In the midst of devious developers' demolition derby, after the demolitions of Don Pedro Fornells House, Echo House and Carpenter's House,
after the outsize influence shown by rubber-stamp approval of outrageous, oversize hotels and other abominations,
here's the City of St. Augustine's stunning admission of its custom, practice and procedure of pro-developer favoritism:
"The role of the PZB is to grantzoning exceptions and variances as provided in the zoning code ordinances, hear appeals of any decision of the Planning and Building Department and recommend to the City Commission the rezoning of land or changes to the Comprehensive Plan." (St. Augustine City website).
Florida Resilient Communities Initiative University of Florida
October 2015
Florida Planning Officials Handbook
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pp. I-22
Planning Officials Are Elected or Ap- pointed Citizens Involved in the Plan- ning Process
The term "Planning Officials" was created by the American Planning Association to include a wide range of citizen participants in planning who have specific roles. City and County Commissioners are elected officials who serve on the governing bodies of local government. In Florida, these elected offi- cials play a significant role in planning and growth management. They are the final authority for the adoption of a community’s comprehensive plan, the enactment of its land development regulations and the approval of major development applica- tions. City and County Commissions also typically appoint the officials who serve on the planning commissions and other boards of their community.
Planning Commissioners are appointed to serve on local planning commissions. Planning commission- ers are the keepers of the Comprehensive Plan. They initiate and guide long-range planning ef- forts, conduct public meetings and hearings on proposed plans and projects, review development proposals for conformance with local plans and de- velopment regulations, and develop new planning programs.
Zoning Board members are appointed to serve on boards that review development applications. Zon- ing boards normally make recommendations to the local governing body regarding rezonings and oth- er development approvals but may serve as the final approval authority for some actions pre- scribed by the local regulations. Planning commis- sions may serve as a zoning board to perform this function in many communities.
Board of Adjustment members are appointed, vol- unteer officials who serve on a board that hears appeals or requests for variances and conditional use approvals, all zoning and land use matters. The work of the board is generally limited to re- view of applications for conditional use permits, variances, and other appeals. In some communi- ties, the functions of a planning board and a zon- ing board of appeals are performed by a joint plan- ning and zoning commission.
The Work of the Planning Commission
The Planning Commission's goal is to make the comprehensive plan work. The Planning Commis- sion’s first responsibility is to recommend a com- prehensive plan that reflects the vision and values of the community. The planning commission is a lay body that in many ways speaks for the com- munity.These volunteer citizens give their time, energy, and intelligence to evaluating their com- munity and its future, and advise the elected offi- cials about future directions.
The Planning Commissions second goal is to move the plan from vision to reality. To do this, the planning commission must examine each issue and every application and ask the question, "Does this proposal further the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan?” If so, the proposal conforms to the public interest as expressed in the plan and should normally be approved. If not, the proposal runs contrary to the public interest as expressed in the plan and should normally be rejected. All of this seems straightforward enough, but in practice things are much more complex. The comprehen- sive plan, for example, while offering guidance and showing direction, will not often provide automatic answers.
In addition to ensuring that the decisions of the planning commission conform to the comprehen- sive plan, it is also the duty of planning commis- sion members to ensure that the plan is kept up to date. As technology changes, for example, what is practical or possible in the plan will also change. Further, as a community evolves, so too will the goals and objectives of its citizenry. New ideas will be introduced. Existing land uses will change. It may become evident that aspects of the plan are no longer relevant. For all of these reasons and more, a key task of the planning commission is to make certain that the plan is current and, if not, that the plan be updated and amended.
Evaluating and amending the plan should be a reg- ular part of the planning commission's annual agenda. At least once per year, the commission should schedule time to review the existing plan and then develop any changes as required. This
will ensure that the plan remains an accurate re- flection of community values and will also serve to reinforce the importance of the plan to the mem- bers of the planning commission itself.
The Work of the Zoning Board
The “Zoning Board” reviews development applica- tions and makes recommendations to the local governing authority. The “zoning board” reviews development applications for consistency with the comprehensive plan, compliance with the land de- velopment regulations of the community and ad- herence to accepted planning practices and princi- ples. The development review process normally involves an analysis and recommendation by an appointed body before a final decision is made by the local governing body. The procedures that guide this review are prescribed by the communi- ty’s land development code and typically involve rezonings, subdivision review, site plan review and other processes.
A community may not have a “zoning board” but the review function described above does exist by one name or another within the planning structure. Often a planning commission will perform this role. In other communities, a hearing officer may be used. Regardless of where the responsibility is as- signed, it is an essential function and one that typ- ically involves the planning officials’ most active and direct involvement in community issues.
The Work of the Board of Adjustment
Communities have “boards of appeal” or “boards of zoning adjustment”. For convenience, the term “board of adjustment” is used. The moment a land development code is adopted, the work of the board of adjustment begins. As the name implies, the focus of the board’s work is zoning code relat- ed appeals, but just as with the planning commis- sion and zoning board, a second goal of the board of adjustment is to implement the comprehensive plan, or to at least assure that its decisions don't violate the comprehensive plan.
The “board of adjustment” is charged with a com- plex set of duties that typically include:
Deciding on variances to the land development code;
Reviewing appeals to decisions of the code ad- ministrator;
Interpreting the meaning and the intent of the land development code; and often
Evaluating special exceptions or conditional us- es.
As Justice Robert Jackson once said to his law clerk, "But what does it all mean?"
DeVos Education Dept. Begins Dismissing Civil Rights Cases in Name of Efficiency
Photo
The changes worry civil rights groups, which point out that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has already rescinded guidances meant to protect students against sexual assaults on campuses and black and transgender students against bias.CreditErin Schaff for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has begun dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints under a new protocol that allows investigators to disregard cases that are part of serial filings or that they consider burdensome to the office.
Department officials said the new policy targeted advocates who flooded the office with thousands of complaints for similar violations, jamming its investigation pipeline with cases that could be resolved without exhausting staff and resources. But civil rights advocates worry that the office’s rejection of legitimate claims is the most obvious example to date of its diminishing role in enforcing civil rights laws in the nation’s schools.
The goal of the new manual, which took effect last month, is to help the office better manage its docket, investigations and resolutions, she said.
Among the changes implemented immediately is a provision that allows the Office for Civil Rights to dismiss cases that reflect “a pattern of complaints previously filed with O.C.R. by an individual or a group against multiple recipients,” or complaints “filed for the first time against multiple recipients that” place “an unreasonable burden on O.C.R.’s resources.”
So far, the provision has resulted in the dismissal of more than 500 disability rights complaints.
Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Office for Civil Rights under the Obama administration, said the new provision undermined the mission of the office. Unlike the Justice Department, the Education Department cannot pick and choose the cases it pursues. If the office has evidence that the law has been violated, it must open a case.
“The thing that scares me is when they get to say ‘we won’t open some cases because it’s too much for us,’ or ‘we don’t like the complainant,’ or ‘it’s not our week to work on that,’ you start to change the character of the office,” Ms. Lhamon said.
But Debora L. Osgood, a lawyer who worked for 25 years at the Office for Civil Rights and now consults with and represents schools on civil rights matters, praised the change.
She said the provision showed that the agency was “essentially taking the reins back for control of its complaint docket.”
Ms. Osgood said that in her experience, one person could clog the pipeline in each of the agency’s 12 regional offices, limiting investigators’ ability to respond to other complaints. It often frustrated investigators who prided themselves on being able to resolve complaints promptly, she said.
“In effect, it turned over the decision-making about how the agency would use many of its resources to a single individual, rather than to agency officials and staff charged with the responsibility for implementing the agency’s stated mission,” she said.
According to the Education Department, 41 percent of the 16,720 complaints filed in the 2016 fiscal year came from three people. The next year, of the 12,837 total cases, 23 percent of them did.
The department calls the complainants “frequent fliers.”
Marcie Lipsitt is proud to be one of them.
In the last two years, Ms. Lipsitt, a disability rights advocate in Michigan, has filed more than 2,400 complaints with the office against schools, departments of education, colleges and universities, libraries and other educational institutions across the country that have websites that people who are deaf or blind or who struggle with fine motor skills cannot navigate.
“No one even knew about this issue until I started filing,” Ms. Lipsitt said. “I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. I just wanted to raise awareness.”
She has secured more than 1,000 agreements with institutions that committed to bringing their websites into compliance with the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities and requires that electronic and information technologies be accessible to them.
In recent weeks, Ms. Lipsitt said, she has received notice that more than 500 cases, including active and open investigations, were dismissed. Each letter cited the new provision as the reason. The department will instead work with colleges on complying with web accessibility laws.
“But I won’t stop,” Ms. Lipsitt vowed, “because if I do, the story goes away.”
The new manual also eliminates an appeals process for Office for Civil Rights decisions — department officials said it usually resulted in the same outcome — and says complaints can no longer be filed on the basis of journal articles and news media reports.
The manual also drops all mention of investigators’ looking into “systemic issues.” However, the department said that the new provision would not apply to class-action-like complaints filed by groups.
The changes worry civil rights groups, which point out that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has already rescinded guidances meant to protect students against sexual assaults on campuses and black and transgender students against bias.
Neena Chaudhry, associate general counsel and senior adviser of education at the National Women’s Law Center, said that by filing dozens of complaints in recent decades, the group has been able to secure equal scholarship money and increased sports opportunities for female athletes. Now, as the organization shifts its focus to sexual assault, the department may prove less responsive.
Rachel M. Kleinman, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said that the new manual was “yet another avenue for O.C.R. to not seriously investigate systemic race discrimination.”
The group has filed complaints on behalf of large groups of black students it believes were being disproportionately affected by law enforcement policies. Already, one case has been closed by the DeVos administration, and the department declined to conduct a broader analysis.
“They seem to be closing all of the pathways for students to have their rights enforced by the federal government,” Ms. Kleinman said.
Ms. DeVos’s Office for Civil Rights has maintained that it wants to be more efficient and effective than it was under the Obama administration, which was known for its aggressive enforcement and broad investigations but was also accused of being overzealous and leaving cases languishing for years.
Ms. Osgood said such changes would be welcomed by the colleges and universities that she assists with federal civil rights investigations.
She said the changes showed that the department was willing to work with schools in a “more reasonable, more nimble and more expeditious manner.”
The department did not say how its investigators would determine that a case would place an “unreasonable burden” on its resources. However, just weeks after the new manual took effect, Congress allocated $8.5 million more in funding to the Office for Civil Rights, which Ms. DeVos had sought to cut, in order for the office to manage its caseload.
Ms. Lhamon said that, in her time in the office, she sought out ways to manage large volumes of cases that stemmed from one complainant, and she acknowledged that her office struggled with timely responses. But she said she could not come up with any measure that would not shortchange an investigation.
“There’s not a limitation on justice, and there’s not a limitation on how we perceive injustice,” Ms. Lhamon said. “To say you’ve reached your quota is to say that there’s somehow a cap on the number of children who might be harmed.”
The judgment is now final. No APPEAL WAS FILED BY DEPUTY JEREMY BANKS from U.S. District Court Judge Brian J. Davis' March 30, 2018 Order dismissing BANKS' bogus lawsuit against FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers.
An outrageous act of bullying and barratry and retaliation, Deputy BANKS' bogus civil rights lawsuit was stirred up by corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.
BANKS' bogus lawsuit against Agent Rodgers hung over the decorated special agent for four (4) years, four (4) months and seventeen (17_ days before it was dismissed, on Good Friday/Passover 2018.
Judge Davis joined another judge, County Court Judge Charles Tinlin, in finding that there was probable cause to believe that Deputy BANKS murdered Ms. Michelle O'Connell on September 2, 2010 in his home with his service weapon.
Now, Special Agent Rusty Rodgers will likely prevail on a claim for malicious prosecution of a civil lawsuit and racketeering against BANKS, et al. for filing the retaliatory Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, filed just a few days before the November 24, 2013 New York Times/PBS Frontline stories. Rodgers had earlier filed a counterclaim on that count, but withdrew it (the last element was not present until Judge Davis dismissed the case and the judgment became final when it was not appealed from within 30 days.
The FBI and USDOJ must investigate SHOAR, et al. for their coverup of the Michelle O'Connell case.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR needs to resign. Now.
Otherwise, his political machine needs to disown him.
A new Governor must appoint a truly independent prosecutor, not another conflicted, lackadaisical louche lackey Republican lout like BRADLEY KING, whose son SHOAR hired as a deputy at age nineteen, and who listed SHOAR as his number one reference when he unsuccessfully applied for a seat on the Florida Supreme Court in 2016.
Due to Golden Gate Killer coverage, the hour long ABC News 20/20 investigation of Deputy JEREMY BANKS and Sheriff DAVID SHOAR will NOT air on May 4, 2018. It will be rescheduled at Disney's whim.
"Let justice be done though the heavens fall." Now.
Watch ABC News 20/20 broadcast on the death of Michelle O'Connell, covered up by Sheriff DAVID SHOAR and State's Attorney RALPH LARIZZA, et pals, since 2010.
Here's story from ABC's website:
A family's battle against a sheriff to try to prove relative was killed
When St. Johns County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the St. Augustine, Florida, home of Jeremy Banks on Sept. 2, 2010, they found his 24-year-old girlfriend Michelle O’Connell lying on the floor with a gunshot wound to the head and dozens of prescription painkillers in her pocket.
“Please get someone to my house!” Banks had told the 911 operator. “Please. Send -- my girlfriend, I think she just shot herself. There’s blood everywhere!”
Deputies found Banks, a fellow St. John County sheriff’s deputy, crouched at the bathroom door, clutching his phone.
The gun was found on O’Connell’s left with the Tac light on the gun switched on. Later, pictures taken at the scene revealed a shot fired into the carpet.
Despite the efforts of the first responders, O’Connell was pronounced dead close to 11:48 p.m. that night.
Outside the home, some deputies and detectives started to conclude that O’Connell’s death was a suicide. Some of them were later interviewed as part of the investigation.
“I didn’t have any suspicions that it was anything other than suicide. I think that’s what we were all kind of discussing, but just making sure that we covered our bases,” St. Johns County Det. Jessica Hines is heard saying in a recording of the interview for the investigation.
“It appeared she had committed suicide,” St. Johns County Cpl. Mark Shand said in his interview.
OConnell Family
In the hours that followed, some fellow deputies took time out to console their coworker and friend, Banks. A squad car was used as a makeshift interview room as Banks was briefly questioned by Hines in an interview that was recorded.
During that interview, Banks said that he was sitting on his motorcycle in the garage when he heard a pop and rushed inside.
“The bedroom door was locked and I screamed her name again. I heard it go off a second time,” he told Hines.
Shortly after, Banks went to his parents’ home and O’Connell’s body was taken to the morgue.
A family’s doubt about a woman’s death
When sheriff’s deputies notified O’Connell’s family of her death, her mother Patty O’Connell told “20/20,” “They just said that she committed suicide, ‘your daughter killed herself. She committed suicide.’”
The O’Connell family found it hard to believe that Michelle O’Connell, a single mom who worked multiple jobs to support Alexis, her 4-year-old daughter, would take her own life.
OConnell Family
In fact, Michelle O’Connell had just landed her dream job at a day care center.
“She said, 'I'm going to the doctor and I'm not even sick, but I have insurance for once in my life,'" her boss Teresa Woodward remembered Michelle O’Connell excitedly saying when she gave her the job. Her death came as a total shock to her.
Michelle O’Connell’s brother Sean O’Connell and her sister Chrissy O’Connell were outraged when they realized that the sheriff’s office had spent only a few hours investigating before calling her death a suicide.
“The word suicide was thrown around right off the bat without any investigation,” Chrissy O’Connell told “20/20."
Two days after her death, medical examiner, Dr. Frederick Hobin, officially ruled Michelle’s death a suicide and despite the family’s initial efforts to have local authorities enlist an outside agency to investigate her death, St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar told them he would not be doing that.
Michelle O’Connell’s last hours
Through various interviews, authorities constructed a timeline of the last hours of Michelle O’Connell’s life.
Michelle O’Connell and Banks attended a Paramore concert that night in 2010 at the St. Augustine Amphitheater, and Banks told detectives the two argued before, during and after the show.
“We don’t get along. We fight all the time. I mean, it’s never, never bad fighting. It’s always just arguing,” Banks was recorded saying in an interview with St. Johns County sheriff’s office detectives.
According to Chrissy O’Connell, her sister wanted to break up with Banks, but decided to go to the show first since she already purchased the tickets in advance.
“She said, in true Michelle fashion, ‘I paid for the tickets. I’m going. I’m breaking up with him. I’m starting my life over,’” Chrissy O’Connell said. “She said, ‘I’ll be fine.’”
Anne Schindler
Michelle O’Connell’s brother was also seated with her and Banks at the concert and said Banks was “kind of withdrawn” during the show.
“I was like [to Banks], ‘Hey, do you mind scooting over, if you're not going to have fun at the concert with my sister, I'm definitely going to,’” Sean O’Connell recalled.
Hours before, Michelle and Chrissy O’Connell had lunch, where Chrissy O’Connell says her sister talked about looking for a new apartment and that she was breaking up with Banks.
“This was kind of a culmination. I was concerned with all the violence and how the relationship had turned,” Chrissy O’Connell said.
OConnell Family
Her family says there had been whispers about verbal and physical abuse within their relationship from both sides.
“She said, ‘There's going to be a fight because he's going to want me to go out after the concert,’” Chrissy O’Connell said. “And I said, ‘Don't even go to the concert.’ Because I knew Jeremy was rageful. I knew in my heart something was going to happen.”
Chrissy O’Connell was babysitting her sister’s daughter Alexis while they were at the concert. During the show, Chrissy O’Connell said her sister sent her text messages.
“Promise me one thing. Lexi will be happy and always have a good life,” Michelle O’Connell said in a text message to Chrissy O’Connell about her daughter.
“Promise you what?” Chrissy O’Connell wrote back.
“That no matter what, Lexi will always be safe and loved,” Michelle O’Connell responded to her sister.
By the end of the concert, Michelle O’Connell texted her sister, “I’ll be there soon.” But Michelle O’Connell never picked up Alexis.
Banks told detectives that on the way home from the amphitheater, “She said, ‘I’ll have my things out by this weekend.’ And I said, ‘Are we breaking up?’ She said yes. And I was like, ‘All right.’ I raised my voice. She raised her voice. We argued. But when we got to the house, we were fine,” Banks said in his interview with detectives.
OConnell Family
According to Banks, Michelle O’Connell was inside the house while he remained outside with two friends. At one point, Michelle O’Connell went outside to retrieve a makeup bag from the car and quickly returned inside.
After 10 to 20 minutes, Banks said his friends left and he sat alone in the garage when he heard the popping sound.
“I knew exactly what it was. Just instinct and I just said, ‘S---,’ and I ran inside. I started screaming her name. The bedroom door was locked, and I screamed her name again,” Banks told detectives. “I heard it go off again a second time. I ran into the living room. I grabbed the phone. I kicked the bedroom door in and I found her laying where she is.”
Inside the investigation into Michelle O’Connell’s death
Debra Maynard, a former St. Johns County sheriff’s deputy who was one of the first to arrive, questioned what she was hearing on the scene.
“Immediately, it was almost like they were taking Jeremy's word that she shot herself at that point,” Maynard said. “We were told it was a suicide. They automatically said it was a suicide, though we are trained to every scene is a homicide until proven otherwise. But they did immediately start calling it a suicide.”
OConnell Family
Maynard was later fired by the sheriff, reportedly for untruthfulness. She claims it was because the sheriff asked her to lie in an unrelated case and she refused.
A later police interview with Banks revealed he had gained access to a report about the investigation.
“I’ve already read the report. I know I probably shouldn’t have. I just wanted to know what went down on the other side,” Banks told a detective.
Some in the department later admitted to having doubts about what happened that night.
“When I first walked into that room, the first thought that went through my mind was, ‘This is not good for Jeremy,’” Sgt. Scott Beaver, who worked on the case, told investigators. “I was in the homicide unit for a few years, and it didn’t add up. But I didn’t do more investigation into this.”
Shoar, the St. Johns County Sheriff, would later acknowledge missteps were made by his department. Among them, deputies failed to canvas the neighborhood for witnesses, failed to interview the decedent’s family members and failed to isolate, interview and photograph Banks in a structured environment.
As for why Banks didn’t take Michelle O’Connell’s pulse or perform lifesaving measures, his attorney Mac McLeod told “20/20,” “I don't think his frame of mind was as a deputy at the time as I was saying. I think his frame of mind was completely shocked and freaked out.”
Michelle O’Connell’s family insists she wasn’t looking to take her own life.
In her appointment book, found in the car, Michelle O’Connell had signed up for CPR training for two days after her death. Michelle O’Connell also had plans to meet with her friend Mindy Fox the night she died.
In addition, the pills found in her pocket at the time of her death were from Banks’ prescription bottles, and none of the pills was found in her system. All the pills were accounted for.
While the sheriff’s department and Michelle’s family are at odds over how she died, it is undeniable that she was killed with Banks’ service weapon.
When asked how Banks secured his firearms in the home, McLeod said, “not well.”
“I think that the policy was to secure your firearm; which primarily for law enforcement officer means you put it in either a gun lock or in a secure place up higher so that children and things, and other people in the house can't get to it. However, in practice, like other law enforcement officers, he came in, would take his gun belt off, and would place it on a chair or place it somewhere else,” McLeod said.
It took four months, but Shoar finally bowed to pressure from the family, knowing that his department’s investigation had fallen short. He asked state investigators to take a fresh look at the case.
A second look at the death of Michelle O’Connell
Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) investigator Rusty Rodgers was assigned to the case. In his investigation, he found something that the sheriff’s department had not: Two women who say they heard two screams for help from a woman and two gunshots the night Michelle O’Connell died.
“The two girls heard her scream for help. If she was suicidal, if she was killing herself, she’s not going to scream for help,” Patty O’Connell said.
As to the two gunshots, Sheriff Shoar says it is not uncommon for some suicide victims to fire off a test shot before firing the fatal shot.
Following his investigation, Rodgers presented his findings to the medical examiner, Dr. Hobin. According to a recording of an interview with Dr. Hobin by Jacksonville reporter Anne Schindler, Hobin came to believe that Michelle O’Connell’s death was “probably a homicide.”
ABC News
Hobin filled out an amended death certificate and listed homicide as the manner of death.
“And I said that, based on this, I would amend the autopsy and change the manner of death from suicide to homicide,” Hobin said in the recording of his interview with Schindler. “I did that, but just internally. I mean, I didn't, I didn't send it out, it wasn't filed with anybody, wasn't sent to the funeral director, wasn't disclosed, anybody except the state attorney.”
Hobin didn’t officially file the amended death certificate, he told Schindler, because he was told to hold off by the state attorney while the investigation continued.
“So we had people almost, almost close to doing the right thing, and then we have people above them that said, “No, we’re gonna do it a little different.” Patty O’Connell said.
Hobin was later reprimanded by the state medical examiner's office for keeping that document and others at his home rather than at the medical examiner’s office.
A new medical examiner, Dr. Predrag Bulic, was then consulted. Bulic believes Michelle O’Connell’s death was a suicide.
In his investigation, Rodgers also called in a crime scene reconstructionist with four decades of experience, who performed a field test outside to try to see if Michelle shot herself or was shot by someone else, based on where the shell casings landed in his test. His conclusion: This was a homicide.
Shoar and Banks fought back. Shoar penned a 152-page review of the case, which is mostly a positive assessment of his department. He ridiculed the field test over the fact it was done in an open field and didn’t take into account the variables at the scene, such as walls, a ceiling, furniture and Michelle O’Connell’s extremities.
ABC News
Banks fought back in the form of filing a lawsuit against the FDLE and Rodgers for allegedly violating his civil rights. The case dragged on for years.
“They did their own investigation,” Sean O’Connell said. “They investigated, their, themselves, and then later on they finally bring in FDLE, who paints this picture that it's not jiving, it doesn't look good, and they don't like it. So they attack the FDLE agent and go after him hard, tooth and nail.”
In the absence of evidence that Michelle O’Connell’s death was not by suicide, special prosecutor Brad King broke the news to the O’Connells.
“He calls us in for a meeting and basically says, ‘There's not enough evidence.’ So our family was just pushed aside and this meeting was very hostile,” Chrissy O’Connell said. “My mom was devastated, and I think I've said before it was like the second worst day of my life. You know the first losing Michelle.”
Michelle O’Connell’s body is exhumed
Five and a half years after Michelle O’Connell’s death, her family had her body exhumed and got in touch with Dr. William Anderson, a forensic pathologist and former deputy chief medical examiner for Orange County, Florida. He was asked to examine the original autopsy report and to do a second autopsy.
While examining the x-rays taken during Michelle O’Connell’s original autopsy, Anderson noticed there was another injury on her body.
“When we did the exhumation… the jawbone was in two pieces, so indicates there was a fracture,” Anderson told “20/20.”
After Shoar learned of the exhumation, he issued a statement about the family, saying in part, “Molesting Michelle from her place of rest using some freelance type approach is beyond unconventional. It was reprehensible.”
“Even if he doesn’t agree with it, or whatever, he should in no way shape or form ever speak, public release, whatever to a family using those words ever,” Sean O’Connell said of Shoar’s statement. “It really shows his character.”
"Despite rumors and statements to the contrary, we did this totally pro bono,” Anderson said.
News of the fracture brought into question the work of Hobin, the original medical examiner. Banks' attorney Mac McLeod told "20/20" that Hobin “noted mandibular separation. It’s not in the autopsy report. It’s in his field notes.”
But Anderson said the fact that was it was left out of the autopsy report was “very disturbing.”
“Because if everything else is very carefully described, and you leave out a major finding out of your report, it’s not good practice,” Anderson said of Hobin’s omission of the fracture from the autopsy report.
It’s significant because Anderson said the fracture reveals how Michelle O’Connell could have died.
“The only explanation that I can see that's reasonable is that, uh, there was another force, a blow to the chin that broke the mandible prior to the time the gunshot wound was inflicted,” he said. “In my opinion, it was a homicide.”
Banks has always denied hurting Michelle the night of her death and he has never been charged with a crime. He remains a sheriff’s deputy with the St. Johns County office.
“What the family wants to believe or what the theory … being proposed was… that she must have been hit really hard,” Banks’ attorney McLeod said, adding that there "was a problem with that" because no medical examiner "worth his salt ... will tell you that in an intraoral gunshot wound, such as this, with a high-powered weapon that more often than not you expect to see mandibular separation.”
Anderson said it is possible in some cases that a shot could split the jaw, but he doesn't believe that's case with Michelle O’Connell, based on the evidence he reviewed.
“There was a gunshot wound to the mouth that put a hole in the tongue but didn't do any other damage to the teeth, to the gums, to the floor of the mouth, the very soft tissue that basically would've been destroyed if there had been enough force from that blast to break the jaw,” Anderson said.
McLeod argued against that, saying if O’Connell had been hit, “you would see bruising. You would see abrasion. You’d see something. There’s nothing.”
Anderson said he had conducted about 8,000 to 9,000 autopsies over his career and "if you die quickly enough, you will not have bruising.”
Having gotten the answers the family was looking for, Michelle O’Connell’s body was returned to her grave, but her death is still an open question for the family.
Where the case of Michelle O’Connell’s death stands today
Last year, the Florida Medical Examiners Commission reprimanded Hobin and Bulic after determining they had mishandled some of the components of the investigation.
“[Hobin] brought some material home and hadn’t kept it, you know, in the medical examiner’s office,” reporter Anne Schindler said. “Bulic, I think, had just showed autopsy photos that he wasn’t supposed to show to nonfamily members.”
Hobin was also called out for his poor recordkeeping in failing to document the jawbone fracture in his autopsy report.
The medical examiners and a states attorney declined to comment for this report.
The sheriff's office told "20/20" in a statement that "this case has been extensively reviewed by numerous investigations" who "have continually ruled the death a suicide."
The latest development in the case is that just weeks ago, a judge found that FDLE agent Rusty Rodgers had probable cause to detain Banks for homicide and dismissed Banks’ civil lawsuit in Rodgers’ favor.
The dismissal of the civil lawsuit has reinvigorated the O’Connell family’s quest for justice. Michelle O’Connell’s mother hopes that Gov. Rick Scott assigns a new special prosecutor.
The governor’s office told “20/20” they will always listen to the O’Connell family’s concerns. The family is also crusading for a law that would prevent departments from investigating one of their own.
“Because they work together, and you know, they look out for each other. I just feel like something's got to change,” Sean O’Connell said.
McLeod said the case has ruined Banks’ life.
“His neighbors that walk up and down the street at 2 [a.m.] at night and will scream at him, ‘murderer,’” McLeod said.
But Michelle O’Connell’s family said it’s her daughter Alexis, now 12, who feels the biggest void.
“You can't grieve until you, um, get justice,’ Patty O’Connell said. “You have to have your justice. And it never goes away.”
Like an Energizer Bunny, nonfeasance, misfeasance, malfeasance and corruption in St. Augustine Beach keeps "going and going and going."
St. Augustine Beach City "Manager" BRUCE MAX ROYLE has produced another phony budget document: a putative "budget" for the proposed December 31, 2018 "Beach Blast Off!"
It includes a mere $500 for the Fancy Bears "V.I.P. Tent" for 100 people at St. Augustine Beach -- an all-white V.I.P. tent in past years. There is talk that the alcohol-fueled New Year's Eve event will be "privatized." See below.
You paid for it, dear reader.
It's our money.
For those who are laughing, here's more: BRUCE MAX ROYLE's reply to Merrill Paul Roland's concerns, including a postscript urging Mr. Roland to avoid laughing too loud lest he get a "hernia.":
-----Original Message----- From: Max Royle To: MERRILL ; Comm George ; Comm England ; Comm Kostka ; Comm O'Brien ; Comm Samora Cc: michelspawlowski1 ; Mrbailey71 ; rvbailey ; Robert Hardwick ; Thomas Ashlock ; Todd Smith ; Ed Martinez ; Dean Henry ; Hala Laquidara ; Melissa Burns ; sheldon.gardner ; thomasfreynolds ; easlavin ; DOCTOR EDDIE ; Joseph Howell ; Jane West ; Roberta Odom ; Steve Mitherz ; Anthony Johns ; Jim Wilson Sent: Thu, May 3, 2018 9:00 am Subject: RE: BEACH BLAST B.S.💸💸💸💸💸
Mr. Roland,
First, there aren’t 25,000 people all at once in the pier park. People come and go. Also, many of the thousands are on the beach.
Second, the City is outsourcing the event. The organization selected to manage the beer/wine sales and other event activities will have to provide insurance.
Third, the TDC grant, if the City receives it, mandates that half the grant amount, $7,500, be spent on advertising.
Fourth, the Events Coordinator obtains in-kind donations from a sponsor or sponsors for the VIP area.
Max
P.S. Please don’t laugh too hard. You might get a hernia.
Javier Fernandez beat Republican Andrew Vargas, despite being outspent by at least 2-1 in a swing seat where voters split their tickets between both parties in the 2016 elections. | Facebook
‘Let the blue wave continue’: Democrats notch 4th Florida bellwether win
In the fourth and final Florida bellwether election since 2016, the Democratic candidate beat the Republican in a contested race, providing the best evidence yet that the GOP is in retreat heading into the midterm elections under an unpopular president.
On Tuesday, in Florida’s 114th state House District in Miami, Javier Fernandez beat Republican Andrew Vargas by about 4.1 percentage points, despite being outspent by at least 2-1 in a swing seat where voters split their tickets between both parties in the 2016 elections.
“Let the Blue Wave Continue!" crowed the chairwoman of Florida’s Democratic Party, Terrie Rizzo.
"Tonight's special election victory is the latest of a string of special election victories for Florida Democrats which shows us that after nearly 20 years of failed Republican leadership — people are ready for change,” she said in a written statement.
Fernandez’s win follows a shocking February victory by Democrat Margaret Good in Florida’s 72nd House District, which voted for President Donald Trump. Democrats also won Florida’s 40th Senate District in Miami-Dade and St. Petersburg’s mayoral race. Those last two elections had Democratic-leaning electorates with significant minority populations, unlike the 72nd in Sarasota and, to a lesser degree, the 114th District.
The win was also big for Florida Democrats because they finally started to build a bench by electing their second Cuban-American Democrat from Miami-Dade County to the Florida Legislature, where the 42-year-old Fernandez will join state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez.
Cuban-Americans dominate the power structure in Florida’s most-populous county, though they’re overwhelmingly Republican. But as the older generation gives way to second- and third-generation Cuban-Americans, political observers have been predicting for years that more would become Democrats.
In 2016, the 114th chose Democrat Daisy Baez by 2 percentage points, but Sen. Marco Rubio — who used to represent parts of the district — won it by 4.3 percentage points. Trump, though, lost it by 14 points.
The special election was triggered after Baez resigned for lying to investigators about her residency in the district.
The election was more about bragging rights for both political parties, because the state legislative session is over. No special session is likely to be called, so the winner, Fernandez, will have to run again in November anyway.
By registration, Republicans outnumber Democrats by about 1 percentage point. But independents make up roughly 31 percent of the voters. And Tuesday’s election showed the swing voters of the swing district favored the Democrat.
Despite Trump’s unpopularity, Democrats didn’t play it up — a sign, they say, that the atmosphere in the nation’s largest swing state is toxic for the GOP.
Still, Republicans say Trump’s approval ratings are slowly improving and they hope that one of his closest allies, Gov. Rick Scott, will be able to fight the headwinds in his race against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson thanks to the governor’s improving poll numbers and the unprecedented $5 million in TV ads that he’s already dropping.
But Juan Peñalosa, the executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said the wins show that Florida Democrats’ get-out-the-vote field program is working and that Republicans can’t keep up on the ground or when it comes to the message they’re delivering to voters.
“These wins are more than just Democrats having the ‘wind at our backs.’ We're winning because we are running smarter campaigns and speaking to the issues,” he said. “Voters are paying attention now and they are believing in our message, our plan and joining us in holding Republicans accountable by voting them out of office.”
Farther north, in another special state House election, Republicans hung on to their seat when Josie Tomkow quickly dispatched Democrat Ricky Shirah in Florida’s 39th House District, a GOP stronghold the Democrats didn’t contest.
While the Florida House is likely to stay Republican for years, Fernandez’s win bolstered hopes that Democrats could be closer to taking back the Florida Senate if they can flip five seats in the 40-member chamber.
Republicans lauded Fernandez. And they sounded spooked at the Democratic gains in the Legislature, where the GOP remains in charge of the Florida House and Senate, as well as the governor’s mansion and Florida Cabinet.
“@Javierfor114 is a class act and a good man. His colleagues will see it too and soon, and no doubt in my mind leadership is in his future,” Alberto Martinez, former chief of staff for Rubio, said on Twitter. “Only real question is whether he’ll be minority leader or [Florida House] Speaker.”
HERE'S THE 2016 ELECTION in bumper stickers from St. Johns County, Flori-DUH, which former County Commission Chair Ben Rich once called "one of the last bastions of the Ku Klux Klan."
St. Johns County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK ably interrogated by citizen watchdog Tom Reynolds, at a rare appearance by the former in the lair of the latter,
St. Augustine Beach City Commission.
(Once upon a time, at a meeting of the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors in Knoxville, Tennessee, local reporter, wit and columnist Jim Dykes asked Chairman S. David Freeman, "Where'd you get those funny shoes?" When I began law school in Memphis, I learned that one of my new classmates had, in fact, sold Freeman the "funny shoes.).
Men interrupting and man-spraining to women, even on the Supreme Court. Hideous. Here in St. Augustine, one chauvinistic former Commissioner allegedly once hollered out when my friend Diane Mills entered the Alcazar Room, "We have to listen to that bitch again!?"
Current City of St. Augustine VICE MAYOR TODD DAVID NEVILLE a/k/a "ODD TODD" habitually interrupts his four female colleagues mid-sentence. Mayor Nancy Shaver recently gaveled "ODD TODD" for his "personal attack" on me, but she and her colleagues have been remarkably tolerant to the antisocial energumen, who sits at the far end of the Commission table:
During the Senate hearings on whether he should become the next associate justice of the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch maintained iron discipline in refusing to commit himself to any position that could count against him. Gorsuch maintained a steadfastly calm demeanor, but he showed his cards in one regard: He could not help repeatedly interrupting the liberal female senators. In this way, he proved himself to be well qualified to sit on the highest judicial bench. Our new empirical study shows that the male justices interrupt the female justices approximately three times as often as they interrupt each other during oral arguments. And the conservative justices interrupt the liberal justices more than twice as often as vice versa.
We examined the transcripts of 15 years of Supreme Court oral arguments, finding that women do not have an equal opportunity to be heard on the highest court in the land. In fact, as more women join the court, the reaction of the male justices has been to increase their interruptions of the female justices. Many male justices are now interrupting female justices at double-digit rates per term, but the reverse is almost never true. In the last 12 years, during which women made up, on average, 24% of the bench, 32% of interruptions were of the female justices, but only 4% were by the female justices.
These results are not limited to the current Supreme Court. We conducted an in-depth analysis of the 1990, 2002, and 2015 terms to see whether the same patterns held when there were fewer female justices on the court. We found a consistently gendered pattern: In 1990, with one woman on the bench (former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor), 35.7% of interruptions were directed at her; in 2002, 45.3% were directed at the two female justices (O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg); in 2015, 65.9% of all interruptions on the court were directed at the three female justices on the bench (Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan). With more women on the court, the situation only seems to be getting worse.
Prior research in linguistics and psychology has shown that women are routinely interrupted by men, be it in one-on-one conversations or in groups, at work or in social situations. Interruptions are attempts at dominance, and so the more powerful a woman becomes, the less often she should be interrupted. Yet even though Supreme Court justices are some of the most powerful individuals in the country, female justices find themselves consistently interrupted not only by their male colleagues but also by their subordinates: the male advocates who are attempting to persuade them.
Despite strict rules mandating that advocates stop talking immediately when a justice begins speaking, interruptions by male advocates account for approximately 10% of all interruptions that occur in court (excluding justices interrupting advocates, which is standard procedure). In contrast, interruptions by female advocates account for approximately 0%. The problem was particularly observable when, in 2015, male advocates interrupting Justice Sotomayor was the most common form of interruptions of any justice, accounting for 8% of all interruptions in the court. Justice Sotomayor is also the court’s only woman of color.
Can this pattern be explained by other factors? Of the 113 justices to have served on the Supreme Court, only four have been women, and three of those four were appointed by Democratic presidents. We expected that partisan differences could account for some portion of the interruptions. Since justices do not always vote in accordance with the party of their nominating president, we used Martin-Quinn scores, the most common way to analyze judicial ideology, to determine how liberal or conservative each justice was. We found that conservative justices disproportionately interrupt liberal justices: 70% of interruptions were of liberals; only 30% were of conservatives. In addition, advocates interrupt liberal justices more than they interrupt conservative justices. Despite this pattern, gender is the stronger factor in interruption: In 1990 the moderately conservative Justice O’Connor was interrupted 2.8 times as often as the average male justice. (It is worth noting that the results were not driven by Antonin Scalia, despite his reputation as a particularly pugnacious justice.)
Two of the three sitting female justices, Kagan and Sotomayor, are the most junior justices on the court. But, once again, seniority does not explain the gender pattern. Although senior justices do interrupt junior justices more frequently than vice versa, and the difference is statistically significant, gender is approximately 30 times more powerful than seniority. The most junior justice on the court will now be Gorsuch, and we expect the greater importance of gender over seniority to become even more apparent.
Length of tenure does matter in one particular respect: Time on the court gives women a chance to learn how to avoid being interrupted — by talking more like men. Early in their tenure, female justices tend to frame questions politely, using prefatory words such as “May I ask,” “Can I ask,” “Excuse me,” or the advocate’s name. This provides an opportunity for another justice to jump in before the speaker gets to the substance of her question.
We found that women gradually learn to set aside such politeness. All four of the female justices have reduced their tendency to use this polite phrasing. Justice Sotomayor adjusted within just a few months. Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg gradually became less and less polite over decades on the court, eventually using the polite phrases approximately one-third as much as they did initially. Justice Kagan is still learning: She uses polite language more than twice as often as the average man, although half as often as she did in 2010. We do not see a similar trend with the men, because male justices rarely use these polite speech patterns, even when they first enter the court. It is the women who adapt their speech patterns to match those of the men.
These behavior patterns are important, as oral arguments shape case outcomes. When a female justice is interrupted, her concern is often left unaddressed, which limits her ability to influence the outcome of the case. Women changing their questioning techniques should not be the only response to this problem. The chief justice should play a larger role as referee, enforcing the rule that prohibits advocates from interrupting the justices, and preventing an interrupting justice from continuing.
Our research aligns with previous research that has shown that women get talked over much more often than men in all sorts of settings, likely due to unconscious bias. What our findings additionally suggest is that there is no point at which a woman is high-status enough to avoid being interrupted.
Tonja Jacobi is a professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
Dylan Schweers is a J.D. candidate at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
More coverage from The New York Times on land ownership secrecy. I have repeatedly asked local governments in St. Johns County, Florida to inquire of LLC mouthpieces to name all of the beneficial owners of the properties in quo. Not once has any Commissioner made asked the question. Think of it -- how many Russian mobsters own real estate in St. Johns County, with our all-Republican County Commissioners winking at them?
Anonymous Owner, L.L.C.: Why It Has Become So Easy to Hide in the Housing Market
A way to protect property owners from personal liability has also turned out to be handy for enabling problematic behavior, like laundering money or being a bad landlord.
Parcel surveys of Memphis have revealed that a majority of the most blighted properties belong to L.L.C.s. Many have effectively gone out of business without selling the homes, leaving their ownership in limbo.CreditRobert Rausch for The New York Times
When Sean Hannity, the popular Fox News host, was revealed this month to be a property owner and landlord of considerable scale, it highlighted how opaque the housing market has become.
Owning real estate in limited liability companies, as The Guardian reported that Mr.Hannity does, is a perfectly legal and increasingly popular practice. But the whiff of secrecy — and the umbrage Mr. Hannity has taken after the secret got out — speaks to the growing role of L.L.C.s in the nation’s housing market.
L.L.C.s shield property owners from personal liability while obscuring their identities. In some cases, so much anonymity also enables money laundering, and it can mean that tenants struggle to hold landlords accountable, that cities fail to fix blight and that researchers can’t answer basic questions about the housing market.
As much as people may want to keep their financial dealings private, the housing market has long been an unusually transparent place.
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“We basically have a property system where you’re supposed to be able to look up who owns what property,” said Dan Immergluck, a professor at Georgia State University. “Our English system of property recording doesn’t really give you that privacy. People can look up what my property taxes are any time they want.”
L.L.C.s have eroded that expectation. There is little good national data tracking the rise of L.L.C.s. But in 2015, according to the Rental Housing Finance Survey from the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development,about 15 percent of all rental properties were owned by L.L.C.s, limited liability partnerships or limited partnerships. That represented one-third of all rental units, and that can include single-family houses or apartment buildings.
Put another way: 92 percent of rental properties in America back in 1991 were held by individual owners whose names tenants could easily know. By 2015, that number had fallen to 74 percent, driven largely by the growth of L.L.C.s, although the market today includes other kinds of institutional investors as well.
In the single-family market, which includes investors who built rental empires after the housing crash and others who’ve used empty properties to store wealth, about 9 percent of home sales last year were to L.L.C.s, according to ATTOM Data Solutions, a real estate data company. That’s twice the share a decade ago. The rent-to-own company Vision Property Management, for example, has bought homes across 24 states through nearly two dozen L.L.C.s.
In his own research, Mr. Immergluck tried to identify the largest buyers of foreclosed properties in the Atlanta area. But because one unidentified buyer could be behind many L.L.C.s, it’s hard to know who is acquiring the most property, or which property owners are behind the most code violations or the most evictions.
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That makes it impossible for city officials to aim scarce resources at the most problematicowners. And it makes it hard for researchers to know, for example, if property has become concentrated among fewer owners.
Because the stakes are so high and the spillovers significant, there has always been a public element to private property, said Susan Pace Hamill, a law professor at the University of Alabama who has written about L.L.C.s since the late 1980s.
“Should tenants have a right to know who they’re renting from?” she said. “Should cities have a right to know who owns the property? The answer is a resounding yes.”
L.L.C.s today hide what should be public information, she argues.
“I am quite disturbed by that,” she said. “Having participated in the evolution of L.L.C.s from their early days, I feel like they’re being abused.”
Wyoming passed the first L.L.C. statute in 1977 at the prodding of oil and gas interests, creating an entity with the liability protections of a corporation without the tax responsibilities of one. Hardly anyone took advantage of the tool, and few states followed until the I.R.S. blessed L.L.C.s a decade later. They then quickly became the entity of choice for all kinds of businesses, and by the mid-1990s, all 50 states had L.L.C. laws.
In Milwaukee, according to research by a Harvard doctoral student, Adam Travis, L.L.C.s have grown to about a quarter of the rental market in the two decades since they became legal in the state.
The original idea was never specifically about real estate, and anonymity wasn’t particularly the appeal. But over time, Ms. Hamill said, state laws have made it easier to conceal who’s behind L.L.C.s. So they have simultaneously grown more common and less transparent.
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L.L.C.s are required to list a registered agent who can receive legal and government notifications, but they’re often not required to name the people who financially benefit from the investments.
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Luxury condominiums in New York, like these in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, are popular with foreign billionaires, many of whom conceal their identity behind L.L.C.s.CreditEmon Hassan for The New York Times
The downsides of all of this have become clear, at both high and low ends of the market. In expensive cities like New York and Miami, L.L.C.s have helped foreign investors launder money through luxury condo purchases. In poorer cities like Memphis and Milwaukee, they have enabled investors to walk away from vacant properties and tax bills.
For renters, or tenants mired in rent-to-own contracts, these entities mean they often don’t know whom they’re dealing with — or who’s evicting them.
These consequences worry even real estate lawyers who advise their clients to use L.L.C.s.
“The lawyer in me that represents clients says ‘privacy, secrecy, keep my people out of the papers,’ ” said William Callison, a lawyer in Denver who specializes in L.L.C. and affordable housing law. “The policy guy in me says, ‘Well, wait a second.’ ”
Why? “Because good things happen in the light,” he said, “and bad things happen in the dark.”
In Memphis, parcel surveys of the city have revealed that a majority of the most blighted properties belong to L.L.C.s. Many have effectively gone outof business without selling the homes, leaving their ownership in limbo. When the city has tried to hold some responsible, there is no one to contact — the duties of those listed as registered agents having expired along with the companies.
“The liability protections we’re talking about are liability protections from external forces,” said Steve Barlow, a Memphis lawyer who directs Neighborhood Preservation, Inc., a group trying to fight blight there. L.L.C.s are supposed to personally shield owners from, say, a tenant who breaks an ankle on the property. “It shouldn’t be a protection from you, yourself abandoning it,” he said.
There should be a way, he and Ms. Hamill believe, to keep the liability and tax benefits of L.L.C.s without all the secrecy. Unless or until there is, cities like Memphis are left with properties no one wants to buy and frustration from the public.
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“I hear that in community meetings all the time: ‘What’s being done with this property? Why can’t you guys do something with it?’ ” said Robert Knecht, the director of public works in Memphis. “You have to explain to them our job is to get the owner to court.”
But it is no easy thing to get a faceless company to court.
Matthew Goldstein contributed reporting.
Emily Badger writes about cities and urban policy for The Upshot from the San Francisco bureau. She's particularly interested in housing, transportation and inequality — and how they're all connected. She joined the Times in 2016 from The Washington Post.@emilymbadger
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Opaque World of Ownership by L.L.C..
Professor Butler is now a member of the St. Augustine Confederate Monument Contextualization Committee, which is doing stellar work on the text placing the 1873/1879 monument in context.
St. Augustine's Civil Rights MovementProfessor Michael Butler talked about the Civil Rights Movement in St. Augustine, Florida, and visited some of the key locations of the movement. He spoke about the place where police arrested Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as the Slave Market, where violence related to civil rights protests took place.
C-SPAN’s Local Content Vehicles (LCVs) made a stop in their “2015 LCV Cities Tour” in St. Augustine, Florida, from March 22-26 to feature the history and literary life of the community. Working with the Comcast Cable local affiliate, they visited literary and historic sites where local historians, authors, and civic leaders were interviewed. The history segments air on American History TV (AHTV) on C-SPAN3 and the literary events/non-fiction author segments air on BookTV on C-SPAN2. close
No investigative reporting here. At The St. Augustine Record, they should post a sign: "no iconoclasts need apply." Only tepid, tedious, tiresome puff pieces about local governments. Sad. Wonder why?
HIDE CAPTION
St. Augustine Beach City Hall on Friday. [PETER WILLOTT/THE RECORD]
The city of St. Augustine Beach’s debt is manageable, but only if it doesn’t grow.
As early budget talks gear up, City Manager Max Royle is advising commissioners not to add any new programs that would require new debt, though nothing like that has been proposed.
“The point at this time is, no more,” Royle said. “We should not do any more debt.”
Commissioners will be able to set the tone for the city’s finances next fiscal year at a budget meeting on Tuesday — the regular meeting is Monday. Along with avoiding more debt, officials are focused in part on building the city’s reserves and preparing for possible hits to revenue.
Debt has grown to one of the largest categories of spending in the city. From fiscal years 2013 to 2017, the cost of debt as a percentage of the total budget grew from 9.66 percent to 36.6 percent, according to the city.
The city’s total debt is about $8.8 million, with close to $3.5 million of that coming from the city’s purchase of land for Ocean Hammock Park.
“It was the last vacant oceanfront piece of land in our city that could be protected from development,” Royle said. “There’s nothing else, other than the Pier Park, which is owned by the county. This is the city’s commitment to preserving the maritime hammock and doing something to at least show for future generations we have done within our means the best we could to set aside some land in its natural state.”
The city levies two millage rates, 2.3992 to go toward government services and .5 that goes toward debt on the land purchases.
Other debts include leases for police cars and bond refinancing. About $1.9 million of the debt is being paid by St. Johns County utility revenue for a sewer project, though the infrastructure will be on the city’s books until it’s paid off, according to city Chief Financial Officer Melissa Burns.
The city could, according to its Debt Management Policy, take on debt equal to up to 2 percent of the total assessed property value in the city. Two percent of the taxable value is more than $23.4 million, and total assessed value is typically higher than that, according to the city.
But, “We don’t have the funding sources [to take on more debt] unless we do an additional levy,” Royle said.
The city is considering adding a collection fee for solid waste. But that’s not to take on new debt. Rather, it’s to recoup more of the costs associated with the solid waste program.
Royle said the city’s current debt level is at its largest.
“Years ago, debt was a dirty word. The Commission for years resisted [taking on any],” he said.
Commissioners preferred to pay as they went from savings. They bought the land for the current City Hall building and police station out of savings, and they built the police station out of savings. But commissioners realized that a new City Hall couldn’t be built with what remained in savings, he said.
“So that’s when we decided to join with the Florida League of Cities that does the issuance for bonds of small cities,” Royle said.
While it takes up a chunk of the budget, debt isn’t keeping the city from providing basic services and maintenance, Royle said. But there are other issues associated with it. The city used savings to help pay for the land.
“The unrestricted savings the city has for its general fund is way down. It’s the lowest it’s ever been since I’ve been here,” Royle said.
The unassigned fund balance can be tapped into in emergencies, though the city would use other funds with specific uses before using the savings, according to Burns.
The total in the unassigned fund balance is $60,944, according to Burns. It should be $317,044 to meet the city’s policy of having 20 percent of annual operating expenses set aside.
Even if a disaster were to occur now, the city would be able to operate for several months, Royle said. The city expects to get a $1.5 million state grant in June to replenish its unassigned fund balance, according to Burns. That grant is a partial reimbursement for the purchase of Ocean Hammock property.
Mayor Undine George said she doesn’t have major concerns about the city’s financial health.
“We’re getting back into the place we were and where we planned to be when we took on [the Ocean Hammock property],” George said.
In addition to managing debt, the city is also preparing for a possible increase in homestead exemption if voters pass the measure in November.
“Our debt levels are lower than the recommended thresholds, and they should be,” she said. “We’re all kind of waiting and watching to see what happens in November with the revisions that might impact our income stream, but if we need to tighten our belt we can do it — we’ve done it before.”
St. Johns County needs a charter, with post-employment restrictions on employees, full ethics disclosures on officials and developers, an Inspector General and Ombuds, with suzerainty over both cities, Airport, Mosquito Control and all county operations, including Sheriff, Election Supervisor, Clerk of Courts and Comptroller, Property Appraiser and Tax Collector. Enough no-bid contracts, political patronage hiring, waste, fraud, abuse, misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, flummery, dupery and... » more
Maladroit mendacious SAB City "Manager" Bruce Max Royle needs to retire. Thank him and give him a couple of plaques, and a sheet cake. National search needed for new City Manager. Now.
THE COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE HAS LED THIS CITY INTO DEBT WITH HIS POOR MANAGEMENT!
CITY EMPLOYEES RECEIVING THE CADILLAC HEALTH INSURANCE FULLY PAID by the CITY TAXPAYERS IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY AT ITS WORST! NO OTHER CITY and DEFINITELY NOT IN PRIVATE SECTOR DOES THIS HAPPEN!
CITY HALL EMPLOYEES ARE WAY OVERPAID and THEY DON'T COME ANY LAZIER THEN ROYLE!
CITY COMMISSIONERS GEORGE, ENGLAND, SAMORA, and CITY CONTRACTED JIM WILSON RECEIVING $10,000.00 GIFTS AT THE BEACH BLAST IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY AT ITS WORST!
GIVING TRASH PICK-UP SUBSIDIES TO SEA COLONY RESIDENTS IS CORRUPTION AT A VERY HIGH PRICE AND IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY.
GIVING A TRASH PICK-UP SUBSIDY FOR COMMISSIONERS MARGRET ENGLAND S PERSONAL HOME and COMMISSIONER UNDINE GEORGE HOME & BUSINESS IS WRONG AND NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED WITH CRIMINAL PROSECUTION!
CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE HAS BEEN GIVING THE ST AUGUSTINE BEACH CIVIC ASSOCIATION OVER $200,000.00 IN SERVICES AT NO CHARGE OVER THE LAST 12 YEARS! THAT IS NOT ONLY FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY, BUT SERIOUS FELONIES COMMITTED BY BRUCE MAX ROYLE! WHERE ARE THE CITY COMMISSIONERS WHEN IT COMES TO OVERSEEING THE WORK by CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE?
THEY ARE LOOKING THE OTHER WAY BECAUSE of COMMISSIONERS RICH RINGHAVER O'Brien, COMMISSIONER and LAWYER UNDINE GEORGE, COMMISSIONER and LAWYER MARGRET ENGLAND and the NEWLY APPOINTED UNETHICAL COMMISSIONER and LOCAL GREASY SPOON RESTAURANT OWNER (W/SUPER LOUSY FOOD)... DONALD SAMORA ... ALL ARE TAKING FROM OUR CITY or AS THEY LIKE TO SAY ..." WE ARE GETTING OURS! "
THE GOOD NEWS IS ...
THERE WILL BE THREE NEW CITY COMMISSIONERS GETTING ELECTED THIS FALL and HOPEFULLY THE FIRST ORDER of THEIR SMART GOVERNING WILL BE TO FIRE BRUCE MAX ROYLE!« less
Why wouldn't the multi-million dollar St. Johns County Council on Aging take on this work? Why do we have to rely on nonexistent "serve" from a grantee two counties away? Needs investigative reporting.
‘Nobody bothered to call’: Local attorney, judge question lack of public guardianship service for county By Jared Keever Posted at 6:42 AM Updated at 6:42 AM St. Augustine Record
The agency that receives funding from the state of Florida to arrange for and provide guardianship services for the area’s elderly who find themselves in need is not providing those services in St. Johns County and at least one other county in the 7th Judicial Circuit.
“I don’t currently have any cases in St. Johns County,” MaryLou McKeon, senior vice president for guardianship and client services at the Volusia County Council on Aging, told The Record on Friday.
That was much the same thing she told Circuit Judge Michael Traynor during a guardianship hearing in a St. Johns County courtroom in April.
Traynor spoke during that hearing with both McKeon, who appeared in person, and Florida Department of Elder of Affairs Office of Public & Professional Guardians Deputy Director Amelia Milton, who appeared by phone.
He started off the hearing by explaining that he had entered an order for the Volusia County COA to assist as a limited guardian for the ward in the case.
“And I understand they are supposed to usually offer to do that,” Traynor said. “However, my concern is that they are not offering to do things in St. Johns County and they have made it clear I think in the past they don’t do things in St. Johns County.”
The OPPG, according to its website, “appoints local public guardian offices as directed by statute to provide guardianship services to persons who do not have adequate income or assets to afford a private guardian and there is no willing family or friend to serve.”
While agencies in other parts of the state may differ, the Volusia County COA, McKeon said on Friday, is able to provide services only for senior citizens and those suffering from dementia.
The state OPPG website also says that the Volusia County agency is supposed to serve in that capacity for Volusia, Flagler, Putnam and St. Johns counties — the four counties of the 7th Circuit. What Traynor said he was trying to understand through that hearing was why they don’t seem to be providing any of those services in St. Johns and Putnam counties and what could be done to fix that.
Milton, who couldn’t be reached before press time for comment, and McKeon, said essentially that the limited funding they do receive from the state Legislature doesn’t make it possible to expand their services beyond Flagler County.
“We are very aware of the limited resources so we do understand and sympathize with the lack of resources that might be available in that area,” Milton told Traynor. “It certainly is something that we are working really hard over here to address.”
“But unfortunately because our resources are so limited we don’t currently have the funding to support our public program for taking more cases in that area at this time.”
For the 2017-18 fiscal year, which ends June 30, the Volusia COA received about $87,000 in state funds. It received other funding too, but the bulk of its money for guardianship services — $126,000 of it — came from Volusia County itself for local cases.
Historically, that has been the case, McKeon explained. Until the state, around 2014, bumped up funding to expand the guardianship program to all 67 counties, all of the Volusia County COA funding for guardianship was local, for local cases.
When they did receive that first influx of state cash, McKeon said, it was made clear to the state that the money would only really allow them to expand into Flagler County.
She said Friday that she thinks her office is handling one Flagler case right now. It has handled others, she said, though the wards have passed away.
But St. Johns County attorney, Tance Roberts, who handles a number of area probate and guardianship cases and filed a “friend of the court” notice to appear at the April hearing and speak about both St. Johns and Putnam counties’ need for the OPPG’s services, said during the hearing that she couldn’t see where the Volusia County COA had made much of an effort with its extra money to help.
According to Roberts’ reading of funding reports, the state spent roughly $3 million in 2014 to fund what she called the “expansion program.”
“And I would have thought, the expansion program, that those funds would have been used for somebody to pick up the phone and call the one sitting judge in the probate division in St. Johns County and/or the attorneys that have been practicing in this area — and are well known in the communities by the judges and the community — to be practicing in this area,” Roberts said. “But we heard nothing.”
Had they called, Roberts said, she and others likely would have stepped forward to help, as they often do when they become aware of local cases.
“But nobody bothered to call,” she said. “Nobody bothered to say, ‘Oh by the way, we’ve been appointed to now represent all 67 counties. Or we’ve been now appointed to represent you St. Johns County, and you Putnam County and you Flagler County.’”
McKeon said Friday though that nobody has bothered to call her either and didn’t even know what the needs were in St. Johns or Putnam counties, though it would be something that she, and perhaps Milton, would be willing to work with local officials on to try and figure out.
Which is much what Traynor said he thought should have been done in the first place.
He said in April’s hearing he was concerned that the 7th Circuit as a whole may not be getting funding comparative to other circuits, but also that the resources, or even lack of resources, for the program at the Volusia County COA didn’t seem to have been properly communicated throughout the circuit so others could try and help locally, as appears to have been the case with local funding in Volusia County.
Milton, later in the hearing, pointed out that the state money “was not specifically allocated by county to serve specific amounts of cases but rather to assure that there is a public guardian in that area and to try and fund the public guardians to take on more cases with the limited dollars that they have.”
Instead, she said, the money was meant to fund the public guardian office to “administratively serve people at no cost” to the ward and the people that they serve. That means the money is meant to fund the building space, case managers and other administrative costs so that they can take on cases.
“I understand the limitations on personnel,” Traynor said in response. “But what I feel is important when you have that is that you use the administrative dollars that you get to work in each of the areas that you serve, to develop ... a volunteer network to fill the needs that you have, or alternate funding sources, if you can find them, among either governmental or non-profit organizations.”
“And I didn’t see that being done,” he added. “And that’s the issue that I do have with the whole process right now.”
Traynor said he wasn’t faulting anyone for not having enough money.
“But I do feel that it is our responsibility to people who are in need of guardians to try to develop a network or program that helps to meet those needs through other areas if we can’t do it through funding from the state,” he said. “And I don’t know that we’ve done that and I think that’s an issue.”
This article makes it even CLEARER that when Republicans are in-charge, YOU KNOW NOTHING FOR POOR ELDERLY and the POOR NOBODY s GET DONE!
REPUBLICANS and African descent Florida Democrats NEVER ... and I MEAN NEVER DO A THING FOR POOR PEOPLE PERIOD!
Just like when Gov Rick Scott received the phone calls for the Hollywood nursing homes needing help, ... HE DID NOTHING and then DELETED THE INFORMATION!
governor RICK SCOTT OWNS THE DEATHS OF THOSE POOR ELDERLY NURSING HOME RESIDENTS!
WITHOUT ANY DOUBT IN MY CHRISTIAN MIND, HELL WILL BE PACKED WITH FLORIDA REPUBLICANS and AFRICAN DECENT DEMOCRATS OVER THE YEARS TO COME.
I CAN NEVER STOP WONDERING WHY SO MANY PEOPLE KEEP SUPPORTING FLORIDA REPUBLICANS and FLORIDA AFRICAN DESCENT DEMOCRATS. THEY WORK TOGETHER TO SCREW POOR PEOPLE, PUBLIC SCHOOLS, and ONLY HELP THE DONORS OF THEIR CAMPAIGNS.
THIS ARTICLE IS JUST ANOTHER FAILURE OF THE FLORIDA REPUBLICANS and the FLORIDA AFRICAN DESCENT DEMOCRATS. IT SHOULD BE VERY CLEAR TO PEOPLE THAT FLORIDA REPUBLICANS and FLORIDA AFRICAN DECENT DEMOCRATS NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR THE POOR ELDERLY IN FLORIDA.
WHETHER IT IS THE CORRINE BROWN FLORIDA DEMOCRATS or THE ST JOHNS COUNTY REPUBLICAN (RUSICANS) STATE LEGISLATORS, THEY NEVER DO A THING FOR POOR ELDERLY FOLKS! PERIOD!
Good column. We need more concerted protected activity, standing up against management abuses in corporations, great and small. What do you think?
Opinion: 'Right to Work' only works for the rich Patrick J. Fowler, Your Turn Published 2:00 p.m. ET April 6, 2018 | Updated 7:33 p.m. ET April 6, 2018 Tallahassee Democrat
Re: "Opinion: 'Right-to-work' really does work," April 2
In his column, Bob McClure did not just tout the false merits of "right to work" laws. He said the conditions provide a rationale for labor unions no longer existing.
Is that so? Why do workers join together to address compensation, working conditions and the politics that support the rights of owners and executives over those of workers?
Workers are people who depend on payment for their labor power. The payment comes from the owners of the land and buildings, who have access to credit necessary to carry out a business enterprise. The owners promise to pay. Workers promise to go by the rules set by management.
There is no freedom of speech, assembly or redress of grievances in this set of promises. It is not a contract between equals. Capitalism centralizes money and power at the top. In order to affect that in any way, workers must join together.
McClure said even though they are no longer needed, unions cling to their desire to remain relevant. There is certainly reason to question the union hierarchy, but it is not, as he would have it, because the people who support the James Madison Institute have become altruistic or the government is doing a good job seeing U.S. workers are protected and secure.
In the past 60 years since the passage of the Taft/Hartley Act, limiting the actions allowed to unions and giving federal sanction to state "right to work" laws, unionization has been crushed as an effective tool.
Neo-liberals have succeeded in promoting individualism and competition over cooperation and the common good. The effect has been disastrous for the trust and social solidarity needed for democracy to operate.
Both political parties participated and there was no longer an effective force to point out the damage being done. U.S. unions had lost their influence.
Businesses have cut back on benefits and stopped providing pensions. They send jobs overseas and automate more. The "newly created" jobs to replace those lost have not come with the same compensation.
U.S. business invented and exported the "gig economy." It became obvious with the birth of Uber. This business model, as do others today, destroys secure jobs and replaces them with positions that have no rights, no benefits and no real government regulation. It is a scheme that shows the capitalist dream of sucking all the gains to the top.
Florida's workers and economy were said to be flourishing under the right to work standard. But average wages in Florida compare unfavorably with many states, and Rasmussen College reports that, when combined with cost of living, Florida falls to the bottom.
It is possible that better organizing efforts would solve some of the problems for the unions, but for the supporters of capital-over-workers, nothing that gives workers more influence is acceptable.
The United States is a prosperous country. By far, the bulk of gains in wealth since the late '60s have gone to the richest. Workers have been shortchanged and are threatened on all sides.
Workers, unite: Your future and that of your children depend on it.
Patrick J. Fowler is a Tallahassee resident and a reader of books.
Frequent battery arrestee ERROL JONES, a/k/a "ERRONEOUS JONES" was sentenced to one year of probation, adjudication withheld, and anger management training on May 3, 2018 by Judge Howard Maltz for his latest battery arrest, in a plea bargain supported by Seventh Circuit State's Attorney RALPH JOSEPH LARIZZA and defense lawyer Thomas Elijah Cushman.
ERROL JONES was once St. Augustine Vice Mayor, and served as a Commissioner from 2004-2012.
JONES was a belligerent, racist Commissioner who often played the race card from the bottom of the deck, even stating that the Ponce de Leon Golf Course was "not historic" because "my daddy couldn't play there. "
JONES often touted property rights and was a lickspittle for campaign contributors like developer CHESTER STOKES and ROBERT MICHAEL GRAUBARD, often on the wrong side of 3-2 votes for crummy projects, like the GRAUBARD project allowing condos and a strip mall on a 3000-4000 year old Native American archaeology site.
Pitiful.
In 2008, JONES barely won re-election after his opponent, Judith Cills Seraphin, stated without any rebuttal from JONES that JONES often appeared intoxicated at Commission meetings and community meetings.
In 2012, Mrs. Vernoda Luckett won an injunction against JONES from Judge John Alexander prohibiting further contact, after she credibly alleged sexual harassment; she testified JONES told her "I want to boink you."
In 2012, JONES came in fourth (of four) in the August primary, with only 12% of the vote, in a four way race behind Deltra Long, Bruce Maguire and the eventual winner, Roxanne Horvath.
After JONES' first arrest in 2011, I told then-new City Manager John Patrick Regan, P.E., "when the City Manager's not blackmailing Commissioners, the police can do their job."
Upon his 2011 arrest, JONES said to arresting officers, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"
Later, witty Commissioner Leannas Sophia Amaru Freeman was heard suggesting to fellow Commissioners she was ordering a new Commissioner badge, bearing the words, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" (I have really good hearing. Perhaps that's why the door to the antechamber is now often closed, "for privacy," as retired Public Works Director Martha Graham later explained to me.)
In August 2012, JONES took my suggestion, in public comment at a Fair Housing Workshop held by City Commission, and moved for the City Attorney to draft an ordinance adding "sexual orientation" to the protected classes in the City's Fair Housing ordinance. It passed unanimously then, and again on first and second reading, finally enacted on December 10, 2012, after JONES had left office.
Ironically, JONES was the deciding vote on May 23, 2005 in our City's lamentable 3-2 vote against equality (rejecting Rainbow flags on the Bridge of Lions).
Only a fortnight later, this vote led inexorably to the landmark June 7, 2005 order by United States District Court Chief Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. in a First Amendment case, Rev. Ruth Jensen & Elizabeth Forbell v. City of St. Augustine, ordering Rainbow flags to fly on the Bridge and Bayfront June 8-13, 2005.
Good chrestomathy of ideas on how to fight sexual harassment.
In St. Augustine Beach, City Manager BRUCE MAX ROYLE (left at dais) is still in office, having failed to investigate or discipline alleged sexual harassment by disgraced, triple-dipping City Planning and Building Director GARY LARSON (at podium and to left at table in rear of room).
LARSON finally resigned effective December 31, 2017.
Time for ROYLE to go, too.
In St. Johns County, County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK (left) and Sheriff DAVID SHOAR are still in office, despite ill-treatment of women employees.
That's what happens in two jurisdictions with all-white Republican commissioners, incurious, at best, subservient to developers, insouciant to human and civil rights, and utterly lacking in compassion for their fellow man/woman. Time for them to go.
From The Washington Post:
The one best idea for ending sexual harassment
The past few months have seen a deluge of stories revealing that sexual harassment takes place everywhere, from Hollywood hotel rooms to factory floors. The stories shared by silence breakers have made it impossible to deny how prevalent sexual misconduct is, and how much damage it can do.
While the reckoning must continue, it’s time to move the conversation forward. We need to start talking about the changes that will make sure fewer people are victimized in the future; that fewer employers will feel comfortable covering up for high-profile offenders; and that perpetrators will face swifter and more serious consequences.
We asked 16 leaders what one change they would implement to stop sexual harassment in their fields, and their answers have lessons for all of us. But these suggestions are just a starting point: We want to know what you think would be most effective at stopping sexual harassment. Share your ideas through the form at the bottom of this page. —Alyssa Rosenberg and Christine Emba
Flight Attendants, about 80 percent women, are ongoing victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Not that long ago, the industry marketed the objectification of “stewardesses,” a job only available to young, single, perfectly polished women who until 1993 were required to step on a weight scale. Our union was formed to give women a voice and to beat back discrimination and misogyny faced on the job.
We defined our careers at the bargaining table, in the courts and on Capitol Hill. We taught the country to leave the word “stewardess” in the history books. But the industry never disavowed the marketing schemes featuring short skirts, hot pants and ads that had young women saying things like “I’m Cheryl, fly me.”
Even today, we are called pet names, patted on the rear when a passenger wants our attention, cornered in the back galley and asked about our “hottest” layover, and subjected to incidents not fit for print. Like the rest of our society, flight attendants have never had reason to believe that reports of the sexual harassment we experience on the job would be taken seriously, rather than dismissed or retaliated against.
The most effective thing that could be done now is a series of public service announcements from airline chief executives. It would be powerful to hear these men clearly and forcefully denounce the past objectification of flight attendants, reinforce our safety role as aviation’s first responders and pledge zero tolerance of sexual harassment and sexual assault at the airlines. They need to back up their words with action: A survey of our members last year showed the majority of flight attendants have no knowledge of written guidance or training on this issue available through their airline. Increased staffing and clear policies are needed.
Credibility from the industry on this issue isn’t only about keeping only flight attendants safe. It is absurd to think that a group of people frequently harassed for decades can effectively become enforcers during emergencies without this level of clarity about the respect we deserve. Knowing that CEOs will back us up will also make it easier for flight attendants to intervene when passengers are sexually harassed or assaulted on planes. Flight attendants need to know the airlines will take this as seriously as any other safety duty we perform.
Sara Nelson is the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
Change the law. For a year I’ve worked with Congress to craft the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act, which gives victims the right to confront their harassers in court. A bipartisan group of senators and representatives is co-sponsoring this important legislation. It will make a huge difference in the lives of working women.
When my complaint against my former boss came out 17 months ago, I felt incredibly alone. I was wrong. Since I spoke up, thousands of women have courageously done the same. Every woman has a story, and we’re at a tipping point where real change is possible. It’s an empowerment revolution! But forced arbitration means no matter how many women speak up, the system is rigged against victims from the get-go.
Today, more than 60 million Americans have arbitration clauses in their employment contracts, eliminating their Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Arbitration clauses can be required as a condition of employment — and they’re a harasser’s best friend. Forced arbitration keeps proceedings secret and allows predators to stay in their jobs, even as victims are pushed out or fired. Forced arbitration also silences other victims, who might have stepped forward if they’d known. These clauses are unjust and un-American, and the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Act restores victims’ right to a jury trial.Under the act, victims can choose arbitration or court. This is the only way to ensure claims can be made public.
If we want to end workplace harassment, Congress must pass this law and get it to the president for signature. Sexual harassment is a bipartisan issue, because it impacts women from every walk of life. Trust me, harassers don’t ask your party affiliation before they pounce. And that’s why we should all care.
I always want to smother my children with kisses and hugs. But it’s so important to teach consent from a young age. I tell my kids that they’re the boss of their bodies — it’s a clear, age-appropriate phrase (every kid understands the concept of boss!) and it makes them feel empowered. If my son doesn’t want to kiss Grandma, I’ll say, “You’re the boss of your body, it’s up to you.” If they’re playing with a friend who doesn’t want a hug, I’ll tell them, “She’s the boss of her body, and you need to stop.” I hope that by understanding consent at a young age, children will find it second nature to respect others’ bodies and minds throughout their lives.
Since October, when three decades of egregious sexual harassment by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein came to light, women have come forward in unprecedented numbers to expose sexual harassment and assault in their workplaces. Their graphic accounts have served as a powerful reminder that sexual harassment is not about sex. It is about abuse of power that doesn’t end when the harassment does.
Instead, it continues when companies give male executives and star performers a pass for harassing women, and protect them by paying out confidential settlements, gagging the accusers and “managing” them out of their jobs. In publicly traded companies, at least, there’s a good model for checking this behavior: Congress should apply the same standards for sexual misconduct that it does to violations of securities law.
After the Enron and WorldCom frauds devastated the retirement funds of numerous investors, Congress responded with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which has helped restore investor confidence through better corporate governance, stricter reporting and enhanced whistleblower protections for employees who report fraud. The law also requires corporate officers to sign certifications, under penalty of perjury, attesting to their companies’ compliance with securities laws and maintenance of internal controls that work to identify violations.
Existing federal laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Congressional Accountability Act, must be amended to require companies to file similar disclosures of the number of sexual harassment claims settled, the amounts paid and the corrective actions taken in response. Legislators, too, should have to attest annually to their offices’ compliance with sexual harassment laws and to disclose sexual harassment settlements (while shielding the identities of the victims). Changes like these could have uncovered the sexual harassment scandals at 21st Century Fox, which employed Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, or the congressional practice of paying out confidential settlements with public money, much more quickly.
The current system permits settlements to go unreported and sexual harassment to be concealed. There is no accountability or transparency and therefore no deterrence — which is poor public policy. The challenges for women in the workplace will not end here, but these simple requirements could go a long way toward making clear whether a workplace is safe for women.
Debra S. Katz is a civil rights lawyer who specializes in the representation of employees in sexual harassment matters.
IN THE FIREHOUSE: Recognize the message sent by vulgar language
In our agency, you have to lead by example. Discipline is important. When those in positions of authority are crude in conversation, it fosters an environment that makes it easy for misconduct to happen. Vulgarity in language, even if inappropriate touching never happens, trickles down throughout the organization. If people in a position to lead and make decisions constantly curse and joke about sex while playing down complaints about harassment, it sends the message that harassment is not a problem — and that everyone else should feel the same way. Loose conversation promotes a negative culture throughout the chain of command. It’s hard to change people’s morals or values individually, but the agency can set the precedent that that kind of language is not acceptable — from the top down.
The issue isn’t isolated to the men on our job. Women can be just as vulgar — in part, because they think that joining in coarse conversation is what it takes to be equal to men or to gain their respect. But there will always be a group of men who doubt women’s ability, and that isn’t the way to convince them. The way to gain respect is to know your job and perform it well consistently. Even if men don’t want you around, nine times out of 10 they’ll develop respect for you. Why? Because you’re being true to yourself and because you’re doing the work — maybe even better than they are. That’s the way to get buy-in, not by trying to be cruder versions of men.
Kishia Clemencia is a captain with D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services.
Sallie Krawcheck, chief executive and co-founder of Ellevest Financial, in May 2016. (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg News)
ON WALL STREET: Mandate diversity targets
Sexual harassment thrives in male-dominated environments such as Wall Street. Diversity groups can help; inclusivity training can help; mentoring programs can help. But the ultimate solution to harassment is shifting the power dynamic between men and women in a company, and this is most effectively accomplished by increasing gender diversity at the top.
The real question is how to get there. The financial services industry has been settling sexual harassment cases for decades. Individual firms have spent years and tens of millions of court-mandated dollars to improve gender diversity — and both have failed completely. There are no female chief executives on Wall Street; traders are 90 percent men and financial advisers are 86 percent men.
Thus, the solution is for the companies’ boards of directors to mandate diversity targets: not as afterthoughts but as key business goals, just like they do with revenue targets, new-client goals and expense initiatives. In addition, these boards should commit to reviewing, and sharing publicly, gender pay comparisons for each level of the organizations. Managers should be compensated or penalized on each of these objectives, because if it’s not measured and it’s not part of compensation on Wall Street, it simply doesn’t happen.
Are these “quotas”? It seems we’re allergic to the term. But is it really too much to ask that an industry that brought the economy to its knees, was bailed out by our government and yet continues to exclude most of the population from its plum jobs get with the program? If these companies become more inclusive of gender and other types of diversity, the research indicates that risk will be reduced and performance improved. And that is good for all of us.
Sallie Krawcheck is chief executive and co-founder ofEllevest, an investing and planning firm for women. She is former CEO of Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
With sexual harassment and assault revealed to be prevalent in public workplaces, imagine what is happening to workers who labor behind closed doors in homes around the country.
Domestic workers — those who care for our children as nannies, clean our homes and support the elderly to live at home as they age — are some of the most at-risk and invisible workers in the nation. Not only is their workplace the private home, but also they have faced a long history of exclusion from basic protections afforded workers in other industries. We need to rewrite our harassment and discrimination policies to include all working people, regardless of field or employment classification.
Some of our most progressive labor protections exclude domestic workers, by design or default. During the negotiations surrounding the New Deal, Southern members of Congress, in exchange for their support, insisted on the exclusion of farm workers and domestic workers from labor protections afforded others. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act requires a threshold number of employees for workers to be protected from discrimination and sexual harassment. Because they typically work in settings with only one employee, the vast majority of domestic workers are excluded.
We live in an age in which work itself is changing. As more people work as freelancers, independent contractors or in temporary, part-time settings, they are failed by our inadequate legal protections against discrimination and harassment. How many female Uber drivers have faced harassment from male passengers at night? How many housecleaners, the original gig workers, have been manhandled by the “man of the house”? “Non-traditional” work is becoming the norm, and more women are falling through the cracks of our written rules of conduct.
The rules of the new economy are being written at this very moment. We have a unique opportunity to write them in a way that ensures the future of work is safe for women — and while we’re at it, to address pay equity and value women’s work equally. Thanks to the courage of women from Anita Hill to Rose McGowan and all who have shared their #MeToo stories, we’re having a real conversation about working while female. It’s time to ensure that the future of work for all women is safe and dignified.
Ai-jen Poo is the executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-director of Caring Across Generations.
For too long, too many members of Congress have had an inflated sense of power, whereby they think they can do whatever they want to anyone and no one will hold them accountable. How else can you explain a congressman grinding against a staff member on the House floor, while sticking his tongue in her ear, without any consequence? If some members are conducting themselves this way in the House chamber, I cannot imagine how they must act in private. And since I shared my own #MeTooCongress story, it’s become clear that I am not alone.
That’s why I introduced the bipartisan Member and Employee Training and Oversight on Congress Act, otherwise known as the Me Too Congress Act, which has more than 100 co-sponsors. I have heard from survivors that they have been personally, professionally and financially destroyed by the current opaque and abusive process. Meanwhile, taxpayers foot the bill for settlements and the harasser goes on his way, free to destroy more lives. This bill does three main things to rectify these wrongs.
To protect the vulnerable, this bill creates an in-house Victims’ Counsel to represent and advise complainants, just as the House is represented by in-house counsel. The bill also ensures that employees who are not paid by Congress — that is, interns and fellows — receive the same protections as paid employees.
To level the playing field, the counseling and mediation stages will be voluntary, not required, and no confidentiality agreements will be required to start the complaint process. Legislative employees will also have the same whistleblower protections as those given to the rest of the federal government.
This bill will also increase transparency for cases that end in taxpayer-funded settlements. For those cases, the name of the employing office and the amount of the award or settlement will be published on Office of Compliance’s public website. And members who have a substantiated finding against them will be personally responsible for reimbursing the treasury for settlement costs.
The #MeToo movement is about bringing to light a dark corner of our society, and I’m heartened by the outpouring of support from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I know Congress can be better than this, and the American people know Congress can be better than this. Now we must rise to their challenge.
Jackie Speier, a Democrat, represents California in the House.
In late 2014, the rabbi who oversaw my conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Barry Freundel of Georgetown, was infamously arrested on charges of voyeurism and eventually convicted of setting up secret cameras in the bathroom of the ritual bath. He was charged with 52 counts, but about 100 other victims’ videos fell outside of the statute of limitations. Mine was one of these.
I decided not to join a class-action lawsuit against the synagogue, mikvah and rabbinic governing bodies such as the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). Given how swiftly law enforcement was called, the synagogue and mikvah are, in my opinion, not liable for Freundel’s actions.
That doesn’t mean, however, that lawsuits aren’t a valuable tool for putting fire under the pants of those in power to take abuse seriously.
Did the Orthodox world learn its lesson from Freundel? Soon after that arrest, the Orthodox community offered Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt of the Riverdale Jewish Center in New York a juicy buyout even after the New York Times reported that he took naked trips to the sauna with boys. (He was not accused of touching their genitals or any other criminal conduct.) After the story ran, the RCA’s own Rabbi Yona Reiss appeared on a panel with Rosenblatt. The subject of their discussion? Responsibilities and boundaries. Talk about a mixed message.
There are several glaring similarities between the pre-scandal Catholic Church of the 1980s and the current Orthodox community. In his book on the clerical abuse crisis, “Mortal Sins,” Michael D’Antonio wrote that before the scandals, “the Vatican was focused not on controlling abusive priests, but on disciplining theological liberals.” Those who follow rabbinic politics know that one of the greatest concerns for those of the more right-wing RCA is reining in those among the more liberal Open Orthodox establishment.
Guila Benchimol, an academic expert on sexual abuse and victimization in the Jewish community, advises organizations on how to create protection policies to prevent abuse. She told me, “Jewish institutions who have been or are being sued, or anticipate a lawsuit from people who’ve been victimized by the institution’s employee or volunteer, are often the first to ask for assistance with assessments, policy creation and training.” That is, it’s often a lawsuit that prompts institutions to take seriously their policies around sexual abuse. Which is why, as uncomfortable and socially damaging as it may be to file a suit, that may be the best way to prevent future abuses.
Bethany Mandel is a columnist at the Forward and a senior contributor at the Federalist.
IN THE MILITARY: Give the inspector general broader authority
Despite the many actions taken to aid the victims of sexual assault in the military, there are still too few prosecutions and little real accountability. Though there’s not an easy fix, there is an easy step forward: The secretary of defense could direct the inspector general to investigate and recommend the proper disposition of particularly difficult sexual assault cases or command failures to address pervasive and persistent sexual misconduct issues.
The Defense Department inspector general has the experience to take on this responsibility. To deal more effectively with the problem of retaliation against sexual assault victims, the inspector general’s office is already charged with investigating all claims of professional retaliation related to sexual assault.
Getting the IG involved in retaliation complaints was the recommendation of a panel of judicial experts directed by Congress to come up with ways of dealing with this special category of whistleblower. As a result, the inspector general’s office has a cadre of investigators and managers schooled in sexual assault response training and investigations.
Giving the inspector general broader authority would take the most challenging cases away from the military chain of command, give victims a way to have their cases investigated more thoroughly and give the department a way to deal with high-ranking offenders who may have undue influence over the chain of command.
Monica Medina is an adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She served as senior adviser to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta from 2012 to 2013.
While the public exposure of sexual misconduct has been most pronounced in media, politics and entertainment, what’s less reported is its pervasive occurrence in predominantly female professions, especially those where women have less economic clout and face retaliation if they speak out.
Just ask nurses. About 90 percent of nurses are women. Moreover, many nurses work at odd hours, including nights and weekends, often in understaffed units, in isolation from colleagues who could be witnesses or backups.
To be able to safely advocate for themselves and their patients, and to be able to protest harassment and identify abusers, nurses need a protected and enforceable collective voice on the job.
That comes only through unionization with the legal force of contract law.
There are state and federal laws covering various forms of harassment and workplace safety. But without an enforceable mechanism that protects workers from retaliation for reporting dangerous workplace conditions, as in a union contract, those laws are repeatedly violated.
Nurses can be targeted not just by direct supervisors but also by doctors who are viewed as rainmakers by their hospital employers, who increasingly put their bottom lines ahead of the well-being of nurses and other staff. Management will commonly close ranks with the harasser — not with the target of the abuse.
Nurses who object to sexual misconduct can endure retribution, such as being reassigned to less desirable schedules or to clinical areas in which they have less expertise. Loss of livelihood is a particular threat to nurses who are their families’ sole sources of income.
In union contracts, including many won by National Nurses United, nurses have won the power to report and hold management responsible for a safe workplace environment and to improve staffing to ensure patients have safe care.
For nurses, as for all women, the real potency of #MeToo is directly tied to the collective action for our empowerment. By uniting under that umbrella of workplace democracy, nurses and female workers can build the security, protection and freedom they need and deserve.
Jean Ross is a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United.
We will never solve the problem of sexual harassment and violence until we understand and address such conduct as the civil and human rights violation that it is. We must recognize that only in a society where women and gender minorities are truly equal will it be unacceptable to sexually abuse them. On college campuses, the best way to achieve that is to resist the backlash against Title IX and to continue its vigorous enforcement.
Since women first entered campuses for work, class and social activities — really, from the inception of higher education itself — sexual harassment and sexual violence have been a major issue for colleges and universities. Recent conversations about this reality have been painful, but they are also a reminder that the movement to end these problems has made extraordinary progress.
That’s because women on campus have a unique tool available to them that is not necessarily accessible to other women coming forward to share their #MeToo stories: Title IX. This groundbreaking 1972 civil rights statute has been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court as incorporating sexual harassment and violence as unequal treatment. The statute provides education officials with many, many strategies for achieving the truly equal cultures and attitudes that will eliminate sexual abuse.
We now know that vigorously following Title IX presents not only the most effective way to address sexual abuse in education but also an example for preventing all such harassment. We shouldn’t let the backlash to Title IX slow progress toward gender equality on campus, or short circuit this essential conversation in the wider world.
Correction: This item originally stated that the 1972 Title IX anti-discrimination statute “identifies sexual harassment and violence as unequal treatment.” The statute does not cite sexual harassment and violence, but it has been interpreted to incorporate them.
This may sound self-serving coming from the first female executive editor of the New York Times. But having more newsrooms run by women would be a major stride in curbing sexual misconduct in news. I know from my experience leading several newsrooms that women are more likely to confide mistreatment to a female boss, and female bosses are unlikely to look the other way.
During my 40 years in journalism, I had a female boss only once, at the very beginning of my career. At Time magazine in the 1970s, my bureau chief, Sandra Burton, looked out for me in many ways. When I went out on assignments involving powerful or famous men, she warned me to be on guard against what was then called “lechery,” before “sexual harassment” became a familiar term. She mostly laughed off the experiences she had had rising up the ladder in a male-dominated profession, but, looking back, there is nothing funny about them.
There are, of course, men who are terrific bosses and look out for the young women who work for them. When I was a young researcher at NBC News, my boss, Roy Wetzel, warned me away from a correspondent with a history of hitting on young women in the research pool. But in my experience, female bosses are more prone to take decisive action against harassers. At the Times and other places I worked in senior positions, there were situations where the men at higher levels wanted to look the other way in cases of sexual misconduct. I took it upon myself to confront the miscreants and to follow up with human resources.
By the end of my first year as executive editor of the Times, the newsroom masthead of the most senior editors was half women for the first time. But one of the most disheartening trends since I was fired in 2014 is seeing the number of top female editors stagnate. We’re back where we were 10 years ago.
Empowering more women will help change the culture and the prevalence of sexual misconduct.
IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY: Empower an independent reviewer
The Torah teaches us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbors. If our concern is to care for victims of sexual misconduct and to prevent new victims, we must create and expand the systems and structures that allow us to do so.
I would like to see the development of a new, independent organization entrusted by every Jewish denomination and major organization with the authority to help the Jewish community do better around issues of sexual misconduct. If enough major players in the Jewish system agreed to entrust this body with authority, others would look to it as well.
I imagine that this body would serve several functions: It would run trainings on sexual ethics, power dynamics and bystander intervention that would be mandatory at every rabbinic seminary, for new employees at every Jewish organization and as a periodic professional development refresher. This training would be a semester- or year-long course and would force participants to confront their deep-seated issues in the same way that clinical pastoral education does.
Incidents of sexual misconduct would also be reported to this body. Today, it’s not always clear to whom issues should be reported, and reporting can be particularly complex given the intricate tangle of relationships inside an organization. This third-party body would have clear procedures for reporting (including anonymous reporting), and every affiliated organization would agree to make information on reporting clearly available to constituents. This body would evaluate and investigate allegations fairly and, if warranted, bring recommendations for consequences, ranging from restorative justice to professional dismissal to involving legal authorities.
Lastly, this body would work with Jewish organizations to standardize and implement safe-conduct policies for working with congregants, campers, students and other constituents.
There are some organizations out there doing pieces of this work — Sacred Spacesmost notably — that could be expanded to more comprehensively cover education and reporting as well as policy work. But as long as we leave it to each individual organization, denomination and community to fight sexual misconduct, we risk the work happening inconsistently and inexpertly, or allowing personal relationships, the impulse to protect “one of our own,” or concerns about public relations to impact the process.
One of many critical steps that Christians must take to end the systemic abuses within our churches is to develop a safeguarding policy in every church and Christian organization.
Such a policy must identify the various types of abuse — such as sexual abuse and misconduct, child abuse, emotional abuse and spiritual abuse — and provide specific guidelines that minimize their occurrence.
In addition, every safeguarding policy must help create an environment that encourages abuse disclosures and provides a protocol for responding to them. That means defining response protocols to ensure that disclosures are addressed in a consistent manner regardless of the identity or influence of the alleged abuser.
Safeguarding policies would need not only to satisfy best-practices standards but also be developed by each individual church in collaboration with victim advocates and abuse prevention experts. Effective safeguards don’t come from cutting and pasting policies from other churches or organizations.
Keep in mind, though, that the most thorough and well-written policy is powerless unless it becomes part of the very DNA of the church community. This begins by making sure that every member has a copy of the policy and fully understands it through ongoing education and training by church leadership, in partnership with abuse prevention experts. It is also critical for the safeguarding policy to be reviewed on a yearly basis, for the purpose of making continuous improvements that will best protect all members. The effective safeguarding of members won’t become a central part of the church culture overnight. It will take time, a lot of hard work, and commitment from the entire church family. But it can be done: I’ve seen it!
One of the great challenges in confronting and addressing abuses within our churches is that abuse is not something that can be resolved exclusively through “policy” change. It requires a cultural transformation that can occur only when we see and understand these grave issues through the lens of Jesus.
NATIONAL SECURITY: It’s not complicated — promote more women
It’s simple. Hire and promote more women into leadership positions. Specifically, aim to fill at least 30 percent of policy and security leadership positions with women. Research suggests that 30 percent is the magic number, the tipping point at which women stop being a beleaguered minority — tokens, unable to change organizational culture — and serve as effective change agents.
It’s time to stop making the old excuses, that “there just aren’t enough qualified women” and so on. There are now hundreds — thousands — of highly qualified women in the foreign policy and national security worlds. There are female admirals and generals. There are women who have earned military awards for valor and whose sacrifices have been recognized with Purple Hearts. There are women who have served as ambassadors and assistant secretaries and senior White House officials; women with high-level intelligence experience, women who have run major think tanks and women who are top-notch scholars. If we had to stock the entire federal government with spectacularly accomplished women, we’d have plenty to choose from. Want a female secretary of defense? I can suggest half a dozen supremely qualified candidates. A female CIA director? Ditto. Female military service chiefs? There’s an increasingly deep bench of women with stars on their shoulders.
When women reach critical mass in organizational leadership positions, things change. Women are less likely to create or tolerate a “locker room” atmosphere at work and more likely to notice and challenge sexism than male leaders. As a recent Harvard Business Review article noted, “Male-dominated management teams have been found to tolerate, sanction, or even expect sexualized treatment of workers.” Conversely, organizations with plenty of women in leadership positions tend to be organizations in which sexual harassment is less likely to occur.
Increasing gender diversity has other important benefits, too. Companies with more women on their boards outperform those with few or no women, reaping substantially higher returns on sales, equity and invested capital. A McKinsey study found that gender-diverse organizations outperformed those with less gender diversity. (Ethnic diversity increased performance still more.)
It’s not complicated. Want to reduce the incidence of sexual misconduct in foreign policy and national security workplaces, while simultaneously improving performance and the quality of decisions?
Let’s keep the conversation going. Submit your idea using the form below or by clicking here. [Update: You can read some of the best submissions here.]
Horrific history made worse by "journalists" in league with the Ku Klux Klan.
Waiting for The St. Augustine Record and other GateHouse newspapers to atone for their past.
BTW, the son of lynching investigator Walter White (referred to in the article), lawyer Walter White, Jr., was the Chairman of the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division, and in 1989 Walter White, Jr. named me to chair the Committee on Human and Civil Rights, also naming me as the YLD Liaison to the ABA Section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. At the time, I was Legal Counsel for Constitutional Rights at the Government Accountability Project in Washington, D.C., representing ethical employee whistleblowers.
Our ABB YLD Committee and IRR Section were busy, busy busy for the next two years.
We helped win ABA House of Delegates uproot for resolutions on increasing security clearance due process procedures (Honolulu, Annual Meeting August 1989), non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations (Denver Mid-year Meeting, February 1990); and private and public sector whistleblower protection (Chicago Annual Meeting, August 1990).
Only after my appointment by Walter White, Jr. did I learn about his dad.
The white Southern press played a role in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to death by white mobs.
The Arkansas lynch mob that burned a black tenant farmer at the stake in 1921 observed common practice when it advertised the killing in advance so spectators could mark the grisly event on their calendars. The organizers notified newspapers early in the day that they planned to kill Henry Lowery as painfully as possible, giving editors time to produce special editions that provided the time, place and gruesome particulars of the death to come.
Historians have paid scant attention to the role that the white Southern press played in the racial terrorism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw thousands of African-Americans hanged, burned, drowned or beaten to death by white mobs. This issue surfaced in dramatic fashion recently when the nearly two-centuries-oldMontgomery Advertiser printed a front-page editorial apologizing for lynching coverage that dehumanized black victims. The apology coincided with the recent opening in Montgomery, Ala., of a memorial to lynching victims, and it sets the stage for a timely discussion of a deeply dishonorable period in Southern press history.
The bloody celebration at which 500 jeering spectators saw Henry Lowery burned to ashes was held at Nodena, Ark., on Jan. 26, 1921. Among those in attendance was a reporter for The Memphis Press whose story — under the headline “Kill Negro by Inches” — validated the barbaric proceedings and cataloged the victim’s suffering in lurid detail, noting that Lowery remained stoically silent “even after the flesh had dropped away from his legs and the flames were leaping toward his face.”
Lowery had been charged with a wanton act of murder for killing his white landlord and the landlord’s adult daughter. The renowned lynching investigator Walter White later reported that Lowery had drawn a pistol only after being shot by the landlord’s son and physically attacked by the landlord himself in a dispute over wages. In the eyes of the lynching state — where an African-American could be put to death on a white person’s whim — the impulse toward self-defense was often viewed as a crime when it came with a black face.
Newspapers even bragged about the roles they had played in arranging particularly spectacular lynchings. But the real damage was done in terse, workaday stories that justified lynching by casting its victims as “fiends,” “brutes,” “born criminals” or, that catchall favorite, “troublesome Negroes.” The narrative that tied blackness inextricably to criminality — and to the death penalty — survived the lynching era and lives on to this day.
The Montgomery Advertiser was historically opposed to lynching. Nevertheless, when its current staff scrutinized the paper’s lynching-era coverage, they concluded that it had conveniently opposed lynching in the abstract while responding with indifference to its bloody, real-world consequences. The editors found that the paper too often presumed without proof that lynching victims were guilty and that, in doing so, it advanced the aims of white supremacist rule.
That description applies broadly to the Jim Crow-era South, where even newspapers that were viewed as liberal replicated the apartheid state within their pages — by separating news and birth announcements by race, by rendering law-abiding black people invisible and especially by denying African-Americans the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. This humiliating practice was meant to illustrate the impossibility of racial equality. It also let white readers know when a black person was being quoted so that the person’s statement could be ignored.
The newspaper editor Ira Harkey, who was white, incurred outrage in 1949 when he abandoned the Southern journalistic practice of automatically labeling black people by race in stories and began cautiously extending the courtesy title Mrs. in the pages of The Pascagoula Chronicle-Star “to certain carefully selected Negro women such as teachers and nurses.” Harkey was reviled — and shot at — by racists in Mississippi for championing civil rights. He wrote bitterly of his earlier years at The New Orleans Times-Picayune, where there was “a flat rule that Negroes were not to appear in photographs”; it was required that they be airbrushed out of crowd scenes.
The Montgomery Advertiser — known in the 19th century as the leading paper of the Confederacy — put itself on the wrong side of history in countless ways, not least by ridiculing the civil rights movement that was launched by the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and reached its zenith a decade later with the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Newspapers even bragged about the roles they had played in arranging particularly spectacular lynchings. But the real damage was done in terse, workaday stories that justified lynching by casting its victims as “fiends,” “brutes,” “born criminals” or, that catchall favorite, “troublesome Negroes.” The narrative that tied blackness inextricably to criminality — and to the death penalty — survived the lynching era and lives on to this day.
The Montgomery Advertiser was historically opposed to lynching. Nevertheless, when its current staff scrutinized the paper’s lynching-era coverage, they concluded that it had conveniently opposed lynching in the abstract while responding with indifference to its bloody, real-world consequences. The editors found that the paper too often presumed without proof that lynching victims were guilty and that, in doing so, it advanced the aims of white supremacist rule.
That description applies broadly to the Jim Crow-era South, where even newspapers that were viewed as liberal replicated the apartheid state within their pages — by separating news and birth announcements by race, by rendering law-abiding black people invisible and especially by denying African-Americans the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. This humiliating practice was meant to illustrate the impossibility of racial equality. It also let white readers know when a black person was being quoted so that the person’s statement could be ignored.
The newspaper editor Ira Harkey, who was white, incurred outrage in 1949 when he abandoned the Southern journalistic practice of automatically labeling black people by race in stories and began cautiously extending the courtesy title Mrs. in the pages of The Pascagoula Chronicle-Star “to certain carefully selected Negro women such as teachers and nurses.” Harkey was reviled — and shot at — by racists in Mississippi for championing civil rights. He wrote bitterly of his earlier years at The New Orleans Times-Picayune, where there was “a flat rule that Negroes were not to appear in photographs”; it was required that they be airbrushed out of crowd scenes.
The Montgomery Advertiser — known in the 19th century as the leading paper of the Confederacy — put itself on the wrong side of history in countless ways, not least by ridiculing the civil rights movement that was launched by the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and reached its zenith a decade later with the march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Bro Krift, now the paper’s 41-year-old executive editor, was well aware of this history when he greeted the opening of the lynching memorial by devoting the Advertiser’s front page to the names of victims alongside its bluntly worded editorial acknowledging the paper’s complicity. Speaking of the memorial in a recent telephone interview, Mr. Krift said: “I realized, holy Moses, this could change the narrative for the rest of time in America. This could be the physical representation of the conversation we need to have in America.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR8 of the New York edition with the headline: When Newspapers Justified Lynching. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Exciting news. Commissioners are increasingly voting against ugly massive inappropriate "developments" that clog our roads, crowd our schools and clearcut forests, with no benefit. Corrupt developers' day is ending in St. Johns County. Thanks to Commissioners Jeb Smith, Jimmy Johns and Paul Waldron, who "expressed concerns about the project’s distance from the nearest fire station and the impact that can have on response times and insurance rates."
What do you reckon?
Commission votes 3-2 against rezoning for 252 homes off S.R. 207 By Jake Martin Posted May 5, 2018 at 7:00 AM Updated May 5, 2018 at 7:29 AM St. Augustine Record
St. Johns County commissioners on Tuesday voted 3-2 against a motion to approve a rezoning for a 252-home development on about 219 acres just southwest of the State Road 207 and Interstate 95 interchange, constituting a denial.
Commissioners Jeb Smith, Jimmy Johns and Paul Waldron voted “no” to Commission Chair Henry Dean’s motion to approve, which was supported by Commissioner Jay Morris.
The trio of commissioners voting against the rezoning expressed concerns about the project’s distance from the nearest fire station and the impact that can have on response times and insurance rates, but Smith also turned his sights on some general economic hurdles and the potential subsidizing of fire rescue operations the county could have to take on until tax revenues catch up.
The applicant, property owner Strates Properties, had requested a rezoning of the land from Open Rural to Planned Unit Development to make way for Winding Oaks, formerly known as Strates Crossing. The project was within a designated area where the county anticipates residential development.
After receiving a 7-0 recommendation for approval from the county’s Planning and Zoning Agency in May 2017, hearings on the project later that summer were continued on two occasions before the commission.
The subject property is vacant. The surrounding area includes Vermont Heights, a platted, single-family subdivision to the south and vacant land to the north, east and west. The Country Walk single-family subdivision, as well as the Coquina Crossing and Cypress Lakes PUDs, are located to the southwest of the property along S.R. 207.
Proposed residential density was at more than two units per acre, above the one unit per acre allowed under the existing Open Rural zoning. But the project still included about 116 acres of open space, of which 77 acres would be preserved wetlands.
The developers had proposed dedicating about a little over 2 acres of land for a fire station, given the project area is outside 5 road miles to the nearest station, though one was not requested or required by the county.
Attorney Doug Burnett, representing the developers, said the proposed land dedications for a future fire station and a lift station for the utility department were “pretty significant” considering the size of the development. He also said being outside the 5-mile radius of a fire station hasn’t stopped other projects from being approved, such as all the residential development that has cropped up around the county-owned golf course on the opposite side of S.R. 207.
Fire rescue staff told commissioners it was not an “optimum” location and they’re generally looking for more acreage, although the same layout for the new station in the northwest would fit on the property offered by the Winding Oaks project. The bigger problem is a lack of sufficient funding to maintain the operating side of the equation.
Smith said being outside the 5-mile radius puts homeowners in an” interesting” position in terms of insurance rates and approving developments outside that area can put a strain on existing service areas.
He said the area being considered for a new fire station consists of about 3,800 approved residential units, of which only about 1,700 have been built. He said at the present 1.47 mills levied for fire rescue services, the county would require more than $680 million in additional taxable value to collect the $1 million annually it would take to operate a new station.
“That’s huge,” Smith said. “What happens is, if we continue to push forward with more approvals in that area that has not yet reached that, we’re going to end up subsidizing it at that point.”
He said there’s going to be future pressure on the board to put a fire station in the area whether the county has the money or not. He also said he wants to see what’s already been approved to be built so that the county starts collecting the revenues it will need.
Still, he said the project itself had some “amazing things” going for it.
Dean said he was impressed with the specimen oaks on the property and the plans to keep them and build trails around them as well as the project’s plan for dealing with drainage and stormwater management. He said while there are economic concerns he felt the developers did what they could to meet requirements and come up with ways to work around the challenges.
Before and after the vote, County Attorney Patrick McCormack said while there is a challenging, existing “situation” regarding fire services in that area, the applicant was offering something the county did not require or request as a condition for rezoning. He said even in instances where rezoning applications comply with the Comprehensive Plan and Land Development Code, the board can still choose not to approve the application if there is “legitimate public purpose” in keeping the existing zoning.
After the 3-2 vote against the motion to approve, he requested the board to consider a motion denying the project based on specific findings of fact to support the denial, which he said would help the process and clarify the board’s position. The board did not consider such a motion.
"Believe it or not!" Disgraced former Orlando State's Attorney JEFFREY LEE ASHTON is running for Judge. JEFF ASHTON covered up the Michelle O'Connell case as a special prosecutor appointed by Republican Governor RiCHARD LYNN SCOTT, a/k/a "Fifth Amendment Rick," crony of controversial St. Johns County Sheriff DAVID SHOAR, who legally changed his name from "HOAR" in 1994.
As exposed by The New York Times, Sheriff SHOAR's coverup began on the night of October 2, 2010, when Michelle O'Connell was shot to death in the home of Deputy JEREMY BANKS,with BANKS' service weapon. Her jaw was broken, a fact omitted from the Medical Examiner's report but uncovered by 2016 autopsy after an exhumation.
Orange-Osceola County voters defeated ASHTON in 2016, after the married father of six children was caught red-handed by investigative reporters, using an adultery website. He then promised never to run for public office again. In announcing for Judge, ASHTON told the Orlando Sentinel: “I think the biggest thing about me is… voters sort of know what they’re getting. My career has been very public and people kind of know what I stand for, and I think that’s kind of rare in a judicial race.”
ASHTON is now a solo practitioner in Winter Park, working from a residential address:
University of Florida, Fredric G. Levin College of Law, 1980
Jeffrey L. Ashton
One
Private Law Practice
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Believe it or Not!
Yes, JEFF ASHTON has filed to run for circuit court judge in 2018.
Do pray for our Ninth Circuit friends and voters: "Let justice be done."
Pervy Ex-Prosecutor Wants To Be Judge, Breaks Promise From 2016
The prosecutor, who became famous for failing to earn a guilty plea for alleged child killer Casey Anthony, was surfing the cheating website while on the job.
This was easily determined by analyzing the user information from his profile, which was dumped on the world-wide-web after Ashley Madison was hacked.
His paid account was established in 2013, and was also accessed from home address before his wife presumably busted him looking for other individuals to act out his detailed “fantasies.” Ashton’s profile on Ashley Madison read like a cheap grocery store sex novel.
“I am looking for someone who has fantasies we can act out. Who know what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it. You must be discrete, not looking to change my situation just want to get excited again”
Under the “Turns Me On” header, Mr. Ashton stated:
“Please be real. I want someone that fantasizes about being brought to a climax by a lover with a skillful tongue and fingers as well as his member. Also a big toy collection is a plus”
Yes… those are the words of a man who exacted justice across Orange and Osceola County as the State Attorney. They are the words of the man who served as the moralizer for Central Floridians.
Worse yet, we also discovered that the same email address he used for Ashley Madison was also tied to a group-sex account on Adult Friend Finder, another website where individuals go to get their rocks off.
Ashton would go on to lose his re-election bid against current State Attorney Aramis Ayala in 2016 in the Democratic primary, and it is still unknown how many men or women he contacted while using Ashley Madison and Adult Friend Finder.
Central Floridians breathed a sigh of relief. During his tenure as a top prosecutor and eventual State Attorney, Ashton became infamous for his unprofessional courtroom outbursts and inability to earn convictions.
Now, just a year after he promised to never return to public office, he has filed to run for circuit court judge in 2018.
He did this on the day that Minnesota Senator Al Franken resigned amid sexual assault allegations and as both Republicans and Democrats nationwide have been swept up in sexual misconduct controversies.
Judges are supposed to be morally and ethically sound, not known sexual deviants who have contacted an untold number of men and women in the Central Florida area looking for an extra-marital romp.
If he wants voters to take him seriously as a judicial candidate, Mr. Ashton should immediately release the names of every person he contacted through online sex apps.
We should know if there are any conflicts of interest IF he were to somehow become a judge in Florida’s 9th judicial circuit.
To disrespect voters by breaking his promise to “never run again” and considering the endless amount of unanswered questions about his sexual proclivities… it is the least he can do.
This man has been on the government tit for over 30-years as a prosecutor. According to our sources, Ashton could not hack it in the private sector.
And now we are supposed to cut him another check and allow him to denigrate the integrity of our court system? Not. So. Fast.
Voters are smart enough to realize that he has no business wearing a black robe or judging others, but apparently, he does not.
If he can’t stick to his marriage vows and can’t stick to his promise to never run for public office again, how can we expect him to be faithful to the court?
The truth will come out and he will again be publicly shamed, that is a fact. Mr. Ashton, we implore you to save us the charade and drop out immediately.
Write another book, go on a road trip, or repair your marriage. Orange and Osceola County deserve better, it’s just that simple.
Jacob Engels is an Orlando based journalist whose work has been featured and republished in news outlets around the globe including Politico, InfoWars, MSNBC, Orlando Sentinel, New York Times, Daily Mail UK, Associated Press, People Magazine, ABC, and Fox News to name a few. Mr. Engels focuses on stories that other news outlets neglect or willingly hide to curry favor among the political and business special interests in the state of Florida. ----------
Circuit judge races are set in Central Florida — here's a look at the candidates
Nine people are running for four circuit judge seats in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties — including Jeff Ashton, the former Orange-Osceola state attorney.
Friday was the qualifying deadline for the Aug. 28 primary election.
Ashton lost his re-election bid for the state attorney’s seat in 2016 to Aramis Ayala, the region’s current top prosecutor. He is running in the Ninth Judicial Circuit’s 15th division.
“I think the biggest thing about me is… voters sort of know what they’re getting. My career has been very public and people kind of know what I stand for, and I think that’s kind of rare in a judicial race,” said Ashton, perhaps best known as a prosecutor in the ultra-high-profile 2011 murder trial of Casey Anthony.
He is running against Howard Friedman, who this week resigned from his position as a court magistrate to run for judge. In his 13 years as a magistrate he heard cases of juvenile dependency, among others, and had to make recommendations regarding whether parents were able to take care of their children.
“I have more experience in the private sector. I have more experience than I believe my opponent has,” Friedman said. “… I can make tough decisions; I have made tough decisions.”
In the 26th division, Joseph Haynes Davis is running against Tom Young. Davis’ experience ranges from mortgage law to criminal law, while Young’s practice is in appellate cases.
“I am running because I feel strongly about the need for judges who are hard workers and who are efficient, because the courts are understaffed and underfunded,” Young said. “I just think it’s important for the public and especially litigants to have meaningful access to courts.”
Davis couldn’t be reached Friday.
Assistant State Attorney Lorraine De Young is running for a spot on the bench in the 41st division. She prosecutes sex crimes and resentencing for juvenile offenders who were sentenced to life without parole before the law allowing those sentences was declared unconstitutional.
“Hopefully I would be one of those judges that would run a very good, fair, efficient courtroom,” De Young said. “And with my experience with the law I think I would bring a lot to the bench.”
Also running in the 41st division are Dean Mosley, an immigration and criminal defense attorney who graduated from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston; and Laura Shaffer, who was a supervising attorney for the Department of Children and Families before opening a private practice in 2008.
Some of the people Shaffer represents are minors who are victims of human trafficking, which she said gives her insight into the needs of people who come before the court.
“I think it’s important to recognize that it is the most important day of their lives and that they should be treated with respect and dignity,” she said.
Mosley could not be reached this week.
In Seminole County, incumbent Circuit Judge Melissa Dyan Souto will face opposition in her first race since being appointed to the bench in 2015. She’s at the juvenile courthouse handling cases including dependency and delinquency. Because those cases can be so personal, Souto said she makes a point to listen to those who come before her.
“I find a lot of times that that diffuses the situation somewhat,” she said. “I remind them that I understand this is an emotional situation, and redirect them to what we are here for.”
Running against her is Adam Pollack, who has a private criminal defense and family law practice.
“I’ve had an opportunity to really see people in different stages of their life and I’ve always been there to help them resolve difficult situations,” he said. “While you may be dispensing justice, there should always be an element of compassion.”
glotan@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5774
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Ex-state attorney Jeff Ashton to run for circuit judge
Former Orange Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton has filed to run for judge on the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court.
Steven Lemongello Orlando Sentinel
Former state attorney Jeff Ashton wants to sit on the other side of the bench.
Ashton, who lost his position as Orange Osceola state attorney last year to Aramis Ayala, filed to run Tuesday for a seat as a judge on the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court in 2018.
He is one of two candidates who have filed to run for the open seat along with attorney David Hamilton Harris.
Marc Lubet, the judge serving in the seat, is retiring at the end of his six-year term.
Ashton was elected state attorney in 2012 after defeating his former boss and fellow Democrat, Lawson Lamar, in an open primary after making his name as the prosecutor in the 2011 Casey Anthony murder trial.
In 2015, he was caught up in the hack of the Ashley Madison dating site for married people and admitted to visiting it while at his office.
Ashton claimed he never had an affair stemming from his use of the site, saying at a news conference, “While I indulged my curiosity about the site, it never went beyond that. These were incredibly stupid choices.”
But while he said he used public Wi-Fi to visit the site on his personal laptop, he said he broke no laws.
His defeat by Ayala in the 2016 Democratic primary came after a Washington, D.C.-based PAC connected to billionaire George Soros poured almost a million dollars into her campaign, which ended up outspending Ashton’s campaign by about 14 to 1.
TV ads and mailers accused Ashton of unfair racial policies, which he denied as “lies.”
In an opinion column in the Orlando Sentinel in March, Ashton criticized Ayala’s decision not to seek the death penalty in capital murder cases, for which she had been stripped of her authority to try such cases by Gov. Rick Scott.
“Adherence to the statute is mandatory, morons,” Ashton wrote.
slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920 or @stevelemongello
Thanks to City of St. Augustine Beach City Commissioner Maggie Kostka, Mayor Undine George, Vice Mayor Margaret England, Commissioners Donald Samora and Richard Burtt O'Brien for raising fines for parking in parking spaces set aside for persons with disabilities.
Kudos to disability rights activist Merrill Paul Roland and Thomas F. Reynolds, Jr. for their years of advocacy on this issue.
Commissioners finally listened.
St. Augustine Beach now joins every other jurisdiction in the State of Florida.
SAB's been incorporated since 1959, but lacks competent city management.
SAB now stands to rake in large sums from ADA violators.
I supported the fine increase. So did Mr. Reynolds.
I added a suggestion that the penalty include defenestration, because we now have a tall building (Godawful Embassy Suites Hotel, built without enough parking, too-tall, ugly and a disgrace to the human race, owned by the Ardid family of Miami and their Key International, Inc., represented by the law firm of Akerman LLP.
This fundamental human rights issue should have been acted upon by years ago.
But there was zero interest until tonight by:
the itty-bitty City of St. Augustine Beach, or
a succession of SAB Mayors, including RICHARD BURTT O'BRIEN, ANDREA SAMUES, EDWARD GEORGE, FRANK CHARLES, et al. or
SAB City "Manager" BRUCE MAX ROYLE, or
SAB City Attorney JAMES PATRICK WILSON, a/k/a "Minimum Jim," or
prior SAB City Attorneys GEOFFREY DOBSON and DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT, conflicted mediocre developer lawyers with better taste in clothes than law and public policy.
And there was NO dull Republican rich guy, NO assorted sordid economic royalists and NO greedy secretive LLC benefitting from raising disabled parking fines, as required by state law.
And the itty-bitty City of St. Augustine Beach has repeatedly committed and tolerated ADA parking violations, there was no sense of urgency.
No interest.
Until tonight
Kudos to reform Commissioner Maggie Kostka for forthrightly proposing the $250 fine.
She speaks her truth, early and often, without fear or favor of City burghers ("who know not that they know not that they know not," in the memorable words of my friend and mentor and former client, Senior Special Agent Robert E. Tyndall (Retired EPA, HUD and FBI criminal investigator).
More later on the City's lack of a business plan or a business case on Mayor Undine Celeste Pawlowski George's hare-brained, mosh-mash, misbegotten scheme of institution a smartphone parking app to pay for parking, and her arrogant, ignorant, secretive refusal to answer my Open Records Request No. 2018-70, concerning the unnamed "friend" and "colleague" she had lunch with to discuss a parking app benefitting a local corporation (unnamed).
Mayor George told me by phone it was "confidential." No, it's not. She previously asked me what law required her to answer my questions.
We have a Right to Know. Like any good diplomat, I will not take "no" for an answer.
In the immortal words of the late Wm. F. Buckley, Jr., "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Earlier tonight, I asked Mayor George, "Do you even remember when you first sold out?"
She did not respond.
Will deeply insensitive Mayor Undine Celeste Pawlowski George even file for re-election? Will she draw opponent(s)?
She reminds me of former Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, elected as a "reformer," a few years after the death of legendary dictatorial Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Jane Byrne quickly sold out -- Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper columnist Mike Royko nicknamed her "Ms. Bossy" -- “someone who hopes to be the female version of the late mayor.”
Exactly how is Undine George an improvement over her last two predecessors?
THE COMPLETELY OUT OF TOUCH CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE HAS LED THIS CITY INTO DEBT WITH HIS POOR MANAGEMENT!
CITY EMPLOYEES RECEIVING THE CADILLAC HEALTH INSURANCE FULLY PAID by the CITY TAXPAYERS IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY AT ITS WORST! NO OTHER CITY and DEFINITELY NOT IN PRIVATE SECTOR DOES THIS HAPPEN!
CITY HALL EMPLOYEES ARE WAY OVERPAID and THEY DON'T COME ANY LAZIER THEN ROYLE!
CITY COMMISSIONERS GEORGE, ENGLAND, SAMORA, and CITY CONTRACTED JIM WILSON RECEIVING $10,000.00 GIFTS AT THE BEACH BLAST IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY AT ITS WORST!
GIVING TRASH PICK-UP SUBSIDIES TO SEA COLONY RESIDENTS IS CORRUPTION AT A VERY HIGH PRICE AND IS FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY.
GIVING A TRASH PICK-UP SUBSIDY FOR COMMISSIONERS MARGRET ENGLAND S PERSONAL HOME and COMMISSIONER UNDINE GEORGE HOME & BUSINESS IS WRONG AND NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED WITH CRIMINAL PROSECUTION!
CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE HAS BEEN GIVING THE ST AUGUSTINE BEACH CIVIC ASSOCIATION OVER $200,000.00 IN SERVICES AT NO CHARGE OVER THE LAST 12 YEARS! THAT IS NOT ONLY FISCAL IRRESPONSIBILITY, BUT SERIOUS FELONIES COMMITTED BY BRUCE MAX ROYLE! WHERE ARE THE CITY COMMISSIONERS WHEN IT COMES TO OVERSEEING THE WORK by CITY MANAGER BRUCE MAX ROYLE?
THEY ARE LOOKING THE OTHER WAY BECAUSE of COMMISSIONERS RICH RINGHAVER O'Brien, COMMISSIONER and LAWYER UNDINE GEORGE, COMMISSIONER and LAWYER MARGRET ENGLAND and the NEWLY APPOINTED UNETHICAL COMMISSIONER and LOCAL GREASY SPOON RESTAURANT OWNER (W/SUPER LOUSY FOOD)... DONALD SAMORA ... ALL ARE TAKING FROM OUR CITY or AS THEY LIKE TO SAY ..." WE ARE GETTING OURS! "
THE GOOD NEWS IS ...
THERE WILL BE THREE NEW CITY COMMISSIONERS GETTING ELECTED THIS FALL and HOPEFULLY THE FIRST ORDER of THEIR SMART GOVERNING WILL BE TO FIRE BRUCE MAX ROYLE!« less