Agreed to an SEC consent decree to cease corporate bribery, after admitting illegal bribes in Oman in the Middle East
Settled pollution lawsuits with over 700 residents in Kentucky and West Virginia
In August 2004, was indicted by a Missouri federal grand jury for highway bid rigging, acquitted by jury trial in October 2004. ASHLAND's Higdem credits lying government witnesses and hearsay for APAC®'s acquittal.
Judge: "Why in the world should I believe you?
ASHLAND pled guilty and was fined $9.1 million by a federal judge in 2003 for explosions and fires at its St. Paul Park, Minnesota refinery, severely injuring one worker and injuring others. ASHLAND failed to seal a manhole, violating the Clean Air Act and rules regulating refinery sewer systems, with workers injured on May 16, 1997, pumping hydrocarbons into the refinery's sewer system for treatment and recycling, igniting into a fireball when vapors escaped through an improperly sealed manhole. A second explosion erupting from a manhole injured six ASHLAND firefighters, one severely.
With two injured workers watching, an ASHLAND Vice President apologized to District Chief Judge James Rosenbaum for "lapses" that led to the "accident," claiming that the company was "truly sorry." Citing ASHLAND's environmental lawbreaking history, Judge Rosenbaum asked, "Why in the world should I believe you?'' In 2004, ASHLAND won its federal appeal, with the Eighth Circuit holding that its criminal probation should not require it to be responsible for environmental protection at the Minnesota refinery, which ASHLAND sold after the explosions to a joint venture run with USX subsidiary MARATHON OIL, with ASHLAND now owning 38%.
In Texas City, Texas, a contractor's crane ruptured a tank at a Marathon refinery on October 30, 1987, releasing a hydrofluoric acid vapor cloud, sending some 1000 residents to hospitals. Calling in lawyers before calling "911" or local schools, Marathon allegedly hornswoggled releases from lung-injured residents, paying only nominal sums, though some young and old people became lung cripples for life. Texas courts ordered disclosure of Marathon's supposed "attorney-client privileged" documents. There was a settlement with residents who sued for fraud. Then the crane contractor's insurance claim backfired, with the Texas Supreme Court upholding an absolute "pollution exclusion" in 1995.
In 2001, Marathon-ASHLAND settled with EPA, agreeing to spend $265 million to reduce pollution at Texas City and six other refineries, involving 5% of U.S. refinery capacity.
Pittsburgh River Killers
In Pittsburgh on January 2, 1988, an ASHLAND above-ground storage tank broke, sending 3.9 million gallons of diesel oil rushing out in a tsunami, with 750,000 gallons leaving its property, much of it entering into the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, contaminating drinking water supplies, killing 11,000 fish and 2000 birds, disrupting drinking water for two million residents of Pennsylvania and surrounding states, polluting 200 miles of rivers -- one of the most severe inland oil spills in American history. It was preventable. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania found that ASHLAND failed to:
.... find the flaw and establish relevant material properties...ASHLAND, its employees, and some contractors displayed a pervasive pattern of negligence and ignorance in selecting, assigning, constructing, supervising, and inspecting the reconstruction project....The negligent conduct by ASHLAND ...allowed the tank to collapse not only caused extensive environmental damage and widespread community dislocations, but also risked serious or fatal bodily injury.
Pittsburgh cost some $32.25 million in fines and settlements -- "to ASHLAND ... about as painful as the fine you would pay ... for a parking violation," Robert Sherrill wrote. Fish reportedly started returning ten years later.
Elsewhere, ASHLAND was fined $106,000 by Ohio in 2003 (for not replacing vegetation and other pipeline construction violations) and $650,000 by EPA in 2004 (for hazardous waste violations in Michigan).
Illegal Cash Contributor To Nixon
ASHLAND and its then-CEO confessed to giving the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) a $100,000 illegal cash campaign contribution, part of Nixon's Watergate scandals --charged falsely to Gabon, an African subsidiary. ASHLAND's then-CEO Orin Atkins wrote to a stockholder that, "There was a good business reason for making the contribution and although illegal in nature, I am confident that it distinctly benefited the corporation and its stockholders."
Testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, Atkins claimed the $100,000 produced no "distinctive benefit" for ASHLAND, saying it was intended to "give us a means of access to present our point of view to the executive branch of the Government." Atkins agreed with Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.) that Nixon's fundraising "very much" resembled extortion. Sen. Ervin told Atkins "it certainly is a human weakness or desire for anyone engaged to business to have a friendly ear in Government." ASHLAND's then-CEO Atkins soliloquized:
"...the situation is difficult to rationalize. We were not seeking any particular privilege or benefit because we don't do any significant business with the Government....all we were attempting to do was to assure ourselves of a forum to be heard. Were we a larger factor in our respective industries, we could expect to have access to administrative officials in the executive branch of Government with ease, but being a relatively unknown corporation, despite our size, we felt we needed something that would be sort of a calling card, something that would let us in the door and make our point of view heard. We didn't expect those points of view to be accepted, but only from the point of view of being able to express them and that was our thinking or rationale as to why we were interested in making any type of contribution."
Three days after paying $100,000 illegal cash to Nixon's campaign, ASHLAND representatives met with Nixon's Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP), seeking to secure more crude oil. The Senate Watergate Committee concluded there was "no evidence" the $100,000 and subsequent meeting were connected.
Atkins stayed on as CEO until 1981. In 1988, Atkins pled guilty to providing stolen documents to the National Iranian Oil Company, receiving probation.
Worker Deaths: OSHA Found "Willful" Violation in Jacksonville
Road building and quarrying are dangerous, but sometimes ASHLAND workers die preventable deaths.
In 2004, APAC® employee Hardney L. Rush was electrocuted by a 7200 volt power line at a Missouri limestone quarry. This tragedy was found by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to be the result of APAC® managers' unsafe policies, controls, and procedures.
USDOL Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined APAC®-Florida $112,500 for "willful" violations in a December 22, 1999 death on San Jose Blvd. in Jacksonville, where a worker was crushed by a five ton pipe in a nine foot trench, after defective hoisting and rigging gave way, killing the man in a trench lacking shoring or exit ladders.
As Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter David Barstow found in 2003 and later stories, OSHA rarely finds “willful” violations in worker deaths, hampering victim families’ lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. Against this background, the 1999 “willful” violation and large fine against APAC®-Florida are both significant. Construction trench deaths are among the most easily preventable worker deaths.
Contracts, Lobbying and "Contributions"
The Center for Public Integrity (CPR) calculates that during 1998-2003, ASHLAND and its Political Action Committees (PACs): × Spent $5,905,000 on lobbying expenses; × Gave 88.36% of its campaign contributions (some $1,227,945) to Republican candidates and gave 11.64% (some $161,825) to Democratic candidates; × Gave Republican Party committees $416,730 and Democratic Party committees $42,875; × Gave $23,050 to President George W. Bush and $25,858 to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)(most prominent Congressional opponent of campaign finance reform), $21,300 to House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)(sponsor of two earmarked "bridges to nowhere"), among other large contributions.
ASHLAND's multi-million dollar investments in politics and politicians were evidently repaid many times over. The CPR reports that during that same 1998-2003 time period, ASHLAND received $111,649,608 in payments from U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contracts alone --over 51% of which were won with only one or two bidders.
According to antitrust experts, little competition can be a sign of monopoly power or bid rigging. In 1983, President Reagan signed an Executive Order that eliminated the Kennedy Administration's inexpensive government purchasing antitrust initiative -- publication of identical bids in government procurement -- supposedly to save money and restore "efficiency."
ASHLAND Defender Marc Jacalone: “Harassment”
Former SJCBCC Chairman Marc Jacalone was a prime mover for APAC® contracts/favors. SJC residents Carla Cowan and Glen Tilley successfully complained to FEC about Jacalone in August 2004. On March 4, 2005, the Florida Election Commission (FEC) found "probable cause" on 24 election crimes by Jacalone (Commissioner from 1996-2004). -- including FEC charges of abusing his campaign funds to make illegal contributions to other local, state and federal candidates (including the Bush/Cheney presidential campaign, the SJC Republican Party, former St. Augustine City Commissioner Bill Lennon, successful Airport Authority candidate Randy Brunson and legislative candidates Wiley Deck and Kerry McCarthy).
Defeated last year, Marc Jacalone sold his interest in his family gasoline station. Jacalone now sells commercial real estate whose rezonings he obtained as Commissioner (working for Coldwell Banker). I called Jacalone March 10 and asked whether one of his real estate listings could be a site for an asphalt plant. He asked, "Are you APAC®?" Told I was not, Jacalone seemed disappointed. While insisting APAC®'s asphalt plant was "not in a residential neighborhood," he incorrectly claimed it was there before 1999 (contradicting Yeoman). When asked if he would be requesting a hearing on the Florida Election Commission's 24 findings of probable cause, Jacalone responded, "I don't know about that -- I don't think that's any of your business, number one -- it has nothing to do with you." Asked if it was pertinent to growing perceptions of county political corruption, Jacalone said, "Gotta go, talk to you later," disconnecting.
I asked Jacalone March 11th if he knew that ASHLAND was a convicted felon when moving to award it contracts. Jacalone did not respond, hollering, "This is phone harassment... I want you to know that when I hang up with you, I'm calling the Sheriff's office." Sheriff David Shoar confirmed in writing that Mr. Jacalone did not call or file any complaint. What does Jacalone have in mind? Some SJC politicians and businessmen "call the cops" at the first sign of dissent. SJCBCC lost in federal court over those proclivities.
In 2004, SJC’s First Amendment violations -- in the form of illegal abuse of its zoning “police power” to halt critical political billboards with unconstitutional SJCBCC Ordinance 99-51 --- were “struck down” as “unconstitutional on its face” by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. A three-judge appeals panel found that SJCBCC gave County Administrator Ben W. Adams, Jr. the “unbridled discretion” to censor political free speech, with an illegal “prior restraint” adopted in response to political billboards posted by the owner of by Cafe Erotica/We Dare to Bare. SJCBCC attempted to inflict “content restrictions” on free speech and to limit political signs to 32 square feet while allowing commercial signs as large as 560 square feet. SJCBCCC responded to signs that criticized county regulators, including signs that stated: “Karen Bruner is an Incompetent County Official” and “James Acosta is a fatass Barney Fife. He has cost the county thousands of $ in lost lawsuits for using selective [e]nforcements.” “Prior restraint” on free speech is illegal in America, even in the Pentagon Papers case (involving classified Vietnam War history excerpts that were published by the New York Times and other newspapers).
"Unyielding Commitment"
In 2003, ASHLAND CEO James J. O'Brien was paid $2,703,959 in total compensation including stock options, with another $623,227 in unexercised stock options from prior years.
ASHLAND, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as ASH, describes itself as having:
sales and operations throughout the United States and in more than 120 countries... including four wholly owned divisions: ASHLAND Paving And Construction (APAC®), ASHLAND Distribution, ASHLAND Specialty Chemical and Valvoline. In addition, we own 38 percent of Marathon ASHLAND Petroleum LLC, the nation's fifth largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products [which supplies Pilot and Speedway]. We've come a long way since we started in 1924 as a regional petroleum refiner. Despite our growth, and thanks to our vision, we have a strong sense of who we are, and an unyielding commitment to how we want to practice business.
"Corporate Bullies"
Multinational Monitor reported in 1994 that ASHLAND pressured the magazine Chemical and Engineering News to halt a story about its pollution on the West Virginia-Kentucky border. Diane Bady, director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, says that she worked with [reporter] Lepkowski for over a year on the story. "ASHLAND managers are corporate bullies," Bady says. "They fight behind the scenes to make it impossible for reporters and regulators to do their jobs."
As of April 1, Morris Communications' St. Augustine Record, the FOLIO Weekly and monopolistic Gannett's FIRST COAST NEWS ABC/NBC TV joint news affiliate operation all had never printed or uttered the name "ASHLAND" -- each only calling the plant's owner by its alias ("APAC," no "®"). None of these three media corporations responded to questions about why they have never reported the name ASHLAND (or ASHLAND's criminal history).
Meanwhile, one national "journalist" has served for seven years on convicted felon ASHLAND's Board of Directors.
U.S. News & World Report Publisher: "We Love Dr. Healy"
Since 1998, Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, M.D. has served on ASHLAND's Board of Directors, chairing its Environment, Safety and Health Committee and serving on its Audit Committee. Dr. Healy serves on President Bush's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (CAST)(which did not respond to information requests).
Dr. Healy is "health columnist" for U.S. News and World Report, whose Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman is a multimillionaire real estate developer. Zuckerman told me February 1 (through his prefers-to-be-anonymous-spokesperson): "We have the greatest of confidence in Dr. Bernadine Healy. We love her. She is an extraordinarily talented physician and journalist." Zuckerman signs editorials with evocative titles like "The Politics of Cynicism" and publishes articles like "Two Cheers for Toxic Chemicals" -- advancing the "hormesis" theory that low levels of radiation and poisons are good for you.
On March 7, Healy told me that any questions about ASHLAND's SJC plant must "be dealt with by the company directly." Dr. Healy was asked if she cared to comment on conflicts-of-interest as a "journalist" ands corporate director-- she responded, "no not really -- thank you for calling, bye-bye," disconnecting.
Healy's February 14, 2005 U.S. News column says cancer is "sneaky and inexplicably virulent in many of its forms," hinting "a slew of chemicals at home and work" cause cancer (along with STDs, alcohol and chemicals released in cooking) -- cancer risks are hard to avoid "short of getting to a sackcloth and ashes nunnery. (Oops. Forget that. Ashes are on the list too.)" "Oops" indeed.
Identifying herself as a lifelong Republican and "feminist," Healy serves as a member of the boards of Hudson Institute (the late Herman Kahn's think tank), Marshall Institute (corporate-oriented science group), Battelle Memorial Institute (military and nuclear weapons contractor), National City Bank, Progressive Insurance, Invacare (maker of recalled, allegedly defective wheelchairs and other home medical equipment), Medtronics (manufacturer of silicon implants, recalled, allegedly defective heart and other medical devices, accused of giving monetary inducements to surgeons)(the U.S. Supreme Court denied its claims of "federal preemption" of tort claims).
Dr. Healy was formerly American Red Cross CEO ($400,000 per year, twice the salary of Elizabeth Dole in that job), Cleveland Clinic Research Director, Ohio State University Medical School Dean and head of coronary care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital, with expertise in both medicine and pathology. In the 1980s. She was President Reagan's Deputy Director (Life Sciences) of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the first President Bush's National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director, where she approved hundreds of patent applications for human genes and targeted the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) for charges of privacy violations and conflict of interest. She has been a CBS News Medical Contributor.
On July 16, 1998, Healy told CNN's Larry King, "First and foremost a doctor has to relate and respond and care about the patient." The physician's Hippocratic Oath says, "First, do no harm." Does Dr. Healy believe her good buddies at ASHLAND followed that principle in placing an asphalt plant next to an elementary school and senior citizens?
Pollution Partners: One-Party Rule and Environmental Depredations
The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy said at Berkeley in 1967, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from," listing environmental and other societal problems that flow from abuses of power. Five all-Republican Commissioners, led by Commissioner Karen Stern, prayed at the January 26 SJCBCC meeting, asking they be spared from "dissension." Undemocratic blasphemy? If there had been more dissent, the ASHLAND plant might never have been allowed in a residential neighborhood.
John D. Rockefeller's and Henry Flagler's lawbreaking Standard Oil Trust was said to have done "everything" to the Pennsylvania legislature "except refine it." Corruption and environmental pollution have often been linked, from America to the developing world. By disconnecting people from policymaking, "corruption can have a devastating effect upon the environment" reports anti-corruption group Transparency, International.
Convicted felon ASHLAND, St. Johns County officials, and so-called journalists all have a lot of explaining to do:
Why locate an asphalt plant in a residential community?
Why weren't air pollutants ever measured?
Why can't more state and local governments operate their own cleaner asphalt plants?
How much asphalt will be produced to feed massive SJC overdevelopment?
Why didn't SJC enforce environmental provisions in its old paving contract?
How many "journalists" serve on corporate boards?
How many asphalt plants are causing health hazards for how many people worldwide?
Why are governments doing business with a known convicted felon?
Why isn't there an elected County Attorney (as elsewhere)?
Why isn't there an independent County Inspector General (as in Miami-Dade County and elsewhere)?
Is there any favor governments will not grant Big Business?
Will elected officials ever stop slow dancing with contractor-polluter-contributors like ASHLAND?
Will someone please explain it to us (no cherry-flavoring required) as if we were six-year olds? Will it take public protest for ASHLAND, the County and the Record to behave responsibly?
Pollution Partners: ASHLAND OIL and St. Johns County
by Ed Slavin
A controversial asphalt plant close to homes and businesses runs day and night. Choking on visible, black, sooty, air pollution, one local businessman telephoned "911" last year.
He and other St. Johns County residents have become sick, some even hospitalized, because of air pollution from an asphalt plant on SR 207. It is owned by ASHLAND INC., which is an $8 billion/year Fortune 500 company. ASHLAND is a polluter, convicted felon, and petroleum/transportation/construction/chemical company based in Covington, Kentucky. Its ASHLAND PAVING AND CONSTRUCTION (APAC®) subsidiary is America's largest asphalt paver, working for governments, developers and industrialists.
Asphalt plants have been associated with severe health problems (some studies suggest they bring losses of property value up to 56%). A Miami Township, Ohio Marathon-ASHLAND asphalt plant exploded March 20, 2004, requiring evacuation orders.
County residents are petitioning EPA investigators to probe why the plant was placed in a residential area -- and to decide whether to "suspend and debar" ASHLAND from all government contracts. Residents are asking the county to file a "public nuisance" lawsuit, to order the asphalt plant's removal, and for free public access to copies of the county's APAC® records.
In 2004, APAC® paid the State of Florida a $5250 fine/costs for its SR 207 air pollution. The St. Augustine Record carried front-page reports in 2004-2005 of air pollution, hospitalizations, respiratory illnesses, and a temporary plant shutdown.
ASHLAND Senior Vice President and APAC® President Garry M. Higdem, a Professional Engineer (also President and CEO of Transportation Construction), told me on February 8, 2005 that he took personal supervision in "considering" moving the plant (a trial balloon announced in a St. Augustine Record article on March 1, which spoke only of "smoke" and "odor," not pollution).
In response to community organizers, EPA and Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ramped up enforcement activities. The DEP issued two warning letters and seemed likely to achieve a consent order/fine with ASHLAND. Rick Banks, Environmental Manager, Florida DEP, said February 18th that seven inspectors in recent weeks spent "half their time on this one plant" (one of 300 DEP-regulated facilities in nineteen area counties). They now report that ASHLAND is installing a larger "baghouse" to reduce its air pollution, but the plant shows no sign of moving.
On February 8th, ASHLAND's Higdem directed his staff to research "odorants" (substances that conceal odors). Ten days later, ASHLAND was still "researching." When told that odorants were easily available on the Internet, he called back shortly and said a "cherry-flavored" odorant will be used. Residents report ASHLAND once attempted to use LYSOL® to clean up its kiln odors (the manufacturer's Material Safety Data Sheet warns against heating LYSOL®). Higdem said, "It is absolutely not true."
"Grandfathered"
SR 207 citizens complained to the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners (SJCBCC) in April 2004. Then-Commissioner Marc Jacalone asked, "It's there legally, isn't it?" Commissioner Karen Stern agreed the plant was "legal." In 1999 ASHLAND asked -- and the county government allowed and approved -- locating an asphalt plant "grandfathered" in a residential neighborhood on SR 207 (just before county zoning laws changed to distinguish between "light" and "heavy" industrial uses). County Zoning Manager Rosemary Yeoman told me January 31st that the SJCBCC did not need to vote -- "it had proper zoning.... which permitted heavy industrial." Referring to a newspaper ad about the changes, Yeoman claimed "residents were given notice in 1983 when the rezoning went through."
ASHLAND's Higdem asked me February 18th, "Why would the county have had this county-zoned industrial" to allow asphalt, ready-mix, incinerators and other industrial plants in a residential neighborhood? Good question. (Higdem then said it was like "playing Monday morning quarterback" to question the plant's location.)
Since APAC®'s 1999 opening in a residential neighborhood, SJCBCC and other governments have awarded ASHLAND contracts. SJCBCC approved adding a rock crusher and other facilities.
Zoning Director Yeoman said, "I'm not aware of where the asphalt plants are -- I've not done research on where any asphalt plants are located." ASHLAND's Higdem claims there is an "incinerator" nearby, possibly contributing to the pollution. "I could not tell you the address," he said -- it's "anecdotal." Higdem suggested the pollution source "might" be railroad locomotives or a "ready-mix plant," asserting the "soot is not coming from this plant," never providing proof. Florida's DEP disagrees, and ASHLAND paid the fine in 2004.
Highway freight could double in 20 years, says former APAC® President Charles F. Potts, President of Heritage Paving, with operations as far away as China, currently Chair of the asphalt trade association, and who worked for sixteen years for Florida's Transportation Department. (An APAC® website brags of receiving "many¼awards for safety and quality" from the Florida Transportation Dept.) In 2004, Potts told paving executives about a $284 billion highway bill (passed by the U.S. House on March 10, 2005): "we must grab hold of the opportunity ... to set the stage for the kind of long-term vision that will not only keep our transportation system viable and vital" keeping America "prosperous, protected and strong." Meanwhile, SJC residents have trouble breathing.
Governmental Assurances Untrue
Writer David Thundershield Queen once opined that under Governor Jeb Bush, Florida DEP really stands for "Don't Expect Protection." For over five years, there was no sampling or continuous air monitoring. The DEP only measured the number of particles and their size, based on weak DEP regulations and severely limited in what it can do by the county's own questionable 1999 zoning decision.
On January 26th, Florida DEP inspector Christopher Kirts and Assistant County Attorney Laura Barrow inaccurately told SJCBCC that ASHLAND's subsidiary was "not violating its [air pollution] permit," postulating the problem "might" originate in "recent cold and windy weather." DEP's Kirts said Assistant County Attorney Barrow's presentation was "perfect," stating it was primarily "older people" affected because they're more "sensitive" to pollution. Barrow said there was a "problem with those folks claiming (sic) they have breathing problems."
Two days later, DEP inspected and found ASHLAND's kiln to be "cracked," with a "seam" contributing to illegal air pollution, leading to two warnings and work on a new enforcement action. Oops.
On January 26th, Ken Bryan (who recently opened an upholstery shop near the plant) told SJCBCC that he was sick three days the prior week, his "head hurting" and "throat hurting." He asked what the permit allows, but No one answered him. Rebutting the "old people" remark, Ken Bryan said he is a healthy, 56 year old, 36-year U.S. Justice Department employee who runs marathons. The Record never quoted him in its January 27 article and instead spun the issue toward pollution partners SJCBCC/APAC®, not naming ASHLAND. ASHLAND representatives sitting in the audience Jan. 26th never explained its position, Bryan reports.
Ms. Thelma Lewis, 75, believes ASHLAND is the problem, not the nearby Southern Villas senior citizens with respiratory problems who have required hospitalization. On March 1, the Record reported that she was circulating a petition "against" APAC®, never quoting its specific requests of EPA and the county (suspension, debarment and public nuisance litigation).
At the January 26th SJCBCC meeting, DEP's Kirts admitted ASHLAND's SR 207 asphalt plant is "a public nuisance," defined as causing "annoyance to the community or harm to public health," for which Florida law provides remedies, no matter what "permits" or regulations say. Called on January 28th, Barrow dismissed the possibility of a county nuisance suit on its citizens' behalf, incorrectly asserting to me the existence of state and federal "preemption" of public nuisance suits, despite precedents to the contrary (asserting her only "clients" were County Commissioners, not sick SR 207 residents).
Residents petitioned the county to file a "public nuisance" lawsuit to abate ASHLAND's "nuisance." Commissioner Stern met with residents and publicly supports moving ASHLAND's plant.
Commissioners were told on January 26th that there was no rush to award a new ASHLAND contract, with a need to prioritize Ponte Vedra road-building needs. There was time to "investigate."
Yet on February 23 Stern made a motion to award a new $1.2 million contract February 23rd. The vote was 5-0, with no mention of a public nuisance suit (or the enforcement of environmental provisions Stern had inserted in the previous contract). No one mentioned that ASHLAND was a convicted felon or discussed its worldwide record. Stern berated the (unnamed) author of an E-mail for stating the Commission was ill-serving Route 207 residents, stating she spoke to two ASHLAND lawyers and an Assistant County Attorney, claiming Ponte Vedra's asphalt would come from Jacksonville. There was no discussion of public opposition. There are over 175 signed petitions from Route 207 residents supporting suspension and debarment of ASHLAND from all government contracts. ASHLAND refused to attend a local broadcast TV debate with Ms. Thelma Lewis and Ken Bryan taped February 25th: program host Norma Sherry provided an empty chair for ASHLAND. Asked for copies of their board minutes discussing the plant, ASHLAND never provided them. Since January, the office of SJC Administrator Ben W. Adams, Jr. has stalled citizens on document and fee waiver requests and filing a nuisance suit.
In Harm's Way
Asphalt pollution became notorious thanks to the St. Augustine Record's reporting. In harm's way by APAC® are Osceola Elementary School, St. Joseph's Academy Catholic High School, Little League baseball fields, a nursing home, Southern Villas (federally-owned HUD senior citizens' apartments), a home for the retarded, and other residences and businesses. One asthmatic student assigned to Osceola was transferred elsewhere at their parents' request. Some seniors must stay indoors, breathing oxygen. Some people who have never had breathing problems were hospitalized.
People are collecting black sooty air pollution samples from their cars and air conditioner filters. Commissioner Stern reportedly promised to have them analyzed, but no results were revealed as of April 1.
Seemingly untouchable, APAC® has lucrative state and county paving contracts for I-95 and other roads. ASHLAND's Higdem said APAC® operates in fourteen Southern and Midwestern states with over 60 quarries and aggregate production facilities, 12 ready-mix concrete plants, 226 hot-mix asphalt plants, and over 7,000 pieces of mobile equipment.
A December 2004 Duke-University of North Carolina study found sixteen times higher suicide rates in communities with asphalt plants - compared to the statewide average according to psychiatrists working in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control, with 6.4 times higher brain cancer rates. Hydrogen sulfide, benzene, volatile organic compounds, and other dangerous chemicals were believed responsible.
Asphalt fumes are known poisons, and the EPA reports that asphalt-processing facilities are "major sources of hazardous air pollutants such as formaldehyde, hexane, phenol, polycyclic organic matter, and toluene. Exposure may cause cancer, central nervous system problems, liver damage, respiratory problems and skin irritation." ASHLAND's Higdem disagrees but never said why.
Asked if she would like to read the December 2004 UNC-Duke study on suicide rates in neighborhoods with asphalt plants, County Zoning Manager Yeoman told me January 31st, "No sir, I really wouldn't -- it's not a function of this department -- I would not have any reason to -- it's allowed...under the regulations of the county." She also added, "this department handles zoning -- public health is not part of our purview." She then wanted to know "why you're asking these questions?" On February 8th & 18th, ASHLAND's Higdem had not yet seen the study and had no comment, observing on the 18th, there are "lots of studies that get done."
Yeoman told me, "Not all rezonings have been approved." She was unable to name one single rezoning that had not been approved. Diane Rodgers, Special Projects Editor for the St. Augustine Record, investigated and reported that developers won 147 of 149 votes before SJCBCC in 2003, approving the clearing of “more than 33,000 acres and build[ing] tens of thousands of homes in the next ten years.” That’s a lot of asphalt.
ASHLAND A Convicted Felon
When SJCBCC awarded a new contract on February 23rd, Commissioners did not discuss the fact that ASHLAND has a long criminal history:
In 2003, found guilty of air pollution in Minnesota and put on probation (possibly violated by asphalt pollution here)
Pled guilty to bid rigging in Tennessee and Virginia in 1982, agreed not to engage in collusive bidding activities in the future, fined $7.8 million
Made $100,000 illegal campaign contribution to President Richard Nixon
Agreed to an SEC consent decree to cease corporate bribery, after admitting illegal bribes in Oman in the Middle East
Settled pollution lawsuits with over 700 residents in Kentucky and West Virginia
In August 2004, was indicted by a Missouri federal grand jury for highway bid rigging, acquitted by jury trial in October 2004. ASHLAND's Higdem credits lying government witnesses and hearsay for APAC®'s acquittal.
Judge: "Why in the world should I believe you?
ASHLAND pled guilty and was fined $9.1 million by a federal judge in 2003 for explosions and fires at its St. Paul Park, Minnesota refinery, severely injuring one worker and injuring others. ASHLAND failed to seal a manhole, violating the Clean Air Act and rules regulating refinery sewer systems, with workers injured on May 16, 1997, pumping hydrocarbons into the refinery's sewer system for treatment and recycling, igniting into a fireball when vapors escaped through an improperly sealed manhole. A second explosion erupting from a manhole injured six ASHLAND firefighters, one severely.
With two injured workers watching, an ASHLAND Vice President apologized to District Chief Judge James Rosenbaum for "lapses" that led to the "accident," claiming that the company was "truly sorry." Citing ASHLAND's environmental lawbreaking history, Judge Rosenbaum asked, "Why in the world should I believe you?'' In 2004, ASHLAND won its federal appeal, with the Eighth Circuit holding that its criminal probation should not require it to be responsible for environmental protection at the Minnesota refinery, which ASHLAND sold after the explosions to a joint venture run with USX subsidiary MARATHON OIL, with ASHLAND now owning 38%.
In Texas City, Texas, a contractor's crane ruptured a tank at a Marathon refinery on October 30, 1987, releasing a hydrofluoric acid vapor cloud, sending some 1000 residents to hospitals. Calling in lawyers before calling "911" or local schools, Marathon allegedly hornswoggled releases from lung-injured residents, paying only nominal sums, though some young and old people became lung cripples for life. Texas courts ordered disclosure of Marathon's supposed "attorney-client privileged" documents. There was a settlement with residents who sued for fraud. Then the crane contractor's insurance claim backfired, with the Texas Supreme Court upholding an absolute "pollution exclusion" in 1995.
In 2001, Marathon-ASHLAND settled with EPA, agreeing to spend $265 million to reduce pollution at Texas City and six other refineries, involving 5% of U.S. refinery capacity.
Pittsburgh River Killers
In Pittsburgh on January 2, 1988, an ASHLAND above-ground storage tank broke, sending 3.9 million gallons of diesel oil rushing out in a tsunami, with 750,000 gallons leaving its property, much of it entering into the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers, contaminating drinking water supplies, killing 11,000 fish and 2000 birds, disrupting drinking water for two million residents of Pennsylvania and surrounding states, polluting 200 miles of rivers -- one of the most severe inland oil spills in American history. It was preventable. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania found that ASHLAND failed to:
.... find the flaw and establish relevant material properties...ASHLAND, its employees, and some contractors displayed a pervasive pattern of negligence and ignorance in selecting, assigning, constructing, supervising, and inspecting the reconstruction project....The negligent conduct by ASHLAND ...allowed the tank to collapse not only caused extensive environmental damage and widespread community dislocations, but also risked serious or fatal bodily injury.
Pittsburgh cost some $32.25 million in fines and settlements -- "to ASHLAND ... about as painful as the fine you would pay ... for a parking violation," Robert Sherrill wrote. Fish reportedly started returning ten years later.
Elsewhere, ASHLAND was fined $106,000 by Ohio in 2003 (for not replacing vegetation and other pipeline construction violations) and $650,000 by EPA in 2004 (for hazardous waste violations in Michigan).
Illegal Cash Contributor To Nixon
ASHLAND and its then-CEO confessed to giving the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) a $100,000 illegal cash campaign contribution, part of Nixon's Watergate scandals --charged falsely to Gabon, an African subsidiary. ASHLAND's then-CEO Orin Atkins wrote to a stockholder that, "There was a good business reason for making the contribution and although illegal in nature, I am confident that it distinctly benefited the corporation and its stockholders."
Testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, Atkins claimed the $100,000 produced no "distinctive benefit" for ASHLAND, saying it was intended to "give us a means of access to present our point of view to the executive branch of the Government." Atkins agreed with Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr. (D-N.C.) that Nixon's fundraising "very much" resembled extortion. Sen. Ervin told Atkins "it certainly is a human weakness or desire for anyone engaged to business to have a friendly ear in Government." ASHLAND's then-CEO Atkins soliloquized:
"...the situation is difficult to rationalize. We were not seeking any particular privilege or benefit because we don't do any significant business with the Government....all we were attempting to do was to assure ourselves of a forum to be heard. Were we a larger factor in our respective industries, we could expect to have access to administrative officials in the executive branch of Government with ease, but being a relatively unknown corporation, despite our size, we felt we needed something that would be sort of a calling card, something that would let us in the door and make our point of view heard. We didn't expect those points of view to be accepted, but only from the point of view of being able to express them and that was our thinking or rationale as to why we were interested in making any type of contribution."
Three days after paying $100,000 illegal cash to Nixon's campaign, ASHLAND representatives met with Nixon's Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP), seeking to secure more crude oil. The Senate Watergate Committee concluded there was "no evidence" the $100,000 and subsequent meeting were connected.
Atkins stayed on as CEO until 1981. In 1988, Atkins pled guilty to providing stolen documents to the National Iranian Oil Company, receiving probation.
Worker Deaths: OSHA Found "Willful" Violation in Jacksonville
Road building and quarrying are dangerous, but sometimes ASHLAND workers die preventable deaths.
In 2004, APAC® employee Hardney L. Rush was electrocuted by a 7200 volt power line at a Missouri limestone quarry. This tragedy was found by the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration to be the result of APAC® managers' unsafe policies, controls, and procedures.
USDOL Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined APAC®-Florida $112,500 for "willful" violations in a December 22, 1999 death on San Jose Blvd. in Jacksonville, where a worker was crushed by a five ton pipe in a nine foot trench, after defective hoisting and rigging gave way, killing the man in a trench lacking shoring or exit ladders.
As Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter David Barstow found in 2003 and later stories, OSHA rarely finds “willful” violations in worker deaths, hampering victim families’ lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. Against this background, the 1999 “willful” violation and large fine against APAC®-Florida are both significant. Construction trench deaths are among the most easily preventable worker deaths.
Contracts, Lobbying and "Contributions"
The Center for Public Integrity (CPR) calculates that during 1998-2003, ASHLAND and its Political Action Committees (PACs): × Spent $5,905,000 on lobbying expenses; × Gave 88.36% of its campaign contributions (some $1,227,945) to Republican candidates and gave 11.64% (some $161,825) to Democratic candidates; × Gave Republican Party committees $416,730 and Democratic Party committees $42,875; × Gave $23,050 to President George W. Bush and $25,858 to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)(most prominent Congressional opponent of campaign finance reform), $21,300 to House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska)(sponsor of two earmarked "bridges to nowhere"), among other large contributions.
ASHLAND's multi-million dollar investments in politics and politicians were evidently repaid many times over. The CPR reports that during that same 1998-2003 time period, ASHLAND received $111,649,608 in payments from U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) contracts alone --over 51% of which were won with only one or two bidders.
According to antitrust experts, little competition can be a sign of monopoly power or bid rigging. In 1983, President Reagan signed an Executive Order that eliminated the Kennedy Administration's inexpensive government purchasing antitrust initiative -- publication of identical bids in government procurement -- supposedly to save money and restore "efficiency."
ASHLAND Defender Marc Jacalone: “Harassment”
Former SJCBCC Chairman Marc Jacalone was a prime mover for APAC® contracts/favors. SJC residents Carla Cowan and Glen Tilley successfully complained to FEC about Jacalone in August 2004. On March 4, 2005, the Florida Election Commission (FEC) found "probable cause" on 24 election crimes by Jacalone (Commissioner from 1996-2004). -- including FEC charges of abusing his campaign funds to make illegal contributions to other local, state and federal candidates (including the Bush/Cheney presidential campaign, the SJC Republican Party, former St. Augustine City Commissioner Bill Lennon, successful Airport Authority candidate Randy Brunson and legislative candidates Wiley Deck and Kerry McCarthy).
Defeated last year, Marc Jacalone sold his interest in his family gasoline station. Jacalone now sells commercial real estate whose rezonings he obtained as Commissioner (working for Coldwell Banker). I called Jacalone March 10 and asked whether one of his real estate listings could be a site for an asphalt plant. He asked, "Are you APAC®?" Told I was not, Jacalone seemed disappointed. While insisting APAC®'s asphalt plant was "not in a residential neighborhood," he incorrectly claimed it was there before 1999 (contradicting Yeoman). When asked if he would be requesting a hearing on the Florida Election Commission's 24 findings of probable cause, Jacalone responded, "I don't know about that -- I don't think that's any of your business, number one -- it has nothing to do with you." Asked if it was pertinent to growing perceptions of county political corruption, Jacalone said, "Gotta go, talk to you later," disconnecting.
I asked Jacalone March 11th if he knew that ASHLAND was a convicted felon when moving to award it contracts. Jacalone did not respond, hollering, "This is phone harassment... I want you to know that when I hang up with you, I'm calling the Sheriff's office." Sheriff David Shoar confirmed in writing that Mr. Jacalone did not call or file any complaint. What does Jacalone have in mind? Some SJC politicians and businessmen "call the cops" at the first sign of dissent. SJCBCC lost in federal court over those proclivities.
In 2004, SJC’s First Amendment violations -- in the form of illegal abuse of its zoning “police power” to halt critical political billboards with unconstitutional SJCBCC Ordinance 99-51 --- were “struck down” as “unconstitutional on its face” by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. A three-judge appeals panel found that SJCBCC gave County Administrator Ben W. Adams, Jr. the “unbridled discretion” to censor political free speech, with an illegal “prior restraint” adopted in response to political billboards posted by the owner of by Cafe Erotica/We Dare to Bare. SJCBCC attempted to inflict “content restrictions” on free speech and to limit political signs to 32 square feet while allowing commercial signs as large as 560 square feet. SJCBCCC responded to signs that criticized county regulators, including signs that stated: “Karen Bruner is an Incompetent County Official” and “James Acosta is a fatass Barney Fife. He has cost the county thousands of $ in lost lawsuits for using selective [e]nforcements.” “Prior restraint” on free speech is illegal in America, even in the Pentagon Papers case (involving classified Vietnam War history excerpts that were published by the New York Times and other newspapers).
"Unyielding Commitment"
In 2003, ASHLAND CEO James J. O'Brien was paid $2,703,959 in total compensation including stock options, with another $623,227 in unexercised stock options from prior years.
ASHLAND, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as ASH, describes itself as having:
sales and operations throughout the United States and in more than 120 countries... including four wholly owned divisions: ASHLAND Paving And Construction (APAC®), ASHLAND Distribution, ASHLAND Specialty Chemical and Valvoline. In addition, we own 38 percent of Marathon ASHLAND Petroleum LLC, the nation's fifth largest refiner and marketer of petroleum products [which supplies Pilot and Speedway]. We've come a long way since we started in 1924 as a regional petroleum refiner. Despite our growth, and thanks to our vision, we have a strong sense of who we are, and an unyielding commitment to how we want to practice business.
"Corporate Bullies"
Multinational Monitor reported in 1994 that ASHLAND pressured the magazine Chemical and Engineering News to halt a story about its pollution on the West Virginia-Kentucky border. Diane Bady, director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, says that she worked with [reporter] Lepkowski for over a year on the story. "ASHLAND managers are corporate bullies," Bady says. "They fight behind the scenes to make it impossible for reporters and regulators to do their jobs."
As of April 1, Morris Communications' St. Augustine Record, the FOLIO Weekly and monopolistic Gannett's FIRST COAST NEWS ABC/NBC TV joint news affiliate operation all had never printed or uttered the name "ASHLAND" -- each only calling the plant's owner by its alias ("APAC," no "®"). None of these three media corporations responded to questions about why they have never reported the name ASHLAND (or ASHLAND's criminal history).
Meanwhile, one national "journalist" has served for seven years on convicted felon ASHLAND's Board of Directors.
U.S. News & World Report Publisher: "We Love Dr. Healy"
Since 1998, Dr. Bernadine P. Healy, M.D. has served on ASHLAND's Board of Directors, chairing its Environment, Safety and Health Committee and serving on its Audit Committee. Dr. Healy serves on President Bush's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (CAST)(which did not respond to information requests).
Dr. Healy is "health columnist" for U.S. News and World Report, whose Publisher Mortimer Zuckerman is a multimillionaire real estate developer. Zuckerman told me February 1 (through his prefers-to-be-anonymous-spokesperson): "We have the greatest of confidence in Dr. Bernadine Healy. We love her. She is an extraordinarily talented physician and journalist." Zuckerman signs editorials with evocative titles like "The Politics of Cynicism" and publishes articles like "Two Cheers for Toxic Chemicals" -- advancing the "hormesis" theory that low levels of radiation and poisons are good for you.
On March 7, Healy told me that any questions about ASHLAND's SJC plant must "be dealt with by the company directly." Dr. Healy was asked if she cared to comment on conflicts-of-interest as a "journalist" ands corporate director-- she responded, "no not really -- thank you for calling, bye-bye," disconnecting.
Healy's February 14, 2005 U.S. News column says cancer is "sneaky and inexplicably virulent in many of its forms," hinting "a slew of chemicals at home and work" cause cancer (along with STDs, alcohol and chemicals released in cooking) -- cancer risks are hard to avoid "short of getting to a sackcloth and ashes nunnery. (Oops. Forget that. Ashes are on the list too.)" "Oops" indeed.
Identifying herself as a lifelong Republican and "feminist," Healy serves as a member of the boards of Hudson Institute (the late Herman Kahn's think tank), Marshall Institute (corporate-oriented science group), Battelle Memorial Institute (military and nuclear weapons contractor), National City Bank, Progressive Insurance, Invacare (maker of recalled, allegedly defective wheelchairs and other home medical equipment), Medtronics (manufacturer of silicon implants, recalled, allegedly defective heart and other medical devices, accused of giving monetary inducements to surgeons)(the U.S. Supreme Court denied its claims of "federal preemption" of tort claims).
Dr. Healy was formerly American Red Cross CEO ($400,000 per year, twice the salary of Elizabeth Dole in that job), Cleveland Clinic Research Director, Ohio State University Medical School Dean and head of coronary care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital, with expertise in both medicine and pathology. In the 1980s. She was President Reagan's Deputy Director (Life Sciences) of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the first President Bush's National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director, where she approved hundreds of patent applications for human genes and targeted the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI) for charges of privacy violations and conflict of interest. She has been a CBS News Medical Contributor.
On July 16, 1998, Healy told CNN's Larry King, "First and foremost a doctor has to relate and respond and care about the patient." The physician's Hippocratic Oath says, "First, do no harm." Does Dr. Healy believe her good buddies at ASHLAND followed that principle in placing an asphalt plant next to an elementary school and senior citizens?
Pollution Partners: One-Party Rule and Environmental Depredations
The late Senator Robert F. Kennedy said at Berkeley in 1967, "it is not enough to allow dissent, we must demand it, for there is much to dissent from," listing environmental and other societal problems that flow from abuses of power. Five all-Republican Commissioners, led by Commissioner Karen Stern, prayed at the January 26 SJCBCC meeting, asking they be spared from "dissension." Undemocratic blasphemy? If there had been more dissent, the ASHLAND plant might never have been allowed in a residential neighborhood.
John D. Rockefeller's and Henry Flagler's lawbreaking Standard Oil Trust was said to have done "everything" to the Pennsylvania legislature "except refine it." Corruption and environmental pollution have often been linked, from America to the developing world. By disconnecting people from policymaking, "corruption can have a devastating effect upon the environment" reports anti-corruption group Transparency, International.
Convicted felon ASHLAND, St. Johns County officials, and so-called journalists all have a lot of explaining to do:
Why locate an asphalt plant in a residential community?
Why weren't air pollutants ever measured?
Why can't more state and local governments operate their own cleaner asphalt plants?
How much asphalt will be produced to feed massive SJC overdevelopment?
Why didn't SJC enforce environmental provisions in its old paving contract?
How many "journalists" serve on corporate boards?
How many asphalt plants are causing health hazards for how many people worldwide?
Why are governments doing business with a known convicted felon?
Why isn't there an elected County Attorney (as elsewhere)?
Why isn't there an independent County Inspector General (as in Miami-Dade County and elsewhere)?
Is there any favor governments will not grant Big Business?
Will elected officials ever stop slow dancing with contractor-polluter-contributors like ASHLAND?
Will someone please explain it to us (no cherry-flavoring required) as if we were six-year olds? Will it take public protest for ASHLAND, the County and the Record to behave responsibly?
Letter: Says Congress needs Faye Armitage
Letter: Says Congress needs Faye Armitage
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: Running for Florida's 7th Congressional District, Faye Armitage is facing daunting odds: winning against Winter Park's career politician, U.S. Rep. John Mica. He's seeking his ninth term.
A classic David vs. Goliath contest, Armitage's contributions $25,000. vs an ominous war chest of nearly $1 million, begs the question: Why does a sitting congressman spend $1 million to win? Mica's lock step voting record 93.7 percent with President Bush could be a predictor of same old, same old. Perhaps it's just not real money, to Mica? Way to go.
As a single mother with five children, Armitage knows first hand the meaning of hard work and will work to find solutions that give relief to families suffering under the economic meltdown. Her international experience, a master's degree in economics, and knowing where to look for answers will help bridge the gap between Wall Street and Main Street USA.
In its November edition, Esquire reviewed candidates.
Here is what it said about the Florida District 7 race between Armitage and Mica:
"Mica demands budgetary transparency from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) that's good. But over the past two years he's given a rubber stamp to every invasion of privacy the agency proposes while seeking to trim costs by keeping TSA workers' wages and job security at a minimum. That's dangerous.
Esquire endorses: Faye Armitage (D)"
Got questions? Ask Armitage. She is the real thing. www.fayeforcongress.com.
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
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Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: Running for Florida's 7th Congressional District, Faye Armitage is facing daunting odds: winning against Winter Park's career politician, U.S. Rep. John Mica. He's seeking his ninth term.
A classic David vs. Goliath contest, Armitage's contributions $25,000. vs an ominous war chest of nearly $1 million, begs the question: Why does a sitting congressman spend $1 million to win? Mica's lock step voting record 93.7 percent with President Bush could be a predictor of same old, same old. Perhaps it's just not real money, to Mica? Way to go.
As a single mother with five children, Armitage knows first hand the meaning of hard work and will work to find solutions that give relief to families suffering under the economic meltdown. Her international experience, a master's degree in economics, and knowing where to look for answers will help bridge the gap between Wall Street and Main Street USA.
In its November edition, Esquire reviewed candidates.
Here is what it said about the Florida District 7 race between Armitage and Mica:
"Mica demands budgetary transparency from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) that's good. But over the past two years he's given a rubber stamp to every invasion of privacy the agency proposes while seeking to trim costs by keeping TSA workers' wages and job security at a minimum. That's dangerous.
Esquire endorses: Faye Armitage (D)"
Got questions? Ask Armitage. She is the real thing. www.fayeforcongress.com.
Ann Palmquist
St. Augustine Beach
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BRIBE-TAKING St. JOHNS COUNTY REPUBLICANS: THE FBI & DOJ TWOCE TAPE-RECORDED REPUBLICAN COUNTY COMMISSION CHAIRMAN THOMAS G. MANUEL RECEI VING BRIBES
Republican County Commission Chairman THHOMAS G. MANUEL was tape-recorded twice by persons working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Let every bribe-taker, bribe-payer, foreign investor, developer, bagman and corporate lawyer in St. Johns County hear and learn -- federal law enforcement and the people e are watching your every move.
The next time you try to destroy a 3000-4000 year old indigenous Indian village for a strip mall and condos, or kill a marsh or build in wetlands, you better meet your cofelons naked in the San Sebastian River, to short out the FBI's body mikes.
Then again, if you go naked in the San Sebastian River, you might catch E. coli from the City of St. Augustine's illegal discharges, or perhaps get eaten by an alligator.
Think Florida Gators meet McGruff the Crime Dog ("Take a Bite Out of Crime.")
On the one hand, this latter development might e viewed as "civic improvement."
Go Gators!
But on the other hand, due to the toxic nature of the army of bribe-takers, bribe-payers, foreign investors, foreign agentgs, developers, bagmen and corporate lawyers jere in St. Johns County, this might be considered "cruelty to animals."
What do you reckon?
Manuel recording questioned -- Defense seeks information about informants
Manuel recording questioned -- Defense seeks information about informants
By RICHARD PRIOR
richard.prior@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Two confidential informants allegedly recorded conversations in which suspended St. Johns County Commissioner Thomas Manuel accepted $60,000 in exchange for influencing public business, according to court documents.
The information was included in the prosecution's response last week to two of the defense's 17 motions that were filed on Oct. 24.
Defense attorneys William Sheppard and Gray Thomas demanded the name of the informant, who, they believe, "was an active participant in the crimes charged in the indictment against (Manuel) or the investigation thereof."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Hackenberry Savell said in her response that there were two informants, not one.
She said she would disclose their names to the defense, even though, "It is believed that defendant is aware of the identities of these individuals, as all of the audio/video recorded conversations have been provided to the defendant. ..."
Manuel, 63, was indicted Oct. 16 in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville on two counts of bribery.
The federal grand jury said Manuel "did knowingly and corruptly solicit, demand and agree to accept" approximately $10,000 on April 8 and approximately $50,000 on June 5.
Both transactions were in Jacksonville, the grand jury charged.
Manuel's intent was "to be influenced and rewarded in connection with any business, transaction, and series of transactions ...," the grand jury said.
The transactions were not specified.
Manuel turned himself in the same day and pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was arraigned and then released on $50,000 bond.
Manuel, a retired businessman and banker, was elected to the St. Johns County Commission in 2006. He was the commission chairman when he was indicted.
Gov. Charlie Crist suspended him from office on Oct. 17.
Another defense motion filed Oct. 24 asked the prosecution to spell out which "business, transaction and series of transactions the (d)efendant is alleged to have intended to be influenced and rewarded in connection with. ..."
The prosecution also was asked to specify how Manuel "knowingly (and corruptly) engaged in the charged conduct."
The prosecutor said in her response on Wednesday that Manuel already knows the answers.
"The indictment ... is clear and informative," Savell wrote. "It specifies the dates, locations, and the criminal conduct by the defendant. ...
"The defendant has been provided extensive discovery, including audio and video recordings related to the conduct charged in the indictment. ..."
Finally, the U.S. Attorney's Office filed a notice Friday that some statements Manuel made to law enforcement officers after being read his Miranda rights could be the subject of a suppression hearing.
The notice did not specify what those statements were.
A pre-trial status conference has been scheduled for 3 p.m. on Nov. 17 in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville.
Manuel's jury trial is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 1.
(For a complete list of motions that have been filed in the case so far, go to staugustine.com.)
http://www.staugustine.com/promo/TomManuel-Motions.pdf
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Letters concerning the presidential campaign: Obama is this reader's choice
Letters concerning the presidential campaign: Obama is this reader's choice
Bob Fliegel
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: I will vote against McCain-Palin, which requires me to vote for Obama-Biden. Four principal reasons:
1) McCain would perpetuate Bush's jingoism and propensity for preemptive military intervention. Having decided that high-level talks with radical or rogue regime leaders are inevitably ineffective at best, appeasing at worst, he would give short shrift to diplomacy and containment, seeking instead futile, alienating, and costly military solutions to age-old and intransigent ethnic and cultural conflicts.
I say, no more American blood and treasure for regime changes in nations the threat from which is tenuous or, to force feed unreceptive nations with Jeffersonian democracy.
2) McCain is wound too tight. He's temperamentally unsuited to be our commander-in-chief.
3) Sarah Palin. No amplification is necessary.
4) My personal contact with Captain McCain in 1981, when he was the Navy's Senate liaison officer and I, the executive assistant to the Navy's director of international security assistance, echoes reason two. I found him an arrogant, dismissive, and volatile churl then and have seen no change for the better in recent years.
An Obama landslide may well result in a filibuster-proof (and runaway?) Democrat/liberal majority in the Congress. So be it.
I will chance that rather than be part of the electorate that could put McCain in the White House.
Bob Fliegel
St. Augustine
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Bob Fliegel
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Editor: I will vote against McCain-Palin, which requires me to vote for Obama-Biden. Four principal reasons:
1) McCain would perpetuate Bush's jingoism and propensity for preemptive military intervention. Having decided that high-level talks with radical or rogue regime leaders are inevitably ineffective at best, appeasing at worst, he would give short shrift to diplomacy and containment, seeking instead futile, alienating, and costly military solutions to age-old and intransigent ethnic and cultural conflicts.
I say, no more American blood and treasure for regime changes in nations the threat from which is tenuous or, to force feed unreceptive nations with Jeffersonian democracy.
2) McCain is wound too tight. He's temperamentally unsuited to be our commander-in-chief.
3) Sarah Palin. No amplification is necessary.
4) My personal contact with Captain McCain in 1981, when he was the Navy's Senate liaison officer and I, the executive assistant to the Navy's director of international security assistance, echoes reason two. I found him an arrogant, dismissive, and volatile churl then and have seen no change for the better in recent years.
An Obama landslide may well result in a filibuster-proof (and runaway?) Democrat/liberal majority in the Congress. So be it.
I will chance that rather than be part of the electorate that could put McCain in the White House.
Bob Fliegel
St. Augustine
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Letter: Cell tower unwelcome in neighborhood
Letter: Cell tower unwelcome in neighborhood
Connie Hansen
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/03/08
Editor: Currently before Planning and Zoning Board is an application to build a 160-foot cell tower on a proposed site in a small North City neighborhood which has three residences adjacent to it and a number of other residences close by.
In 1996, the cell industry spent $39 million in lobbying costs to ensure FCC regulations which state that no one can protest the construction of a cell tower based on health concerns and aesthetics.
In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted which point to possible health concerns for those living near a cell tower. Senior citizens and children are considered to be most at risk.
Most of the impartial studies (i.e., those not funded by cell companies) have been done in other countries. The Institute of Environmental Health in Vienna states that, regarding cell towers, "despite very low exposure to HF-EMF, effects on well-being and performance cannot be ruled out, as shown by recently obtained experimental results."
All three nearby residences for the proposed ClearTalk/St. John's Food tower have seniors and/or children living there. Children live in other nearby houses also.
Many advocates for cell safety recommend that towers be located away from schools and residences. In the case of this proposed tower, there are a number of sites a short distance away that do not have residences near by. ClearTalk could thus avoid potentially putting people at risk. St. John's Food has been a good neighbor to many of the people living in the area. I urge them to consider the recent data that shows that cell towers may not be safe for some people.
We need cell towers, but putting them next to residences is just not a good idea. Because no one can guarantee the safety of these towers, why take the risk?
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Connie Hansen
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 11/03/08
Editor: Currently before Planning and Zoning Board is an application to build a 160-foot cell tower on a proposed site in a small North City neighborhood which has three residences adjacent to it and a number of other residences close by.
In 1996, the cell industry spent $39 million in lobbying costs to ensure FCC regulations which state that no one can protest the construction of a cell tower based on health concerns and aesthetics.
In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted which point to possible health concerns for those living near a cell tower. Senior citizens and children are considered to be most at risk.
Most of the impartial studies (i.e., those not funded by cell companies) have been done in other countries. The Institute of Environmental Health in Vienna states that, regarding cell towers, "despite very low exposure to HF-EMF, effects on well-being and performance cannot be ruled out, as shown by recently obtained experimental results."
All three nearby residences for the proposed ClearTalk/St. John's Food tower have seniors and/or children living there. Children live in other nearby houses also.
Many advocates for cell safety recommend that towers be located away from schools and residences. In the case of this proposed tower, there are a number of sites a short distance away that do not have residences near by. ClearTalk could thus avoid potentially putting people at risk. St. John's Food has been a good neighbor to many of the people living in the area. I urge them to consider the recent data that shows that cell towers may not be safe for some people.
We need cell towers, but putting them next to residences is just not a good idea. Because no one can guarantee the safety of these towers, why take the risk?
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More than half the county's voters have already cast their ballots
More than half the county's voters have already cast their ballots
By MARCIA LANE
marcia.lane@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Early voting is over in St. Johns County but there's no break today for Supervisor of Elections Penny Halyburton and her staff.
They are at work as they have been since Saturday night getting voter rolls ready for Tuesday's general election.
When early voting closed Saturday, about 51 percent of St. Johns County's 131,744 registered voters had cast their ballots either by early voting or absentee by mail.
Halyburton has estimated 88 percent of the county's registered voters will turn out by the time polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
"I'm prepared for higher, but I'll stick with my 88 percent (prediction)," Halyburton said Saturday night after early voting ended.
In 2004, some 79 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in the general election.
"My IT guy will be doing precinct registers all night long," she said Saturday. Those precinct registers include the history of early and absentee voting and are the paper book voters sign when they go to their precincts Tuesday. The registers let precinct workers know who has and hasn't voted and keep people from voting more than once.
Although there are only 46 precincts, 158 registers will be printed out.
"It's literally an all-night thing. There are lots of pages and lots of names," she said.
This morning Halyburton and her staff are putting the registers together so that precinct workers can pick them up and be ready to open the polls Tuesday.
People can still vote absentee on Monday by going to the main voting office or one of the annexes including the Ponte Vedra annex, Julington Creek annex, Southeast Branch Clerk of the Courts Office and Tax Collector's Office in Hastings.
Halyburton says despite the heavy early turnout she's expecting lines. Part of that's because of the length and complexity of the ballot. If people haven't studied the amendments, they'll find them difficult.
"If they don't familiarize themselves with the ballot, they're going to be there awhile," she said.
Halyburton is among those who vote early. On election day, she doesn't have time to get to her precinct.
BY THE NUMBERS 2008
Voting by absentee ballot: 13.93 percent or 18,349 voters
Early voting: 37 percent or 49,234
Registered voters: 131,744
Inactive voters who could still decide to vote: About 12,000
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http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_055.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
By MARCIA LANE
marcia.lane@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Early voting is over in St. Johns County but there's no break today for Supervisor of Elections Penny Halyburton and her staff.
They are at work as they have been since Saturday night getting voter rolls ready for Tuesday's general election.
When early voting closed Saturday, about 51 percent of St. Johns County's 131,744 registered voters had cast their ballots either by early voting or absentee by mail.
Halyburton has estimated 88 percent of the county's registered voters will turn out by the time polls close at 7 p.m. Tuesday.
"I'm prepared for higher, but I'll stick with my 88 percent (prediction)," Halyburton said Saturday night after early voting ended.
In 2004, some 79 percent of registered voters cast their ballots in the general election.
"My IT guy will be doing precinct registers all night long," she said Saturday. Those precinct registers include the history of early and absentee voting and are the paper book voters sign when they go to their precincts Tuesday. The registers let precinct workers know who has and hasn't voted and keep people from voting more than once.
Although there are only 46 precincts, 158 registers will be printed out.
"It's literally an all-night thing. There are lots of pages and lots of names," she said.
This morning Halyburton and her staff are putting the registers together so that precinct workers can pick them up and be ready to open the polls Tuesday.
People can still vote absentee on Monday by going to the main voting office or one of the annexes including the Ponte Vedra annex, Julington Creek annex, Southeast Branch Clerk of the Courts Office and Tax Collector's Office in Hastings.
Halyburton says despite the heavy early turnout she's expecting lines. Part of that's because of the length and complexity of the ballot. If people haven't studied the amendments, they'll find them difficult.
"If they don't familiarize themselves with the ballot, they're going to be there awhile," she said.
Halyburton is among those who vote early. On election day, she doesn't have time to get to her precinct.
BY THE NUMBERS 2008
Voting by absentee ballot: 13.93 percent or 18,349 voters
Early voting: 37 percent or 49,234
Registered voters: 131,744
Inactive voters who could still decide to vote: About 12,000
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_055.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Clock winding down for absentee voter ballots
Clock winding down for absentee voter ballots
Staff
Publication Date: 11/03/08
Absentee ballots can still be picked up at five locations in St. Johns County.
Those ballots are available today and Tuesday at the main Supervisor of Elections office, the Ponte Vedra Annex, the Julington Creek Annex, Clerk of Courts Office behind the Southeast Branch Library and the Tax Collector's Office in Hastings.
On Tuesday, all voted ballots must be in the Supervisor of Elections main office by 7 p.m. or by 3 p.m. at the drop off locations in order to be counted, said St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Penny Halyburton.
Ballots can also be dropped off today.
The main office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. today.
Except for Hastings, the branch offices are open until 4:30 p.m. today. Hastings is open until 5 p.m.
Absentee ballots cannot be turned in at any of the precinct locations, Halyburton said.
If you request an absentee ballot then decide to vote on the day of the election, you must bring both your absentee ballot and the return envelope to the polling place in order to vote a regular ballot.
Halyburton and her staff spent Sunday putting together the precinct registers that voters will sign when they go to their precincts for Tuesday's general election. They include the information on who has already voted either by early voting or absentee ballots.
Voting on Tuesday is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110308/news_110308_026.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Staff
Publication Date: 11/03/08
Absentee ballots can still be picked up at five locations in St. Johns County.
Those ballots are available today and Tuesday at the main Supervisor of Elections office, the Ponte Vedra Annex, the Julington Creek Annex, Clerk of Courts Office behind the Southeast Branch Library and the Tax Collector's Office in Hastings.
On Tuesday, all voted ballots must be in the Supervisor of Elections main office by 7 p.m. or by 3 p.m. at the drop off locations in order to be counted, said St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections Penny Halyburton.
Ballots can also be dropped off today.
The main office is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. today.
Except for Hastings, the branch offices are open until 4:30 p.m. today. Hastings is open until 5 p.m.
Absentee ballots cannot be turned in at any of the precinct locations, Halyburton said.
If you request an absentee ballot then decide to vote on the day of the election, you must bring both your absentee ballot and the return envelope to the polling place in order to vote a regular ballot.
Halyburton and her staff spent Sunday putting together the precinct registers that voters will sign when they go to their precincts for Tuesday's general election. They include the information on who has already voted either by early voting or absentee ballots.
Voting on Tuesday is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110308/news_110308_026.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Voting twice on the same charter is a local 'tradition'
Voting twice on the same charter is a local 'tradition'
By SUSAN R. PARKER
Special to The Record
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Second-guessing the voters on local-government charters is a local tradition. In 1916 citizens were asked to vote again on the new charter for the City of St. Augustine. It was asserted that the electorate, who had approved the charter on the first vote, had not understood what passage might mean. More than 90 years later we are repeating history with the second vote on the county charter.
The previous year the charter to change City government to a commissioner-manager organization had passed by a small margin. Commissioner-manager forms of local government were being adopted all over the nation at the time and considered progressive. Supporters of the charter argued that it was time to replace the old highly political system of running the city with one that relied on experts and a business-like style. Those opposed to the change contended that "St. Augustine does not require the services of experts."
Typical of that time, voters did not vote directly on the charter, but for individual candidates who pledged either for or against the measure. To add to the confusion, voters could vote for both opponents and supporters of the charter.
In those days the ballots were not combined. The St. Augustine Record commented on election eve because of the city charter issue, "St. Augustine will pass through the agony of a double election." Voters had to deal with two ballots at separate locations. In the city, residents could vote at the sheriff's office in the courthouse, the fire hose reel station on Pine Street, the Garnett Building on Washington Street and Jones bicycle shop on Granada Street. The polls were open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The presidential election was on the general ballot with incumbent Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, challenged by the Republican Charles Hughes. The general ballot also included the Florida gubernatorial race.
Residents were able to watch the local, state and national election returns displayed on a canvas screen was set up at Corbett's dock on Matanzas Bay at the end of Cathedral Place. A telegraph wire was temporarily run to the Yacht Club building just north of Corbett's' dock to receive the election news. Trinity Episcopal loaned its stereopticon to project the numbers on the canvas sheet as they arrived by wire.
The charter passed -- again. Wilson was re-elected as president. Sidney Catts became Florida's governor.
By the way, this was Florida's last presidential election in which only men could vote.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_056.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
By SUSAN R. PARKER
Special to The Record
Publication Date: 11/02/08
Second-guessing the voters on local-government charters is a local tradition. In 1916 citizens were asked to vote again on the new charter for the City of St. Augustine. It was asserted that the electorate, who had approved the charter on the first vote, had not understood what passage might mean. More than 90 years later we are repeating history with the second vote on the county charter.
The previous year the charter to change City government to a commissioner-manager organization had passed by a small margin. Commissioner-manager forms of local government were being adopted all over the nation at the time and considered progressive. Supporters of the charter argued that it was time to replace the old highly political system of running the city with one that relied on experts and a business-like style. Those opposed to the change contended that "St. Augustine does not require the services of experts."
Typical of that time, voters did not vote directly on the charter, but for individual candidates who pledged either for or against the measure. To add to the confusion, voters could vote for both opponents and supporters of the charter.
In those days the ballots were not combined. The St. Augustine Record commented on election eve because of the city charter issue, "St. Augustine will pass through the agony of a double election." Voters had to deal with two ballots at separate locations. In the city, residents could vote at the sheriff's office in the courthouse, the fire hose reel station on Pine Street, the Garnett Building on Washington Street and Jones bicycle shop on Granada Street. The polls were open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The presidential election was on the general ballot with incumbent Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, challenged by the Republican Charles Hughes. The general ballot also included the Florida gubernatorial race.
Residents were able to watch the local, state and national election returns displayed on a canvas screen was set up at Corbett's dock on Matanzas Bay at the end of Cathedral Place. A telegraph wire was temporarily run to the Yacht Club building just north of Corbett's' dock to receive the election news. Trinity Episcopal loaned its stereopticon to project the numbers on the canvas sheet as they arrived by wire.
The charter passed -- again. Wilson was re-elected as president. Sidney Catts became Florida's governor.
By the way, this was Florida's last presidential election in which only men could vote.
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_056.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
We hope the Humane Society improves its fundraising and reopens as a no-kill shelter
Phil Genovar's concerns are echoed by others whose fundraising suggestions did not come to fruition. I hope that the Human Society shelter will reopen as a no-kill shelter, and that even in trying economic times, the rich guys will pass the hat to protect animals and find suitable homes.
Shelter backer faults board
Shelter backer faults board
Phil Genovar talking about taking his property back from Humane Society
By KATI BEXLEY
kati.bexley@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/02/08
St. Augustine's Humane Society closed Friday because its funds were so depleted, but a man whose family started the shelter in 1946 and donated the property for it says its board of directors and the management are to blame.
Phil Genovar said if the shelter does not reopen in two to four months he will start "seriously talking to my lawyers" about taking back the property.
"I am totally disgusted with the way (the shelter has) been handled," Genovar said. "St. Augustine needs a Humane Society, but this is ridiculous."
Board of Director Chairman Rusty Hall said that's not true.
He said he and another board member have met separately with Genovar in the last month. And he's not aware of any financial donations turned away.
"I would certainly never turn away money," Hall said. "I mean, that's just crazy. We would never do that."
Genovar's mother began the Humane Society in 1946 and gave roughly two acres for the shelter's construction. Genovar, who owns a business down the street from the shelter, gave the board another half acre two years ago.
The Humane Society is governed by a board of directors headed by Hall.
Genovar said he has tried many times to reach out to board members, and several people have offered him large financial contributions for the Humane Society. But, he said, it all "falls on deaf ears."
"People call me about (donations) and I tell them to call the (Humane Society), and (the shelter) never follows up with them," he said. "I have offered many times to work with the board, my daughter offered to be a board member, but for some reason they won't do anything with us."
Hall said many members of the community have reached out to the board and he plans to meet with them in the next month. He would like to hold roundtable meetings and find ways to make the Humane Society better and eventually reopen it.
Genovar also said he heard from Putnam, Flagler and Jacksonville humane societies all of which offered to help St. Augustine without cost when the board announced a month ago that it was closing. St. Augustine's shelter never accepted their help, Genovar said.
Hall said they did. The Jacksonville Humane Society took more than 10 cats and were willing to take any other animals that weren't adopted out when the shelter closed, Hall said.
"To say that we're refusing help, that's not true at all," he said. "As a matter of fact, we're really pleased with the people who have stepped up to help us."
Genovar believes the shelter should have never closed and doubts it will ever reopen.
Hall said the board is "feverishly" working to start renovating the shelter and make it better than ever. The board wants to work with the community, he said.
"We're not trying to make it difficult for people," he said. "We're going to come back. We will open again."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_053.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Phil Genovar talking about taking his property back from Humane Society
By KATI BEXLEY
kati.bexley@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 11/02/08
St. Augustine's Humane Society closed Friday because its funds were so depleted, but a man whose family started the shelter in 1946 and donated the property for it says its board of directors and the management are to blame.
Phil Genovar said if the shelter does not reopen in two to four months he will start "seriously talking to my lawyers" about taking back the property.
"I am totally disgusted with the way (the shelter has) been handled," Genovar said. "St. Augustine needs a Humane Society, but this is ridiculous."
Board of Director Chairman Rusty Hall said that's not true.
He said he and another board member have met separately with Genovar in the last month. And he's not aware of any financial donations turned away.
"I would certainly never turn away money," Hall said. "I mean, that's just crazy. We would never do that."
Genovar's mother began the Humane Society in 1946 and gave roughly two acres for the shelter's construction. Genovar, who owns a business down the street from the shelter, gave the board another half acre two years ago.
The Humane Society is governed by a board of directors headed by Hall.
Genovar said he has tried many times to reach out to board members, and several people have offered him large financial contributions for the Humane Society. But, he said, it all "falls on deaf ears."
"People call me about (donations) and I tell them to call the (Humane Society), and (the shelter) never follows up with them," he said. "I have offered many times to work with the board, my daughter offered to be a board member, but for some reason they won't do anything with us."
Hall said many members of the community have reached out to the board and he plans to meet with them in the next month. He would like to hold roundtable meetings and find ways to make the Humane Society better and eventually reopen it.
Genovar also said he heard from Putnam, Flagler and Jacksonville humane societies all of which offered to help St. Augustine without cost when the board announced a month ago that it was closing. St. Augustine's shelter never accepted their help, Genovar said.
Hall said they did. The Jacksonville Humane Society took more than 10 cats and were willing to take any other animals that weren't adopted out when the shelter closed, Hall said.
"To say that we're refusing help, that's not true at all," he said. "As a matter of fact, we're really pleased with the people who have stepped up to help us."
Genovar believes the shelter should have never closed and doubts it will ever reopen.
Hall said the board is "feverishly" working to start renovating the shelter and make it better than ever. The board wants to work with the community, he said.
"We're not trying to make it difficult for people," he said. "We're going to come back. We will open again."
Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/110208/news_1102_053.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Dirty Pool by Jacksonville PBS Affilliate Deprives Viewers of Arnutage-Mica Dialogue or Debate
WJCT, the lackluster PBS affiliate in Jacksonville, Florida, deprived its viewers of recorded three minute statements from Faye Armitage and incumbent John Mica in the race for the gerrymandered 7th Congressional District seat, running 225 miles from Ponte Vedra Beach through five counties to the Orlando suburbs.
WJCT scheduled its taping at the same time as PBS Affilliate WMFE in Orlando had a taped debate between Professor Armitage and Mr. Mica.
WJCT refused to reschedule the taping and refused to return phone messages from Professor Armitage In its broadcast and rebroadcast of the canned interviews, WJCT merely said that Professor Armitage and Mr. Mica were "not available." They were unavailable because WJCT ignored the laws of physics -- two busy candidates can't be in two PBS studios simultaneously, one in Orlando and one in Jacksonville.
Why didn't WJCT just air the WMFE debate? Taciturn WJCT isn't talking.
Instead, WJCT ran nothing. How indescribably inept and offensive. By leaving out the 7th District race, WJCT "tilts" and favors Mica, the 16-year incumbent, whose head-butting of an ABC news cameraman, chauvinistic support of President Bush and sponsorship of earmarks for his campaign contributors are rightly under fire (along with Mica's support of offshore oil drilling off Florida's coasts).
Remedy: WJCT must run the WHFE debate and carry links from its website, or its license renewal should be strictly scrutinized for lack of public service.`
WJCT has also apparently canceled its Jacksonville Week in Review Program after some nine years, improving in recent years after several years of being an all-white good-ole-boy affair.
Does WJCT get the booby prize among all PBS affiliates for incompetence?
Will PBS higherups act?
Stay tuned.
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