Thanks to the Center for Biological Diversity for halting a billion dollar Wal-Mart-anchored shopping center and 900 apartment "development" threatening the survival of twenty (20) endangered species in a Miami rockland forest. The 50 acre tract was formerly owned by the University of Miami, which received the former federal land to preserve, only to sell the land (and its soul, if any) to developers.
The same day the lawsuit was filed, Miami-based United States District Judge Ursula Mancusi Urgano found that plaintiffs have a high probability of prevailing on the merits. She temporarily halted the project, orderingTemporary Restraining Order.
She halted the bulldozers, instanter. Three cheers for the independence of article III federal courts.
Venceremos!
On January 15, 2017, the Center for Biological Diversity presented the Earth2Trump Roadshow at our St. Augustine Amphitheater -- the only stop in Florida -- for a pre-inauguration road show protest.
Good work!
United States District Court Judge Ursula Mancusi Urgano
Center for Biological Diversity Florida Director Jaclyn Lopez
Judge orders emergency halt to clearing of rare Miami forest targeted for WalmartBY JENNY STALETOVICH jstaletovich@miamiherald.com DECEMBER 08, 2017 03:22 PM UPDATED DECEMBER 08, 2017 08:42 PM
Miami Pine Rockland Coalition founder Al Sunshine photographed a bulldozer on Friday, Dec. 8, 2017, clearing trees and brush on pine rockland targeted for a shopping mall and 900 apartments. Courtesy Al Sunshine
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article188818299.html#storylink=cpy
On Friday, Dec. 8, 2017, a judge ordered a developer to stop work on pine rockland where he plans to build a shopping center and apartments that would destroy about half of the globally imperiled forest.
PATRICK FARRELL pfarrell@miamiherald.com
Earlier this week, the Fish and Wildlife Service signed off on a habitat conservation plan that cleared the way for Palm Beach County developer Peter Cummings to start work on the controversial project he unveiled in 2014. A day later, bulldozers began downing trees and plowing brush.
In approving the conservation plan, wildlife managers said the menagerie of plants and animals, some of which can be found only in pine rockland, have a better chance at surviving because the land had become overgrown and choked by invasive plants after the University of Miami, which was given the land by the U.S. government, failed to maintain it before selling it to Cummings for $22 million.
“You’ve minimized and mitigated impacts to the species and taking is not going to reduce survivability in wild,” Ashleigh Blackford, the supervisor of planning and resource conservation for the Service’s Florida field office, said earlier this week.
But in their lawsuit filed Friday morning, environmentalists said the plan failed in a number of ways, starting with surveys of the disappearing species the plan is intended to protect.
The habitat conservation plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sets aside two smaller preserves on the property, just over 20 acres each, connected by a ‘wildlife corridor.’
Ram Realty
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article188818299.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article188818299.html#storylink=cpy
Those surveys were either incomplete or nonexistent, according to the lawsuit against the Service, the U.S. Department of Interior, and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. No survey was done for tiger beetles, which were first discovered in the pineland in the 1930s, vanished and were rediscovered in 2007. Only part of the forest was checked for bonneted bats, a species so rare and elusive that only a handful of roosts have been documented in South Florida. And plants were used as a proxy to search for Bartram’s hairstreak butterflies, the suit claims.
The lawsuit also argued that alternative site plans provided to federal wildlife managers failed to consider county protections already in place, and that the developer inflated the potential restoration on the preserves to paint a rosier picture than would likely occur.
The Fish and Wildlife Service also allowed Cummings’ environmental consultants to develop their own formula for calculating the amount of damage that might occur. The untested method, the lawsuit said, had not been peer-reviewed and could set a precedent for use on other projects. About 3,000 people submitted comments on the plan, most opposing it.
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Ken Warren said the agency had received a copy of the judge’s ruling Friday.
“Our staff put a lot of good work into this project,” he said in an email. “Now it becomes a matter for the court.”
Environmentalist Al Sunshine shows a photo he took on his cellphone of a bulldozer clearing land Friday on a pine rockland where a developer wants to build a Walmart-anchored shopping center and 900 apartments.
Roberto Koltun rkoltun@miamiherald.com
In an emailed statement, a spokesman said Cummings’ company, Ram Realty Services, spent seven years studying the site and putting together a “comprehensive” strategy. The plan also brings another 51 acres UM owns nearby under management, he said, although it should be noted that land is already under a conservation easement requiring it to be maintained.
Land clearing that started this week, the statement said, was aimed at removing invasive plants and directed by “the appropriate regulatory agencies.” After receiving the court order Friday afternoon, work was stopped, but the company plans to fight to overturn the decision, the statement said.
“We view today’s court filing as a willful attempt to delay the restoration of this degraded site and prevent the development of a much needed addition to the local community,” the statement said, adding that the public was allowed to comment throughout the lengthy process. “It’s unfortunate that certain organizations choose to focus their efforts in the Courts rather than in the restoration and improvement of the abandoned blight that has existed on this site for years, but we respect their rights to do so and will respond appropriately as needed.”
In addition to the federal case, neighbors have filed a lawsuit in state court arguing that they were not adequately notified about the project because it provided a “layman’s description” that failed to mention the shopping center or apartments.
Frank Ridgley, head of conservation and research at Zoo Miami, talks about the endangered pine rockland
Video and pictures by Peter Andrew Bosch and Jenny Staletovich/Miami Herald
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article188818299.html#storylink=cpy
Judge stops US from allowing destruction of Miami forest The Associated Press DECEMBER 08, 2017 04:38 PM UPDATED DECEMBER 08, 2017 04:39 PM
MIAMI A federal judge has temporarily blocked a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision that would have allowed the destruction of a rare forest near Miami to build a shopping center and apartments.
U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro issued an order Friday stopping the clearing of about 50 acres of pine rockland forest that is home to about 20 endangered species, including the Miami tiger beetle.
She said the lawsuit filed Friday by the Center for Biological Diversity against the service will likely succeed, so she stopped bulldozers that had begun tearing down trees this week shortly after the wildlife service approved the development.
The group's Florida director, Jaclyn Lopez, told The Miami Herald , "We are elated."
The Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/article188841594.html#storylink=cpy
Is Northeast Florida Regional Council CEO BRIAN TEEPLE in breach of contract for work for the City of St. Augustine Beach?
Was it a conflict of interest for NEFRC to turn around and hire giant developer engineering firm ENGLAND, THIMS & MILLR for work on the Land Development regulations?
St. Augustine Beach City Attorney James Patrick Wilson didn't mince words.
At the December 6, 2017 St. Augustine Bach CityCommission meeting, he said that work done on the City's land development regulations since 2014 by consultants was thus far a failure.
"I found the documents to be somewhat incomplete and full of mistakes and errors. It would take a lot of massaging to do it," Mr. Wilson said.
Commissioners were disinclined to give any more money to the Northeast Florida Regional Council, a government agency, and the developer engineering firm of ENGLAND, THIMS and MILLER.
"They were paid well to be here," Jim Wilson said.
And ETM delivered inferior work produt.
Commissioner Maggie Kostka quoted from the original contract. NEFRC and ETM have not yet done the required work and skipped City Commission meetings.
There is more work to be done. See tape here: (1:52:00 to 2:05:00)
NEFRC and ETM claim they've complied with the contract, City Attorney Wilson said.
"They were well paid to be here. I don't know how they accounted for their hours.... I'm not a big fan of consultants... whose work sits o book shelves."
"We can do this. I know we can," said Commissioner Margaret England.
Watchdog Tom Reynolds said, "These people are trying to jack us $20,000. I don't want to negotiate with them. I want to send the a letter.... Thank God Commissioner Kostka got elected. You don't miss a trick.... One of the best rookie years" of any public officials he's ever seen. Mr. Reynolds then suggested that PRISCILLA "RACHAEL" BENNETT be involved. "She knows it," he said of the disgraced developer puppet. Brian Teeple "owes us money," and he was "never impressed" with Linday Haga.
I agreed with Mr. Reynolds and said that Commissioner Kostka is "wiser than a tree of owls." It's a "breach of contract," I said. It's a "breach of contract," I said.
Never again should a government sign a jury trial waiver, as former City Attorney DOUGLAS NELSON BURNETT did with NEFRC and ETM.
ETM's website says: "ETM has an extensive history of providing professional services for all traditional land development sectors, including commercial, retail, industrial and residential as well as non-traditional sectors such as lifestyle centers and dense mixed-use urban redevelopment."
ETM works for every single tree-killing wetland destroying carpetbagging developer in Florida."
SAB paid $42,000 for a "pig in a polk, errors and omissions and flabby thinking," I said.
"Your public comment procedures stink on ice," I told Mayor O'BRIEN. I suggested "actual law professors, people wnho don't have a got in the race," to vet the LDRs. "The best experts are cheap or free."
Delays have allowed Mayor RICHARD O'BRIEN to build his two McMansions on F Street while the LDRs are in limbo.
Newly-appointed Commissioner Don Samora asked for a "timeframe" to be presented at the January 6, 2017 9 AM meeting.
We can get a nice new pier by pledging bed tax revenue to repay bonds. Yes, we can! County Administrator Michael Wanchick won't discuss it publicly. I've been pointing this out since mid-2016.
Posted December 9, 2017 06:40 am By Margo C. Pope Correspondent
POPE’S VIEW: Saving the pier, a goal for all?
I hadn’t spent much time in recent years on the St. Johns County Ocean and Beach Fishing Pier at St. Augustine Beach. But, I made a trip there shortly after seeing this headline in the St. Augustine Record on Oct. 6: “‘CRUMBLING CROWN JEWEL’: County plans to let pier die; city of St. Augustine Beach to look for ways to save it.”
A pier walk used to be a frequent Sunday afternoon diversion and then a stop at a beach restaurant. Then the times between those walks got longer and longer. Our Sunday afternoons fell victim to work on the house or, on the job. For four months after Hurricane Matthew, when we were living at Crescent Beach, I’d pass Pier Park but was always rushing somewhere else. We’d walk part of Crescent Beach instead.
The talk of the future of the pier, etc., between St. Johns County and St. Augustine Beach governments, and the costs of operation and management, is the reality today. The beach is a popular place for tourists and locals but even their property taxes and the tourist-development-tax, otherwise known as the bed tax, don’t cover what all county government requires. Piers don’t last forever. A replacement is $10 million or more. I don’t envy the two governments involved.
The center of St. Augustine Beach’s public space is the Pier. Where else can you look out to the horizon, breathe the healthy salt air, watch the churning Atlantic, see surfers, surf fishing people, beach walkers with and without dog, and others like yourself, just sightseeing?
My family’s outings back in the day were beach driven. Then, the Fourth of July was “officially” celebrated all day long at the center of the community, the pier and its parking lot.
It was a big day for my family and many of our friends who were city folks. My Dad would pack the beach gear – blankets, folding chairs, each balls and rafts, ice chest filled with sodas, and a separate cooler filled with food burrowed in more ice so they would not spoil.
Jammed packed in our big Oldsmobile convertible, we would head from downtown, top down, singing whatever songs my parents thought of. World War II was still fresh in their lives, Daddy in the Air Force, and Mama having been in the South Pacific with the American Red Cross during the war. We knew all the Armed Services songs. If my Grandmother and Grandfather Cox from Connecticut were visiting, there would be more patriotic songs from their first war, World War I, he in the Army overseas and she, a Yeomanette, stateside.
We sometimes shared beach days with the Slater family who lived at the Beach year round. My brother and I thought it was pretty cool to have the beach as your playground. When we got together, all the kids would head to the pier and “stroll” the pier. It always surprised me that fishermen-and-women would catch anything considering the ocean was 12-14 feet below, a long way down for the fishing line to connect with a fish. Some fisher-people would have buckets they would attach to another line to “catch” the fish as it got closer to journey’s end.
As a teenager, my husband recalls catching a lot of whiting and an occasional drum that “hung around” the pilings, too. His parents always took Sunday drives to the beach and walked the pier, too.
It’s hard now to think the pier in past tense.
It’s easy enough to say, “Save the Pier.” But, we are not County Administrator Michael Wanchick, Beach City Manager Max Royle, County Commission Chair Henry Dean and Beach Mayor Rich O’Brien trying to work out a possible solution for their boards to consider. A public-private partnership may be a way. There will be giving and taking, of course, but if this wonderful place gets to keep being wonderful, isn’t that what we want?
Margo C. Pope was associated with The St. Augustine Record for 24 of her 42 years with Morris Publishing Group. She retired in 2012 as The Record’s editorial page editor.
One of my heroes, investigative reporter Les Whitten, has died. I was inspired, circa age 13, when I saw les Whitten's boss, Jack Anderson, speak at Camden County College in Blackwood, N.J., where my mom worked. Here's The New York Times obituary:
Les Whitten, Muckraking Columnist and Novelist, Dies at 89 By SAM ROBERTS DEC. 7, 2017 The New York Times
Les Whitten, who shared a byline with Jack Anderson on a nationally syndicated newspaper column that mercilessly exposed Washington’s foibles and frauds and who once even spied on J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., died on Saturday in Adelphi, Md. He was 89.
The cause was sepsis, his son Les Whitten III said.
Mr. Whitten, who also wrote nearly a dozen political thrillers and horror and science fiction novels, figured in a major First Amendment controversy in 1973. He and two American Indian activists were arrested that January as they loaded cartons of stolen government documents into his Chevrolet Vega hatchback a mile from the White House.
F.B.I. agents “came swarming out of neighboring cars and doorways like ants from a rotten log,” he recalled in Mark Feldstein’s “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture” (2010).
The agents confiscated his pen and pad and accused him of a felony punishable by 10 years in prison, saying he illegally possessed official papers seized when protesters occupied a Washington office building a few months before over the government’s stewardship of Indian affairs.
Journalists expressed concern that the arrest — based merely on having the documents, not on stealing them — would send a chill through the ranks of investigative reporters.
“All of us on my staff are ready to join Les Whitten in jail, if we must, before we will stop digging out and reporting the news,” Anderson, who died in 2005, declared. He had already contrived an inspired defense, though.
Claiming that he planned to write a complimentary profile of Rogers Morton, the secretary of the interior, Anderson reminded Morton that unlike mainstream reporters he subsisted on exclusive reporting. He charmed Morton into handing him confidential files that reflected well on his record overseeing Native American affairs. The idea was to catch a government official leaking the same sorts of confidential documents that Mr. Whitten was accused of possessing.
Armed with photocopies, Anderson told Mr. Whitten, “If this ever comes to trial, we’re going to have a heck of a witness for your defense.”
Mr. Whitten recalled in 2005 in The Huffington Post: “My case carried a 10-year prison term. I don’t know how many years Morton’s carried.”
Mr. Whitten insisted that he had the documents only because he was helping a source return them to the government. Two weeks after his arrest, a federal grand jury declined to bring charges.
Anderson had hired Mr. Whitten, who had worked for The Washington Post and the Hearst newspaper chain, in 1969, just four months after inheriting the “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column from Drew Pearson.
Anderson admired Mr. Whitten’s tenacity and his knowledge of how power worked in Washington.
“Les Whitten is the best reporter in town,” he told an interviewer from The Boston Globe in 1972. “Would you put that down?”
Leslie Hunter Whitten Jr. was born on Feb. 21, 1928, in Jacksonville, Fla. His father was an engineer and executive of Graybar, the electrical supply company. His mother, the former Linnora Harvey, was a Latin teacher.
After growing up in Washington, he enrolled in a civil engineering program at Lehigh University, but dropped out after three semesters, served in the Army, and settled in Paris to become a poet. He returned to Lehigh, switched his major to English and journalism, and graduated in 1950.
Mr. Whitten was the self-described “Episcopalian wine-loving atheist” to Anderson’s teetotaling Mormon, a “fellow egotist” who became more eager to topple a corrupt politician as a journalist than to build from the ground up as an engineer.
In 1951 he married the former Phyllis Webber, who died in January. In addition to their son Leslie III, he is survived by their two other sons, Daniel and Andrew; a daughter from a previous relationship, Deborah Engle; and six grandchildren.
Mr. Whitten was a reporter for Radio Free Europe, International News Service, United Press International, The Post and Hearst before Anderson hired him. They worked together full time until 1978. The success of “Conflict of Interest” (1976), Mr. Whitten’s novel about a crusading reporter, led him to shift to a part-time role with the column.
Tom Buckley, reviewing that novel in The New York Times Book Review, described Mr. Whitten as “Jack Anderson’s senior ferret” who “brought many scandals to light in the nation’s capital.” As for the book itself, Mr. Buckley wrote that it was “more interesting as a manual of journalistic procedure than it is as a work of creative imagination.”
Mr. Whitten’s earlier books included “The Alchemist” (1973), a tale that mixed Washington politics with Satanism and the occult. Martin Levin, writing about that novel in The Times Book Review, called Mr. Whitten “an elegant stylist with a flair for both language and action.”
Mr. Whitten’s other novels included “Moon of the Wolf” (1967), which was adapted into a 1972 television horror movie starring David Janssen; and “Moses: The Lost Book of the Bible” (1999). He also wrote “F. Lee Bailey” (1971), a biography of the defense lawyer.
Mr. Whitten was making a hefty — at least for journalism — $22,000 a year in 1972 (about $130,000 in today’s dollars) as Anderson’s chief assistant. That was more than Anderson was paying his other acolytes, among them Brit Hume, later a Fox anchorman. (The others rarely received bylines to boot.) But the money, Mr. Whitten suggested, was less than he might have earned as a full-time novelist.
Still, not every novelist could search for a scoop by going through a government official’s garbage or staking out Hoover while looking into his private life and liaisons with his chief deputy and close associate, Clyde Tolson. The columns that resulted from those investigations prompted Hoover to denounce Anderson and his ilk as “lower than the regurgitated filth of vultures.” Mr. Whitten told Life magazine in 1972, “This job gives me a chance to do what I wanted to do all my newspaper life — knock the bleeding crap out of the people who are corrupting the country, and there are plenty of them.”
Despite his swagger, he acknowledged his limitations.
“We only catch chips of the truth,” Mr. Whitten said. “But I don’t think that’s frustrating: To get the whole truth, you’ve got to be God.”
A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2017, on Page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: Les Whitten, 89, Columnist; Exposed Washington’s Frauds. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
A Sheriff, a Mystery Check and a Blogger Who Cried Foul
In Alabama, an official’s use of public funds and behavior toward critics raise questions about the broad powers of American sheriffs.
DECATUR, Ala. — One evening last fall, an informant for the Morgan County sheriff entered the office of a small construction business near this old river town and, he said, secretly installed spyware on a company computer. He had no warrant.
The sheriff, Ana Franklin, wanted to know who was leaking information about her to a blogger known as the Morgan County Whistleblower.
The blogger had been zeroing in on the sheriff’s finances, specifically $150,000 that by law should have gone toward feeding inmates in the county jail. Instead it had been invested in a now-bankrupt used-car dealership run by a convicted bank swindler.
Now the sheriff has become ensnared, along with others, in a wide-ranging government investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking at her stewardship of taxpayer money, as well as the dealership and its financial links to prominent people in town, including several state law enforcement agents, according to more than a half-dozen people who say they have spoken to the F.B.I. Government divers recently searched the bottom of a forested creek for evidence.
What, if anything, investigators have uncovered is not known. But The New York Times found that since taking office in 2011, Sheriff Franklin has failed to comply with court orders, has threatened critics with legal action and has not publicly accounted for tens of thousands of dollars raised through charity events.
Her activities point to questions about the broad powers afforded America’s county sheriffs, newly emboldened in the era of President Trump. Unlike appointed municipal police chiefs, sheriffs answer only to voters, giving them often-unfettered dominion not just over county law enforcement but over the jail and the lucrative service contracts that go with it.
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The former site of a used-car dealership in Morgan County. Sheriff Franklin used $150,000 in public funds to invest in the failed business.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
“In certain jurisdictions there is a feeling by sheriffs that this is my fiefdom — I am in charge, my way or the highway,” said Sarah Geraghty, a lawyer at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, which has filed lawsuits against a number of sheriffs. “Sometimes that kind of culture can lead to sort of a sheriffs-gone-wild kind of behavior.”
If these officers of the law are also politicians, their politics have increasingly adhered to the idea of the sheriff as an almost mythic figure — a pure expression of democracy, local protector of the people, accountable only to the people. In recent years, a group of activist sheriffs has coalesced around such hot-button conservative issues as gun rights, immigration and the use of federal lands in the West.
“Mostly we protect people from criminals, but sometimes we protect them from an overreaching government,” said Brad Rogers, the sheriff of Elkhart County, Ind. He added: “I’m answerable to the people. I have a face and a name. Try asking the federal government for a face and a name.”
The apotheosis of the idea that federal and state law is subordinate to local authority is Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who earned notoriety for his aggressive pursuit of unauthorized Latino immigrants. After the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., hundreds of sheriffs allied with Mr. Arpaio signed a pledge not to enforce the Obama administration’s gun-control proposals.
Ultimately, Mr. Arpaio was convicted of contempt for defying a federal judge’s order to stop violating immigrants’ constitutional rights. But President Trump pardoned him over the summer, seemingly endorsing his view of local authority. Indeed, the Trump administration has instructed sheriffs to disregard federal law and detain undocumented immigrant suspects longer than is constitutionally allowed. And when the president announced this month that he was drastically shrinking two national monuments in Utah, he cast the decision in terms of protecting citizens from “federal overreach.”
Sheriff Franklin is ideologically aligned with many conservative causes, and during the 2016 presidential race had a featured role in a national advertising campaign where sheriffs called for tougher border security. “Lives are depending on it,” she said on camera.
In two interviews with The Times, the sheriff said she had done nothing illegal and had not violated anyone’s civil rights. “I have worked my tail off to try to do the right thing and make the best decisions that I can make,” she said.
She said she had tried to make her agency more accountable, and added, “Since I have taken office, I have attempted to train these deputies, to equip them, to manage them in the piddly little budget that I’ve been given.” As for the federal inquiry, the sheriff said, “The F.B.I. has not informed me of any such investigation.”
The sheriff makes no apologies for her belief that voters and the state constitution allow her to carry out her own vision of law enforcement. “I run it based on what the public wants or likes,” she said.
Officers and the Law
While some see that attitude as a defense of liberty, others worry that it is simply license for sheriffs to act as if they are above the law.
“There’s a glorified notion of local sovereignty that flies in the face of 200 years of constitutional progress in the United States,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit focusing on issues of democracy and equal rights. “Sheriffs have an important role, but the fact that they’re elected does not mean they’re not required to operate within the law and the Constitution.”
Earlier this year, the sheriff in Worth County, Ga., ordered his deputies to enter the local high school in search of drugs. They lined up 850 studentswith legs spread and hands against the hallway walls. Deputies inserted fingers into girls’ bras, and touched their underwear and genital areas while searching in their waistbands or reaching up their dresses, according to the Southern Center, which sued the sheriff.
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Ana Franklin, the state’s only female sheriff, did not follow a traditional path into law enforcement.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
The deputies had no warrant or other authority to conduct the search, the suit charged. No drugs were found.
Soraya Kawucha, a former deputy sheriff who teaches criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Tex., called sheriffs the rarely studied “bastard son” of law enforcement. “Researchers either ignored sheriffs or made erroneous conclusions that we were no different than police departments,” Ms. Kawucha said.
Because sheriffs have no direct supervision, criminal prosecution or lawsuits may be the only checks against those who abuse their power. The Georgia sheriff was recently indicted in connection with the mass search and has pleaded not guilty. The lawsuit resulted in a $3 million settlement.
In Florida, a federal appeals court ruled in 2014 that detectives from the St. Johns County sheriff’s office had violated the constitutional rights of a defendant during what his lawyer had assumed was a privileged and private meeting in a closed interview room at the sheriff’s office. Unbeknown to the lawyer, Anne Marie Gennusa, detectives were secretly monitoring the conversation. When the client handed Ms. Gennusa a written statement, detectives rushed in, “forcibly grabbed” it and arrested him, attaching the statement to his arrest report, court records show.
County governments have budgetary control over sheriffs, but little else. They can threaten to withhold money, but they open themselves up to criticism that they are endangering law and order.
In Arizona, voters kept re-electing Mr. Arpaio despite his long record of misconduct complaints. And in Putnam County, N.Y., Sheriff Donald B. Smith repeatedly and falsely accused the local district attorney, Adam Levy, of shielding an undocumented immigrant during a rape investigation. Like Sheriff Franklin, Sheriff Smith appeared in the video campaign for stronger border controls.
It took a defamation lawsuit for Sheriff Smith to finally admit this year that he had lied; the suit was settled with $125,000 in public funds. “Technically, he answers to voters, but I would say he really answered to no one,” said Michael Sussman, a lawyer for Mr. Levy. In November, voters finally had enough and tossed him from office.
Sheriffs can submit to voluntary state or national accreditation surveys, but their agencies rarely have their credentials taken from them for rule violations.
Some sheriffs have been in office so long that evicting them is almost unthinkable, regardless of their records.
In his book “Just Mercy,” the public-interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson tells the story of his client Walter McMillian, a black man with no prior felony convictions who was stopped by Sheriff Tom Tate and other officers in Monroe County, Ala., in 1987 and sent to death row for the shooting of an 18-year-old white female store clerk.
It later emerged that the officers had pressured a key witness into lying about Mr. McMillian. Lending haunting resonance to the case was its venue: Monroeville, home of Harper Lee, whose novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” told a strikingly similar story. Mr. McMillian was eventually freed.
How do voters feel about Sheriff Tate? He has been elected seven times and is in his third decade in office.
A Tax Loophole
Ana Franklin, the state’s only female sheriff, did not follow a traditional path into law enforcement. Raised in this working-class city a short distance across the Tennessee River from Huntsville and the Army’s Redstone Arsenal, she ran a bridal shop, posed as a nightclub “calendar girl” in miniskirt and fishnets, trained German shepherds and ran a fitness center.
She was elected in 2010, defeating an unpopular incumbent. But she had another advantage, at least according to Glenda Lockhart, otherwise known as the Morgan County Whistleblower: She comes across as “just the most sweet, innocent, hard-working person you could ever imagine,” Ms. Lockhart said.
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Sheriff Franklin has given differing accounts about who processed the cash generated by her county rodeo.
Now in her second term with plans to run for a third, Sheriff Franklin, 53, broke into police work in neighboring Limestone County, under the tutelage of its longtime sheriff, Mike Blakely.
It was there that she learned the importance of annual rodeos for fund-raising and publicity. No one in the state did it bigger or better than Sheriff Blakely. With a skybox selling for $650, the events have raised close to a million dollars for law enforcement and for reinvestment in rodeo operations, he estimated. Voters must take him at his word, because rodeo money is not among the nine revenue streams audited by the state, records show.
The Morgan County rodeo had been a smaller affair until Sheriff Franklin took office. She installed an A.T.M. just outside the gate, allowing people to pay cash not only for admission but for concessions. And she asked employees and volunteers to sell advertisements to local businesses. Before long, the ad book more than tripled in size.
Rick Sherman, a former deputy, said he sold ads while on duty. “I’m an armed law enforcement officer asking for money, and that’s never a good thing,” said Mr. Sherman, who left his job nearly two years ago after a falling out with Sheriff Franklin. He said he had also been asked to work without pay at the rodeo. The sheriff said she did not force anyone to sell ads or work for free.
Sheriff Franklin said the rodeo brought in about $20,000 a year in profit, but she has never publicly accounted for all the money, except to say that it went to local charities and law enforcement. She promised to produce financial records for her rodeo, but a month later gave only names of charities and no amounts. The rodeo’s financial records, she said, were “reviewed by a C.P.A. firm.”
In interviews, the sheriff gave differing accounts about who processed the rodeo cash. First she said the money went through a tax-exempt organization set up a couple of years ago called Morgan County Sheriff’s Rodeo. Before that, the money was kept in a regular account, she said.
After The Times could find no group by that name registered with the Internal Revenue Service, Sheriff Franklin corrected herself, saying rodeo proceeds had actually gone to a different nonprofit: Morgan County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse, founded in 1963.
Normally, tax-exempt organizations must file annual financial reports for public inspection. But Sheriff Franklin’s is exempt from public disclosure because of an I.R.S. loophole for charities affiliated with government agencies. “The I.R.S. assumes organizations controlled by governmental entities will be good tax citizens,” said Marc Owens, former director of the I.R.S. division of exempt organizations.
The Times identified 19 such organizations — not all of them related to rodeos — affiliated with Alabama sheriffs. The sheriff in Etowah County has three.
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Rick Sherman, a former deputy, said he was asked to sell ads for Sheriff Franklin’s rodeo while he was on duty.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
Asked to explain how their rodeo profits were managed, three sheriffs gave names of nonprofit groups that they said held the money, but a search of government records could find no such entities. One sheriff said his rodeo was a tax-exempt nonprofit, even though it is incorporated as a for-profit business.
The fact that sheriffs’ offices are handling large, unaudited sums of money has drawn the attention of government investigators.
That said, the value of rodeos for sheriffs in need of votes and money is considerable. Sheriff Blakely, Alabama’s rodeo king, is now in his third decade in office. Recently, the first three news items on his web page were rodeo promotions.
The fourth item — a major drug arrest.
A Suspicious Investment
The mere mention of Ms. Lockhart is enough to shear off Sheriff Franklin’s folksy veneer. A liar, a fabricator, a crazy woman: That is how she describes Ms. Lockhart. “I have never in my life heard of anything like this or been through anything like this,” the sheriff said.
Ms. Lockhart stands by her postings. The diminutive grandmother became a whistle-blower after retiring as a security manager at the Redstone Arsenal, using her military research skills to shadow the sheriff and her allies.
Ms. Lockhart first took an interest in the sheriff after deputies came to her rural home in July 2011 to investigate a supposed disturbance. What happened next is in dispute, but she and her husband, Harold Lockhart, say the officers found nothing but refused to leave when asked.
Deputies arrested the couple after Mr. Lockhart, a retired military police officer, said he had had enough and was calling his lawyer. The Lockharts successfully sued the sheriff for false arrest. And while the sheriff was not present for the arrest and later said she knew nothing about it, Ms. Lockhart did not forget.
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Glenda Lockhart, a blogger known as the Morgan County Whistleblower. Her company computers were seized in a raid while she was investigating the sheriff’s activities.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
“I decided then I was not going to sit back and take it,” she said. “Some people can’t afford to fight it, so I started watching.”
With a profitable construction business, Ms. Lockhart had the resources to pursue complaints big and small. “I waited until employees were fired — then I would tell them I was the Morgan County Whistleblower,” she said.
Earlier this year she even went so far as to hire a pilot to fly her over southern Alabama, where she videotaped a stretch of land that she believed the sheriff had secretly obtained for her horses. That suspicion, Sheriff Franklin says, is not backed by a scintilla of evidence.
There was, however, more than enough evidence to link the sheriff to Priceville Partners LLC, a get-rich-quick scheme that spread a toxic cloud over the business community.
A used-car dealership offering title loans, Priceville Partners had begun opening branches around the county, and investors were welcome. Ordinarily, law officers might investigate rather than invest in a business co-owned by the likes of Greg Steenson, who had done prison time for a multimillion-dollar check-kiting scheme. But several officers from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, along with Morgan County deputies, became financially involved, records show. One agent texted another asking if he wanted a one-month $7,000 profit on a $10,000 investment. Sheriff Franklin’s father worked there; her daughter did the bookkeeping.
The sheriff invested $150,000. She would later say that she had not known Mr. Steenson was a co-owner, even though her daughter said that was clear from her first day on the job.
Ms. Lockhart had begun blogging about the dealership in 2015, after noticing the proximity of the lawbreaker and the law enforcers. She was not the only one watching. So was the F.B.I. in Huntsville, which soon became a popular destination for those with stories to tell about the sheriff or the dealership. In local lingo, they “went across the river.”
In January, after Ms. Lockhart published a copy of Sheriff Franklin’s $150,000 cashier’s check — signed over to Priceville Partners — the sheriff’s lawyer, Barnes F. Lovelace Jr., accused the blogger of obtaining it illegally. “A criminal investigation has been initiated,” he wrote to Ms. Lockhart. No charges have been filed.
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The cashier’s check that Sheriff Franklin used to invest in the car dealership, which was run by a convicted bank swindler.
The sheriff had once even threatened legal action against the creators of a Facebook page seeking “Justice for Aubie,” a golden retriever shot to death by deputies during a drug raid. She said that the dog had lunged at the officers, and that the page was intended to “inflame the public.” A petition with 1,600 signatures was sent to the Alabama Sheriffs Association, asking that officers be taught how to handle pets with nonlethal force. Amid fears of a lawsuit, the Facebook page came down.
Sheriff Franklin’s mystery check was not so easily dismissed. According to The Decatur Daily, she said that the money had come from her savings and retirement accounts. Her lawyer later said it was invested in a “legitimate business,” a strange description for an enterprise whose co-owner, the felon Mr. Steenson, had recently been arrested on new charges — of theft and forgery involving the dealership. The district attorney said Mr. Steenson sold vehicles for which he had no title and then forged people’s names. (Priceville Partners filed for bankruptcy last year.)
Sheriff Franklin eventually admitted the money had been withdrawn from an account earmarked for feeding inmates. For some Alabama sheriffs, that wouldn’t have posed a problem. But Morgan County was different.
Hungry for Money
Ana Franklin had her eyes on inmate food money even before she took office.
In preparing for her new job, she asked the county attorney if surplus food money would be hers to keep. His answer, according to press reports at the time, was no.
That sheriffs would be able to profit from inmate food money comes down to an unusual provision of Alabama law: In most counties — Morgan included — food money is deposited not into government accounts, but into sheriffs’ personal accounts. Nearly a decade ago, when inmates’ lawyers demanded to know how much of this money Alabama sheriffs were keeping for personal use, the state sheriffs’ association instructed them not to answer.
But while other sheriffs have legally kept the surplus money, Sheriff Franklin was bound by a federal consent decree that all her inmate food money be used for just that — food.
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Sheriff Franklin in the kitchen at the county jail. She violated a court order by investing in the dealership with money earmarked for inmates’ food.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
That court order stems from a legal action that the Southern Center brought against Sheriff Franklin’s predecessor, Greg Bartlett, who had been underfeeding inmates while taking $212,000 in food money for his personal use. In a signature moment as sheriff, Mr. Bartlett paid half-price for a truckload of unsold corn dogs and for three months fed them to inmates for breakfast, lunch and dinner, earning himself the sobriquet “Sheriff Corn Dog.”
After the source of the $150,000 came to light, Sheriff Franklin said that because of bad legal advice, she had not realized she was violating the court order. Besides, she said, she had returned the money, and her prisoners received nutritious meals.
Ms. Geraghty, the Southern Center lawyer, disagreed. She sent the sheriff a letter earlier this year reporting inmate complaints of “reduced or watered-down portions,” and food that was frozen, had mold or contained rocks or, in one case, a nail. “During a recent meal at which chicken was served,” Ms. Geraghty wrote, “many inmates reportedly received cooking liquid from the pan in place of meat because the kitchen ran out of chicken.”
Those complaints, the sheriff’s lawyer said, amounted to a tiny fraction of all meals served — a record any restaurant would be pleased with. Ms. Geraghty did not press her case, citing the “exceedingly low constitutional bar” required to satisfy the consent decree’s mandate for improved food. The food order was ultimately lifted, but not before a federal judge found Sheriff Franklin in contempt of court and fined her $1,000.
The sheriff’s office also did not comply with a judge’s order that an inmate not be allowed to work outside the jail because he posed a danger to the community. Sheriff Franklin said she had since changed jail policy to prevent that from happening again.
Sheriffs have found other ways to squeeze money out of inmates. Some take a percentage of service contracts, including commissary sales and telephone charges. In Morgan County, a company that just won the jail phone contract pays the county a 90 percent commission on all its revenue from prisoners’ calls. In St. Johns County, Fla., the sheriff brings in tens of thousands of dollars a year by charging inmates “processing fees.”
In Morgan County, the sheriff oversees 19 different income streams and collects 25 percent of inmate wages. None of this money is supposed to personally benefit the sheriff.
Sheriff Franklin said she stayed within her budget, economizing, for example, by hanging inmate clothes on the line to dry. “It saved me $63,000,” she said.
A Spy Mission
In October last year, armed with a warrant, the sheriff’s drug task force seized Ms. Lockhart’s computers and electronic devices, court records show. In preparing for the raid, the sheriff hired an unusual spy — Ms. Lockhart’s 19-year-old grandson, Daniel Lockhart, who aspired to work in law enforcement.
Mr. Lockhart said the sheriff’s technology expert had instructed him on how to plant spyware. The raid took place about a week after he said he installed the software.
Mr. Lockhart had been living with his grandparents and working in their business. He gained access to the office after hours, he said, by telling Ms. Lockhart that his girlfriend needed an office computer for homework. Ms. Lockhart said she later discovered the spyware on her home computer as well and took it to the F.B.I., which has retained it.
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Government divers recently searched a creek for evidence in a wide-ranging investigation involving the dealership.CreditJoe Buglewicz for The New York Times
The sheriff denied that the seizure was retaliatory, telling the news media, “Not until her personal agenda, her hatefulness and her vengeance to try and tear this office down, to take this office and myself down, and prepare for another election, did she cross the line of criminal activity.”
But over a year later, Ms. Lockhart has yet to be charged, and says she broke no laws. The investigation continues, the sheriff said, though she was unsure who was directing it. “It’s not my investigation,” she said.
Sheriff Franklin admits to hiring the grandson, but denies that she or anyone in her office asked him to install spyware. “We have absolute proof, ” Mr. Lovelace, the sheriff’s lawyer, wrote to The Times. He produced an analysis of Ms. Lockhart’s business computers by a firm he hired that, he said, found no spyware. Several parts of that report were omitted, he said, because of a continuing criminal investigation that he was not at liberty to describe.
The sheriff’s denial is undercut by four people who told The Times separately that they had knowledge that the sheriff’s office taught Mr. Lockhart how to install the spyware. Among them was Ricky Brewer, the sheriff’s former technology officer, who said he told the F.B.I. that his replacement acknowledged giving the grandson the software.
Mr. Lockhart said in a sworn statement that he had been paid several hundred dollars and participated only because he had been told that the investigation focused on the county jail warden, not his grandmother, and that she would not get in trouble.
Two months before the raid, a similar operation against another critical blogger had occurred in Terrebonne Parish, La. The sheriff there, Jerry Larpenter, accused the blogger of “criminal defamation.”
A federal judge, Lance Africk, found the raid unconstitutional, explaining the danger this way: “If you speak ill of the sheriff of your parish, then the sheriff will direct his law enforcement resources toward forcibly entering your home and taking your belongings under the guise of a criminal investigation.”
Here in Morgan County, Ms. Lockhart has filed a federal lawsuit accusing Sheriff Franklin of violating her right to free speech, invading her privacy and slandering her, charges the sheriff denies. Ms. Lockhart’s computers, containing vital company records, were returned only after a court hearing.
All the while, the Morgan County Whistleblower continues to fire away. “There is no way of stating how terrified Sheriff Ana Franklin is right now,” Ms. Lockhart wrote last month. And she added, “She is scared to death that some of her loyalists will cross the river and roll.”
St. Johns County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK rejected an invitation from St. Augustine Beach City Manager BRUCE MAX ROYLE to present his proposed transfer of the St. Augustine Beach Pier Park and parking lot (minus the actual pier) to the City of St. Augustine Beach. ROYLE even offered coffee and snacks, but amoral WANCHICK said no, based on it not being a "constructive environment." In the immoral words of William F. Buckley, Jr., "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
Here's weasel WANCHICK's June 28, 2017 e-mail to ROYLE (six days after I exposed WANCHICK's forbidding public participation during the June 22, 2017 health insurance committee meeting, which he refused to televise, revealing his anti-union animus in front of 30 officials but no citizens) (see below).
Max, I am not planning on attending the July 5th Commission Meeting. To be honest, I do not think it would be a constructive environment for me to discuss the County’s offer to the City. As you know, we have provided all of the information that has been requested. If the City needs any additional information, I will be happy to provide it to you. In addition, if you, the Mayor, or other Commissioners would like to sit down and discuss the details of conveying the parking lot to the City I will be happy do to so at your convenience. The County Commission, as part of its budget process, has inquired as to whether the City has made a decision, so the sooner we have an answer the better. If you have any further questions in this regard, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. Michael D. Wanchick County Administrator St. Johns County 500 San Sebastian View St. Augustine, Florida 32084 (904)209-0530 office (904)209-0531 fax mwanchick@sjcfl.us
From: Max Royle [mailto:mroyle@cityofsab.org] Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2017 12:19 PM To: Michael Wanchick Subject: Pier Park Michael, Review of your proposal concerning the City possibly owning the pier park will be on the agenda for the Commission’s July 5th meeting. At this time, it’s Item 6 on the agenda. I hope we can get to it, though there are a couple of public hearing items at the start of the meeting that could take some time to discuss. You should come to some of our meetings. We even provide coffee, and I’ll give you a dish of the snacks the Commissioners get: mixed nuts or M&Ms, peanut or regular. Make your choice and let me know. Max  Michael Wanchick Wednesday, June 28, 2017 2:25 PM Max Royle RE: Pier Park -----------
Here's the June 22, 2017 blog post on WANCHICK's weasel refusal of public participation in the health insurance committee meeting that day;
"MIKEY THE WEASEL" WANCHICK DENIES PUBLIC PARTICIPATION, REFUSES TO TELEVISE HEALTH INSURANCE MEETING
When you're the County Administrator of a corrupt county, and a union-buster to boot, you don't have any principles. Thus, earlier today, MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK, St. Johns County Administrator and Republican Lord of All He Surveys, held a meeting in which huge increases in employee health care premium were discussed. No employee union representatives were present as WANCHICK expressed anti-union animus. No "public participation" was allowed. That's illegal. I was the only non-employee present. This stinks. Here's my letter to "MIKEY THE WEASEL" WANCHICK:
Subject: St. Johns County refusal of public participation at 6/22 health insurance workshop meeting; refusal to televise it on GTV
Dear Mr. Wanchick:
1. You ignored my June 21, 2017 request to televise the June 22, 2017 health insurance workshop meeting on GTV (see below). Why did you refuse to televise the St. Johns County Board of County County Commissioners health insurance workshop meeting? The subject was projected huge increases in premiums for some 1800 employees and their families. No employee union representatives were present. I was the only person present who was not a St. Johns County Commissioner, constitutional officer or employee.
2. At the beginning of the workshop meeting, you spoke, rudely and crudely usurping the role of the Board of County Commissioners, issuing an unctuous unconstitutional ukase that banned "public participation" or "questions." You also bragged about your efforts to "stave off unionization" by using employee benefits as a bullet in your gun. You brandished anti-union animus and avoided being televised. Why don't you have the courage of your labor-baiting convictions to state them in the County Auditorium, on-camera, in the Sunshine, Mr. Wanchick?
3. Again I was the only non-employee at the meeting. While I appreciate the staff and consultant work, it was legally and morally wrong for you to silence me (with two armed Sheriff's deputies present. How gauche and louche of you to issue an illegal gag order to me, Mr. Wanchick.
4. Why did you refuse to let me ask questions? To whom did you think you were talking?
5. The health insurance workshop meeting was scheduled to run from 1:30 to 3:30, but adjourned at 2:39 pm.
6. I await answers about the seventy (70) former county employees who stayed on the County health insurance rolls after their employment ceased. The public was told at the June 20th SJCBCC meeting that this scandal would be discussed at the June 22, 2017 meeting. It wasn't. Why?
7. Florida law requires "public participation," including workshops -- why did you forbid it, thereby violating my First and Ninth Amendment right to ask questions? See May 17, 1987 Florida Attorney General opinion, here:
8. Please agree in writing to cease and desist from all First Amendment and Sunshine violations. Now.
9. Please call me to discuss your flagrant, flippant disrespect for our civil and constitutional rights under the First and Ninth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, our Florida Constitution, Article I, Section 24 and F.S. 286.
10. In the immortal words of the late William F. Buckley, Jr., "Why does baloney reject the grinder?"
So the place of artists and musicians in St. Augustine has been taken by panhandlers. Wonder why?
Ask SCROOGE-like City burghers like disgraced former City Manager WILLIAM BARRY HARRISS and ex-Mayors JOE BOLES and LEN WEEKS, who worked with ROBERT "MAC" McLEOD, II (JEREMY BANKS' lawyer) the Chamber of Commerce for years to oppress artists and musicians on St. George Street, wasting millions on legal fees and City government workers' times. Federal courts have repeatedly struck down aspects of the laws, but the prohibition on St. George Street performers remains.
Now, businessmen claim a "crisis" with panhandling, partly the result of not rigorously enforcing existing laws.
So, hesto presto, the City has decided to "do something," which includes hiring a conflicted lawyer and possibly giving "significant encouragement" to vigilantism. That's so wrong.
First mistake: Self-promoting, self-aggrandizing First Amendment "expert" MICHAEL KAHN conned the City of St. Augustine to hire him to write a panhandling ordinance. Commissioners ignored KAHN's conflicts of interest in having written the "great victory" anti-artist, anti-musician ordinances that freed up space on St. George Street, now taken over by panhandlers.
Second mistake: the City and KAHN have announced that a Facebook group, "ST. AUGUSTINE VAGRANT (sic) WATCH GROUP," would be developing "the record" for the City's eventual ordinance.
Is that group degenerating into an angry mob of misguided people, inveighing against individuals they do not know, making false statements, bragging about gun-toting and intimidation. This could be stalking. It could also be seen as unChristian, unkind, uncouth, uncool, counterproductive.
Dickensian Scrooge-like behavior ("Are there no workhouses? No jails?")
I've asked the City for records and to disavow the actions of a few vigilantes:
-----Original Message----- From: Ed Slavin To: bfox ; ilopez ; dmay ; dgalambos ; michael ; jregan ; lfountain ; tburchfield Sent: Mon, Dec 18, 2017 1:11 pm Subject: Request No. 2017-695: Stalking by members of St. Augustine Vagrant Watch Group page on Facebook; stalking, gun-carrying, threatening behavior
Dear Mr. Regan, Chief Fox, Mr. Burchfield, Mr. Kahn, Ms. Galambos, Ms. May and Ms. Lopez: 1. Please send me the City of St. Augustine's screenshots and downloads of the "St. Augustine Vagrant Watch Group" Facebook page. This is the very Facebook page to which the City has delegated responsibility for gathering information and creating a "record" for lawmaking, which the City has stated it is "monitoring."
2. Please send me any criminal, civil or administrative complaints about anyone associated with the Facebook page allegedly stalking people in our historic downtown, e.g., using the page to discuss certain group members' invitations or imputations of gun-toting, patrols, surveillance, defamation, invitations to illegal destruction of personal property or other forms of vigilantism in violation of Florida and federal criminal and civil rights law.
3. Please send me any clarification, suitable for publication, that the City of St. Augustine does not endorse vigilantism, libel or violence -- or indemnify anyone for it -- by inviting people to report facts on panhandling.
4. Please send me any legal opinion(s) or insurance communications as to whether the City of St. Augustine and its key employees might potentially face legal liability for giving "significant encouragement" to possibly illegal activities by members of the "St. Augustine Vagrant Watch Group" page on Facebook.
Monday’s meeting of the St Augustine City Commission included a discussion on how to legally justify a tougher panhandling ordinance, presented by Constitutional Law Attorney Michael Kahn of Melbourne, Florida.
During the prior commission meeting Kahn introduced himself to the commission suggesting that he would be available to provide a legal solution to crisis-level complaints by residents, tourism interests, and the city’s downtown businesses. Kahn’s presentation was short on details and long on cataloging his many decades of legal prowess.
Mayor Shaver, and at least initially, Commissioner Leanna Freeman, herself an attorney, suggested that the commission not jump from the pan into the fire until they each had an opportunity to review the substance of the proposed contract. But, the commission room was filled that night with citizens prepared to fight the city manager if he did not direct the police department to step in and remove the growing population of beggars from St George Street.
The commission approved $86,000 from reserves to cover $25,000 in ordinance development costs and to add eight more shelter beds at St. Francis House, expanding the ability of police to resume enforcement of public sleeping prohibitions. If alternatives, other than jail, are not available, police cannot arrest someone simply for sleeping in a public park.
Kahn’s record with the City has not been stellar. Historic City News readers will recall that he was the author of the ordinance to regulate creative artists in the city — a ham-handed effort that twice failed constitutional scrutiny in federal district court; costing the City hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in legal defenses and settlements with injured artists.
But this time, Kahn promised “a record of hundreds of pages, maybe a thousand,” to provide competent substantial evidence supporting the tougher panhandling ordinance he’s writing for the city. A key part of crafting the new ordinance will be building the record of panhandling issues — whether positive, negative, or neither.
To that end, a local Facebook group, created and maintained by individual citizens and not controlled by the city, has already begun photo-documenting public areas that are afflicted with vagrant and aggressive panhandling.
“People can document and report any kind of information related to the panhandling issues to help the city understand what’s happening,” Kahn told commissioners.
The new ordinance “will be distance based rather than zone based. It must be fair to everyone – panhandlers, citizens, tourists and businesses,” the attorney explained. Even so, Kahn said the city should expect to be sued simply because the use of distance-based enforcement strategies is still new for panhandling ordinances.
Estimating that challenges to the new ordinance would cost the city $150,000 “through appeal, over a two-year period,” Kahn seemed either naïve or disingenuous when he proclaimed, “My goal is to provide you with ordinances that are so effective that they’re not sued on.”
Kahn estimated that he can have an ordinance completed by the end of January, with first reading in February and enactment in March.
With questions of liability looming large for city police officers who could be found personally responsible for violations of arrestees’ civil rights if the Kahn ordinances flop, the commission discussed, without resolution, whether to increase insurance coverage, authorize city reserves to be used, or, handle those lawsuits against officers on a case-by-case basis.
The Visitors and Convention Bureau will be working with city police to develop an education program for visitors on how to treat panhandlers downtown, using $10,000 approved by the Tourist Development Council at their meeting earlier Monday.
St. Augustine Beach City "Manager" BRUCE MAX ROYLE and Mayor RICHARD BURTT O'BRIEN caught red-handed meeting privately with developer about future of our pier and pier park, which is owned by St. Johns County, not the City of St. Augustine Beach.
What's going on here?
From: Max Royle Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2017 To: Comm O'Brien Subject: FW: Pier Park, St. Augustine Beach Mayor, Will you be here during the week of October 23rd? Or we could have a conference call with Mr. Ardid re: a public/private partnership. Max From: Diego Ardid [mailto:diego@keyinternational.info] Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2017 3:10 AM To: Max Royle Subject: Re: Pier Park, St. Augustine Beach Hello Max,
I am i plan on being in St. Augustine the week of the 23rd maybe we can arrange to meet then or i am happy to get on a call beforehand. Thank you. Diego Ardid Key International 848 Brickell Ave Suite 1100 Miami Fl, 331313 P. 305 377 1037 F. 305 377 4113 diego@keyinternational.info www.key-international.com On Oct 11, 2017, at 2:54 PM, Max Royle <mroyle@cityofsab.org> wrote: Mr. Ardid, St. Johns County and St. Augustine Beach are discussing what to do about the fishing pier and the adjacent pier park. The County says it has no money to repair both; nor does my City have the financial resources to do the repair. The City Commission recently discussed exploring the possibility of private/public partnerships. Would Key International consider discussing some possibilities with the City? A conference telephone call could be arranged for you to discuss this with Mayor O’Brien, or, if you visit our area, you could meet with him. Please let know if you want to discuss this matter. Max
Max Royle Thursday, October 12, 2017 8:22 AM Comm O'Brien FW: Pier Park, St. Augustine Beach
The Ardid Family
(Photo credit: Haute Living Magazine)
-----Original Message----- From: Ed Slavin To: mwanchick ; pmccormack ; mryan ; rgoldman ; voakes ; wfusco ; jpwilson ; mroyle ; braddatz ; pat.gleason ; pbondi ; leslie.jacobs ; info Sent: Mon, Dec 18, 2017 12:34 pm Subject: Re: Request No. 2017-694: November 2, 1982 St. Johns County Pier Tax Referendum to establish St. Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier at St. Augustine Beach, Florida
Good afternoon: Please send me our city, county and state records on:
A. The November 2, 1982 St. Johns County Pier Tax Referendum to establish the St. Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier, finished in 1984; and
B. Any legal analysis, from any source, as to whether St. Johns County may now legally give away or sell the pier or park, with or without a referendum.
C. Any request(s) from St. Johns County or the City of St. Augustine Beach for a Florida State Attorney General's opinion on this issue of whether an asset or structure acquired or improved with bond and tax funds pursuant to a referendum may be sold, alienated, subdivided, subject to a "private-public partnership" or given away without another referendum.
Dear Messrs. Kasdin, Gracey, Ardid, Goldman, Wanchick, Ryan, McCormack, Wilson and Royle, and Ms. Raddatz: 1. Please identify the expectations, desires, plans, business models, lobbying and consulting contracts and contacts, regulatory analysis, economic research. proposed beneficial owners and investors, accounting records, etc. of the Ardids and Key International concerning the future of our County-owned St Augustine Beach pier and park, a/k/a "St. Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier as a putative "Private/Public Partnership?"
-----Original Message----- From: Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com> To: mroyle <mroyle@cityofsab.org>; jpwilson <jpwilson@cityofsab.org>; braddatz <braddatz@cityofsab.org> Sent: Sat, Dec 16, 2017 10:44 am Subject: Request No. 2017-691: Legal Basis (IF ANY) for City Manager Max Royle Inviting Private Meeting(s) on "Private/Public Partnership" with Key International for Park and Pier at St. Augustine Beach?
Dear Messrs. Wilson and Royle and Ms. Raddatz: Please send me the legal advice or opinion document(s) (if any) and/or St. Augustine Beach City Commission minutes (if any) supporting St. Augustine Beach City Manager Bruce Max Royle writing Key International owner Diego Ardid and inviting him to a private meeting with him and Mayor Richard Burtt O'Brien to discuss what Royle referred to as a "Private/Public Partnership" (sic) with Key International concerning the future of our St. Augustine Beach pier and park, a/k/a "St Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier."
Mr. Ardid, St. Johns County and St. Augustine Beach are discussing what to do about the fishing pier and the adjacent pier park. The County says it has no money to repair both; nor does my City have the financial resources to do the repair. The City Commission recently discussed exploring the possibility of private/public partnerships. Would Key International consider discussing some possibilities with the City? A conference telephone call could be arranged for you to discuss this with Mayor O’Brien, or, if you visit our area, you could meet with him. Please let know if you want to discuss this matter. Max
Max Royle Thursday, October 12, 2017 8:22 AM Comm O'Brien FW: Pier Park, St. Augustine Beach
Once-safe Republicans fear the righteous wrath of the American people. Whither Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's two U.S. Reps., RONALD DEON DeSANTIS (R-FL6/KOCH INDUSTRIES) and JOHN RUTHERFORD (R-FL4)?
What dew yew reckon?
Rebelling Republican Suburbs Offer Democrats Path to House Control By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNS DEC. 18, 2017 The New York Times
HOUSTON — As she sat with a glass of sauvignon blanc waiting for a women-focused Democratic fund-raiser to begin, Nancy Sharp let loose in a Texas-seasoned drawl why she and so many other onetime supporters of the Bush family were abandoning the Republicans.
“Have you ever heard of a stupider and trashier man than the president of the United States?” asked Ms. Sharp, an interior designer who lives not far from the elegant condominium where about 75 women gathered this month to help the House candidate Lizzie Pannill Fletcher. “Calling a U.S. senator ‘Pocahontas’ in front of God and everyone!”
If Democrats are to claim the House majority next year, their path back to power will go through places like the Huntingdon, a 34-floor high-rise in the River Oaks section of Houston that was once home to Enron’s Kenneth L. Lay, has no fewer than five valets on a busy night and sits in the district of Representative John Culberson, a veteran Republican who may be in for the race of his life.
The mounting backlash to President Trump that is threatening his party’s control of Congress is no longer confined just to swing districts on either coast. Officials in both parties believe that Republican control of the House is now in grave jeopardy because a group of districts that are historically Republican or had been trending that way before the 2016 election are slipping away.
Much attention has been paid to the handful of seats in New York, New Jersey and California that are represented by Republicans but voted for Hillary Clinton last year. But even with district lines drawn to favor Republicans in many states, the swelling antipathy toward Mr. Trump threatens to breach the party’s defenses and stretch the congressional battlefield beyond the dimensions Republicans and Democrats anticipated a year ago.
“There’s no illusion about the storm that’s coming,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, invoking last month’s governor’s races and last week’s Senate special election. “If you had any doubts, they were wiped away after New Jersey, Virginia and Alabama.”
From Texas to Illinois, Kansas to Kentucky, there are Republican districts filled with college-educated, affluent voters who appear to be abandoning their usually conservative leanings and newly invigorated Democrats, some of them nonwhite, who are eager to use the midterms to take out their anger on Mr. Trump.
“If you look at the patterns of where gains are being made and who is creating the foundation for those gains, it’s the same: An energized Democratic base is linking arms with disaffected suburban voters,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who as a member of Congress in 2006 helped Democrats win back the House. “The president’s conduct has basically given voters this permission slip to go against the Republicans.”
Congressional Republicans are scrambling to fortify their defenses.
On Wednesday, the last five leaders of the House Republican campaign arm privately addressed Republican lawmakers, outlining the sort of suburban districts most at risk and imploring members to contribute to their colleagues. The former Representative Thomas M. Reynolds of New York said it had been aimed at dozens of lawmakers elected since 2010 who had never faced a Democratic wave.
“The general tenor was: This is not a year like most of you have seen, because you’ve not seen wind in your face,” said Mr. Reynolds, who led the House campaign committee in 2006.
While Mr. Trump has seemed eager to engage in the midterm races, it is unclear where he would campaign and unlikely his presence would help Republicans in many imperiled districts. Already, his unpopularity is luring candidates into races once considered long shots. Democrats need 24 seats to take back the House.
In October, Mayor Ben McAdams of Salt Lake County, a Democrat, announced a bid to oust Representative Mia Love in Utah, a conservative state stocked with educated Mormon voters who view Mr. Trump with disdain. In early December, Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington, Ky., a Democrat, kicked off a campaign against Representative Andy Barr, about 40 percent of whose electorate is in Lexington, home to the University of Kentucky.
Outside Philadelphia, Scott Wallace, a lawyer and philanthropist whose grandfather was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vice president, is exploring a challenge to Representative Brian Fitzpatrick in a traditional haven for white-collar Republicans, people who have spoken with Mr. Wallace said. And P. G. Sittenfeld, a Cincinnati City Council member who briefly ran for Senate last year, is being recruited by House Democrats to challenge Representative Steve Chabot in a district that mixes African-Americans and urban and suburban whites.
“It has all the trappings of a winnable seat if the climate cooperates,” Mr. Sittenfeld said.
Should that climate worsen, Republicans say, lawmakers not previously thought to be at risk could be endangered, like Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, who is facing a former State Senate leader.
Beyond the biggest blue states, perhaps two dozen red-hued districts with significant suburban populations could be winnable for Democrats in a banner year, including those held by Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dave Reichert of Washington State; Ted Budd and Robert Pittenger of North Carolina; and Kevin Yoder of Kansas.
The suburban revolt, which began in a handful of little-noticed special elections and then exploded last month in governor’s and state House races in Virginia, was on display again on Tuesday in Alabama, where Doug Jones, a Democrat, claimed a stunning Senate win thanks to African-Americans and upscale whites.
While few Republicans next year will be as toxic as his opponent, Roy S. Moore, Mr. Jones’s performance suggests wealthy voters in even traditionally conservative areas are willing to support Democrats. Precinct margins in the well-manicured Mountain Brook enclave outside Birmingham, Ala., for example, swung by more than 50 percentage points from last year’s presidential election.
“I’m fired up because of our whole country. Nothing is going right,” Fanay Register, a Jones supporter, said outside the Brookwood Baptist Church in Mountain Brook on Tuesday. She said she wished Mr. Trump “could keep his mouth shut.”
What alarms Republicans is that charges of sexual misconduct, which undermined Mr. Moore and linger over Mr. Trump, are engulfing lawmakers and are bound to lead to more resignations, more special elections and a further galvanizing of female voters.
“The overwhelming challenge we have is with college-educated, suburban women,” said Liesl Hickey, a Republican strategist who previously ran her party’s House campaign arm. “And their resistance mostly has to do with their feelings about President Trump.”
Heartening Republicans is that the anti-Trump activism is also setting off internecine Democratic fights, creating messy primaries and leftward pressure on candidates to back measures like single-payer health care and impeaching the president.
In Mr. Culberson’s district, for example, Ms. Pannill Fletcher, a lawyer, outraised the incumbent in the last fund-raising period — but so did one of her Democratic rivals, Alex Triantaphyllis. While Mr. Wallace has drawn the interest of national Democrats in Pennsylvania, he would have to contend in the primary with Rachel Reddick, a Navy veteran.
And Mr. Gray was not the first to enter his Kentucky race: He will face Amy McGrath, a former Marine pilot who said she had raised more than $1 million. Incensed by Mr. Gray’s entry, Ms. McGrath said she had considered running as an independent — a prospect that could cripple Democrats’ chances — before opting to “continue within the Democratic Party.”
In an interview, Mr. Gray, a wealthy former construction executive, appeared to be looking past the primary to the general election. He said he had detected a climate of fear and frustration in the district, attributing it in part to Mr. Trump.
“There’s an anxiousness,” Mr. Gray said, “and a sense that things just aren’t right.”
Mr. Trump won Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District handily, while Mr. Gray carried it in a losing Senate campaign the same year. But private Democratic polling found Mr. Gray entering the race with a lead over Mr. Barr, built on his stature as a well-liked mayor.
At a campaign stop this month in Winchester, a town outside Lexington, Mr. Gray voiced discomfort with Mr. Trump in measured terms, saying he would work with the president on issues like infrastructure despite disliking his style. “Clearly, the president has been divisive,” he said, “and we can do without a lot of the Twitters.”
Republicans still believe the fundamentals of the district favor Mr. Barr: A lawyer from a prominent local family, he has been re-elected twice with support encompassing country-club Republicans around Lexington and Trump-aligned rural conservatives.
But Robert Blizzard, a pollster who advises Mr. Barr, offered a stern assessment of the national political environment: “If there are Republicans who are not taking this seriously,” he said, “they will get swept out.”
Democrats have dreamed for years of peeling away the rings around major cities, separating suburban voters who favor conservative tax and economic policies from a Republican Party that also champions harder-right positions on abortion, guns and gay rights. So far, that effort has gained Democrats few seats.
Ian Russell, a former political director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the group’s research in the 2014 and 2016 elections found suburban voters inching away from Republicans, but too slowly to flip many seats.
The new president, Mr. Russell said, has accelerated things: “They were Republicans for fiscal reasons, and Trump has alienated them from the party they used to belong to.”
It is not hard to find such voters in the Illinois district of Representative Peter Roskam, which favored Mrs. Clinton by seven points and has a median income over $90,000.
Mr. Roskam is bracing for perhaps his most difficult race since his first election to the House in 2006.
Seven Democrats are jockeying to challenge Mr. Roskam in the western suburbs of Chicago, and they have largely gravitated toward a single message. Kelly Mazeski, a planning commissioner in Barrington Hills and a leading Democratic contender, rebuked Mr. Roskam for his positions on health care and taxes, but for one transgression most of all.
“Most of the time, I talk about Peter Roskam — that’s who my opponent is,” Ms. Mazeski said. “But to be clear, his voting record is 97 percent of the Trump agenda.”
That rebuke resonates with voters like Pat Robinson, a retired teacher inclined to vote for a Democrat in 2018 but waiting to see who will emerge as the nominee. Ms. Robinson, who said she voted for Mrs. Clinton last year as the “lesser of two evils,” said she would not reward a lawmaker allied with the White House.
“He’s certainly following Trump’s platform, and I can’t go along with that at all,” Ms. Robinson said of Mr. Roskam.
In Mr. Culberson’s Houston district, which Mrs. Clinton narrowly carried, the ingredients seem right for an upset.
He has not hired a full-time campaign manager, and some supporters worry he does not fully realize the threat. Asked at a fund-raiser this year if he was besieged with angry calls, Mr. Culberson suggested he was not, a comment that left some attendees flabbergasted, according to a Republican present.
His seat, parts of which were once represented by George H. W. Bush, reflects modern-day Houston, an amalgam of upper-crust whites and a growing minority community that speaks 80 languages.
“The Republican Party has become more and more unrecognizable,” Mr. Triantaphyllis, a nonprofit executive, said over coffee in a strip mall with restaurants offering Mongolian, Chinese, Vietnamese and Mediterranean cuisine.
Ms. Pannill Fletcher noted that just three of Texas’ 36 House members are women.
“Women are ready and demanding a seat at the table,” she said in an interview at her campaign headquarters.
Nearby, one of her volunteers, a Brown University graduate and lawyer by training, spoke with even more urgency.
“I cannot bear what is going on right now in government,” said Norri Leder, saying of Mr. Trump, “I find him completely offensive and unethical and slimy.”
And, Ms. Leder said, her Republican husband feels the same way.
Jonathan Martin reported from Houston, and Alexander Burns from Winchester, Ky., and Barrington, Ill.
Florida U.S. Senator Bill Nelson speaks for most Floridians, who are getting screwed, blued and tattooed by TRUMP and his henchmen. Remember the greediest!
Thank you, Senator Bill Nelson. We, the People in Florida urgently need to re-elect Senator Bill Nelson in 2018. Vote like your life depends upon it, because it does.
Bill Nelson says GOP tax bill will shift jobs overseas Nelson rails against bill in Senate speech. Tampa Bay Times December 19, 2017 By Alex Leary
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida (Associated Press)
GOP passage of the tax bill could give Sen. Bill Nelson a campaign talking point next year and he's already forming the argument.
"It's going to give a few nuggets to the middle class, but that's to mask the true intent," Nelson said Monday on the Senate floor. "The real purpose of the bill is to give huge tax cuts to multinational corporations and to make it easier for them to shift jobs overseas. That's the bottom line."
He explains in the video.
Said Nelson:
"It would be nice if our colleagues showed as much urgency for some of the other things that we should be doing in the Senate, such as providing millions of kids with health insurance through the CHIP program or helping folks recover from the massive hurricanes this year, including millions of people in Puerto Rico who are still without reliable electricity or drinking water or what about hundreds of thousands of kids in the U.S. that are here in a deportable status because they are the Dreamers. That's what we ought to be worrying about."
No-bid U.S. Government contract awarded to right-wing group investigating employees engaged in First Amendment and union protected activity. This EPA contract stinks. It looks like collusion between EPA Administrator and right-wing group, designed to instill fear of surveillance in employees. Subjecting employees to surveillance or the impression of surveillance may give rise to injunctive relief under First Amendment and Labor law. Thanks to Eric Lipton, et al. and The New York Times.
Whoever subjects someone to surveillance, or gives the impression of surveillance, in retaliation for protected activity may be subject to injunctive relief in federal courts, ordering them to cease and desist.
"whistleblowers often face some type of surveillance from either the government, the industry, or some other private investigator. The experience can be very frightening and can add an ominous presence to the misery of blowing the whistle.... We often advise that if someone is watching you, he or she wants you to become affected by the surveillance and to act irrationally about it. It can be another way of bullying you into a mistake." Government Accountability Project, et al. Courage Without Martyrdom -- A Survival Guide for Whistleblowers 5 (1989)(Emphasis added).
Will ethical EPA employees report this outrage to the Inspector General? Will they and their union(s) request a remedy for surveillance or giving the impression of surveillance, in order to halt future lawbreaking. See Consolidated Edison Company, 4 NLRB 71, 94 (1937), enforced, 305 U.S. 197 (1938); Atlas Underwear Co. v. NLRB, 116 F.2d 1020, 1023 (6th Cir. 1941); NLRB v. Ford Motor Co., 119 F.2d 326 (5th Cir. 1941); Press Co. v. NLRB, 118 F.2d 937 (D.C. Cir. 1940), cert. denied 61 S.Ct. 1118; NLRB v. Baldwin Locomotive Works, 128 F.2d 39, 49 (3d Cir. 1942); NLRB v. Jasper Chair Co., 138 F.2d 756 (7th Cir. 1943); NLRB v. Collins & Aikman Corp., 146 F.2d 454, 455 (4th Cir. 1944); NLRB v. Anchorage Times Publishing Co., 637 F.2d 1359, 1365-6 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 454 U.S. 835 (1981); NLRB v. Randall P. Kane Co., 581 F.2d 1124, 1131 (9th Cir. 1978); NLRB v. Squire Shops, Inc., 559 F.2d 486, 487 (9th Cir. 1977); NLRB v. Miller Redwood Co., 407 F.2d 215, 218 (9th Cir. 1978); NLRB v. Intertherm, 596 F.2d 267 (8th Cir. 1979); Russell Stover Candies, Inc. v. NLRB, 551 F.2d 204, 207 (8th Cir. 1977); NLRB v. Speed Queen, 469 F.2d 189, 191 (8th Cir. 1973); NLRB v. Hawthorn Co., 404 F.2d 1205, 1208-09 (8th Cir. 1969); Olsen Rug Co. v. NLRB, 304 F.2d 710, 714-15 (7th Cir. 1962); NLRB v. Tidelands Marine Service, 339 F.2d 291 (5th Cir. 1964); National Phosphate Corp., 211 NLRB 567 (1974); Fotomat Corp., 207 NLRB 461 (1973); J.P. Stevens & Co., 245 NLRB 198 (1979); Laidlaw Waste Systems, 305 NLRB No. 5 (1991); Local 309, United Furniture Workers v. Gates, 75 F.Supp. 620, 625-26 (N.D. Ind. 1948); Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago, 742 F.2d 1007 (7th Cir. 1984); Handschu v. Special Services Divn, 349 F.Supp. 766 (S.D.N.Y. 1972);Presbyterian Church (USA) v. United States, 870 F.2d 518 (9th Cir. 1989); Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. Tate, 519 F.2d 1335 (3d Cir. 1975); Paton v. LaPrade, 524 F.2d 862 (3d Cir. 1975); Cf. Fr. Robert F. Drinan, "First Amendment Endangered" (book review by one of my mentors, who chaired the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities for one of the two years that I served as YLD Liaison member of its Council), 78 Geo L.J. 2057 (1990).
Injunctive relief, damages and attorney fees might be ordered against EPA Administrator SCOTT PRUITT and EPA to make them cease and desist surveillance or giving the impression of surveillance. Otherwise, "[o]nly a brave soul would dare to express anything other than orthodoxy under such circumstances." White v. Davis, 120 Cal. Rptr. 94 (1975).
E.P.A. Employees Spoke Out. Then Came Scrutiny of Their Email. By Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman The New York Times December 17, 2017
The emails of Gary Morton, an E.P.A. employee in Philadelphia, were requested seven days after he participated in a union rally challenging proposed budget cuts.CreditJessica Kourkounis for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — One Environmental Protection Agency employee spoke up at a private lunch held near the agency headquarters, saying she feared the nation might be headed toward an “environmental catastrophe.” Another staff memoer, from Seattle, sent a letter to Sntriott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, raising similar concerns about the direction of the agency. A third, from Philadelphia, went to a rally where he protested against agency budget cuts.
Three different agency employees, in different jobs, from three different cities, but each encountered a similar outcome: Federal records show that within a matter of days, requests were submitted for copies of emails written by them that mentioned either Mr. Pruitt or President Trump, or any communication with Democrats in Congress that might have been critical of the agency.
The requests came from a Virginia-based lawyer working with America Rising, a Republican campaign research group that specializes in helping party candidates and conservative groups find damaging information on political rivals, and which, in this case, was looking for information that could undermine employees who had criticized the E.P.A.
Now a company affiliated with America Rising, named Definers Public Affairs, has been hired by the E.P.A. to provide “media monitoring,” in a move the agency said was intended to keep better track of newspaper and video stories about E.P.A. operations nationwide.
But the sequence of events has created a wave of fear among employees, particularly those already subject to special scrutiny, who said official assurances hardly put them at ease.
“This is a witch hunt against E.P.A. employees who are only trying to protect human health and the environment,” said Gary Morton, an E.P.A. employee in Philadelphia, who works on preventing spills from underground storage tanks. His emails were targeted seven days after he participated in a union rally in March challenging proposed budget cuts. “What they are doing is trying to intimidate and bully us into silence,” he said.
The contract with Definers comes at a time of heightened tension between the news media and the Trump administration. Within the E.P.A., the move is also part of a bellicose media strategy that has been helped at key moments by America Rising — even before its affiliate was hired by the agency.
An E.P.A. official vehemently defended the $120,000 contract to Definers, saying it filled a need in the media office for an improved clipping service.
“Definers was awarded the contract to do our press clips at a rate that is $87,000 cheaper than our previous vendor, and they are providing no other services,” a spokesman for the E.P.A., Jahan Wilcox, wrote in an email.
Joe Pounder, a founder of Definers Public Affairs, said several government agencies had contacted his firm about its news-tracking tool, called Definers Console, because they were seeking a service that does a better job of keeping up with the fast-paced news cycle, including tracking of live-streamed videos. He said that agency staff members familiar with the company’s work approached the firm about putting forward a bid and that Mr. Pruitt himself was not, to his knowledge, involved in the decision to select Definers.
“I hope E.P.A. employees realize after a few months that we are providing a really great and invaluable service that advances their mission,” Mr. Pounder said.
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Joe Pounder’s company, Definers Public Affairs, has been hired to do media monitoring for the Environmental Protection Agency.
He and Matt Rhoades, his partner at Definers Public Affairs, also started America Rising. The two entities share several top executives, including Allan L. Blutstein,the lawyer who prepared the Freedom of Information Act requests aimed at the E.P.A. employees.
Some Republicans who previously worked for the agency said the hiring of Definers Public Affairs sent a worrisome message to employees already on edge and fearful of retaliation.
“Mr. Pruitt appears not to understand that the two most valuable assets E.P.A. has is the country’s trust and a very committed professional work force,” said William K. Reilly, the E.P.A. administrator under George Bush. “This shows complete insensitivity, complete tone-deafness, or something worse.”
Liz Mair, president of a Republican consulting firm, said that the relatively small dollar amount of the contract was an indication that all the agency was buying was a clipping service, and not some kind of sophisticated intelligence-gathering on employees. But she added that certain E.P.A. staff members actually merited more scrutiny.
“A lot of funky stuff has been going on with E.P.A. staff,” she said.
Mr. Blutstein said in an interview on Friday that his requests to the agency tracked employees who had made public statements critical of Mr. Pruitt. He said he wanted to know if any of them had used agency email inappropriately, or had violated agency rules in some other way — findings that he could use to compromise efforts to undermine Mr. Pruitt’s work.
“It was more of a fishing expedition on my part,” he said of the at least 20 Freedom of Information requests he submitted, most for E.P.A. employees who were union leaders or had spoken critically of agency management since Mr. Pruitt’s arrival.
Even before the E.P.A. hired Definers, the group of companies, political action committees and nonprofit organizations affiliated with America Rising had frequently drafted news releases that put Mr. Pruitt and his policies in a positive light and attacked the administrator’s critics. Many items, including video clips, also appeared on NTK Network, a for-profit digital news aggregator that Mr. Pounder founded.
In addition to sharing at least nine current and former executives, Definers Public Affairs shares an office building in Arlington, Va., with the multiple arms of America Rising and NTK Network.
E.P.A. staff members said in interviews that they had the right, as private citizens or members of a federal employees’ union, to publicly discuss concerns about changes taking place at the agency under Mr. Pruitt’s management. Some noted that “media monitoring” could be expected to include tracking of statements made on Twitter and other social media platforms, including potentially critical comments agency staff members make about E.P.A. management.
The Environmental Protection Agency has hired a new contractor, Definers Public Affairs, to do media monitoring for the agency. But before the contract was awarded, staff members who work for the contractor had been conducting surveillance-type work on E.P.A. employees critical of Scott Pruitt, the E.P.A. administrator, and President Trump.
Michael Cox, who worked at the E.P.A.’s Seattle regional office for 25 years, learned this weekend from an article in The New York Times that he had been among the employees under scrutiny.
Mr. Cox wrote to Mr. Pruitt in March — on the day of Mr. Cox’s retirement from the agency — to tell him that he was “increasingly alarmed about the direction of E.P.A. under your leadership,” and to urge Mr. Pruitt to “step back and listen to career E.P.A. staff,” the letter said.
Just 10 days later, a Freedom of Information request came in seeking Mr. Cox’s correspondence on the day of his resignation. The request led to the production of 62 documents, detailing the names of dozens of agency officials, as well as a note he sent to his work colleagues specifically noting that he knew they shared his concerns with how the agency is being managed — names that would now be listed for anyone reviewing the response.
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Some of the emails requested under the Freedom of Information Act were efforts to find documents critical of the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt.CreditPete Marovich/Getty Images
“That does not make me feel very good,” he said, knowing that his emails could potentially be used against other employees.
Nicole Cantello, an E.P.A. lawyer in Chicago who has helped lead a series of enforcement actions against major air polluters in the Midwest, and whose emails also were requested, said the agency’s decision to hire Definers caused great concern.
“Now that they are working for the agency, will they have access to agency computers and perhaps try to come after me in a whole bunch of different ways?” she said. “And will they turn over their opposition research materials on us to agency officials? I just don’t know. It is very scary. Very, very scary.”
Several of the Freedom of Information requests submitted by Mr. Blutsteinask for correspondence between agency employees and members of Congress — such as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts — who have been critical of Mr. Pruitt.
“We have seen a lot of nefarious activities from Trump,” Mr. Whitehouse said. “But hiring a fossil fuel front group that specializes in political hits and is doing F.O.I.A. investigations of your agency’s own employees is a new low.”
“They’re asking for emails related to a document that has already been public and has been reviewed twice by E.P.A. and was ultimately approved by E.P.A.?” Ms. Hayhoe asked. “What do they think they’re going to find?”
The nonprofit arm of America Rising, known as America Rising Squared, oversees some of the group’s most controversial work on climate change: deploying “trackers” to videotape activists like Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, and Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor.
“This is classic propaganda from an authoritarian regime,” Mr. Steyer said. “It’s distressing that it would even happen in the United States of America.”
Brian Rogers, executive director of America Rising Squared and a senior vice president at Definers, would not say who paid for the surveillance. In an emailed statement, he said that the firm had focused on Mr. Steyer and Mr. McKibben because they “aggressively target conservative thought leaders” for scrutiny.
“America Rising Squared is committed to ensuring a balanced debate, and providing a conservative perspective on the issues and actors involved,” Mr. Rogers said.
Mr. Reilly, the former E.P.A. administrator, said the whole sequence of incidents — and now the agency’s involvement in it — was deeply disturbing.
“These are committed people,” he said of the agency employees. “It’s not just a job for them. To put their morale and their good standing in danger is going to risk losing something very valuable to the government and to the country.”
Florida's junior U.S. Senator, MARCO ANTONIO RUBIO, got minor concessions on child tax credits and changed his vote. Low-income families were left in the lurch by the diminutive solon. "Little Marco," as TRUMP called him, needed a spinal and testicular implant.
Sad.
Remember the Greediest -- RUBIO's campaign contributors -- who got the most from this bill.
Analysis: What Marco Rubio got for his tax vote Wonkblog, The Washington Post
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pushed for more relief for working families. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pushed for more relief for working families. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) threw the Republican tax bill into chaos last week when he threatened to vote against it if it didn't include a more robust tax credit for working families.
But by mid-Thursday, GOP leaders had increased the credit by enough to secure Rubio's vote for the bill. The last-minute change will put, on average, about an extra $300 per child in the hands of families earning between $25,000 and $40,000 a year. But it does virtually nothing for those earning even less.
Under current law, the Child Tax Credit gives families $1,000 per child to knock off their tax burden to the federal government. The Senate tax bill doubled the credit to $2,000. But to get the full amount, you have to owe a high amount in federal taxes. Families that make less money owe less money to the government and, as a result, can get less money from the credit.
Rubio and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wanted to restructure the Child Tax Credit to allow more poor Americans to claim more relief. Under Rubio's plan, even if a family owed the government no money, the government would send that family a check if they qualify for the credit. That would allow them to still benefit just like wealthier Americans with big federal tax burdens to reduce. (During the tax debate, Rubio frequently noted that those who don't earn enough to have an income tax burden still pay payroll taxes, which automatically take money from Social Security and Medicare out of our paychecks. Rubio wanted these families, which don't pay income taxes, to also benefit from the tax credit by being compensated for their payroll taxes.)
But in exchange for his vote on the bill, Rubio was only partly successful in revamping the Republican proposal to give some low-income Americans more money from the credit.
Under the Senate bill, a family earning $25,000 per year with two children would have received only $2,300 from the tax credit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Under the compromise reached between Rubio and GOP leadership, that same family will receive $2,900 for their children. That's an additional $600.
But the poorest working families did not benefit at all from that agreement. In the bill the Senate passed, some of the lowest-income workers — those making roughly $15,000 per year — would get a total of $1,875 in tax credits for two children. That's the same amount this family would receive after the negotiated deal that won Rubio's vote. And it's less than half of the $4,000 a wealthy family with two children will get (though the latter family will also lose some other forms of tax relief, like the dependent deduction, which was eliminated under the bill).
Ernie Tedeschi, a former economist at the U.S. Treasury, produced the chart below illustrating the competing policy options for the tax credit. The blue bars represent where the Senate bill stood this week before the changes initiated by Rubio's demands were accepted; the orange bars show the bill after Rubio's changes took effect; and the yellow bars show the Rubio-Lee preferred policy, with both full refundability and immediate access to the credit on the first dollar earned.
Proponents of the change argue that families earning from about $15,000 to $40,000 do appear slated for increases of several hundred dollars, even as they recognize that the bottom decile of the income distribution did not get a bump. “I really care about people who are in deep poverty getting cash, and I'm really disappointed they didn't change that,” said Samuel Hammond, a poverty expert at the Niskanen Center who has worked closely with Rubio in advocating a more robust tax credit for the poor. “But there's still very large resources going to the working poor, even if it's not the ones at the most extreme level of poverty.”
An average annual tax refund increase of $300 could make a big difference to those earning under $40,000 a year, Hammond said. “That's the annual cost for diapers for a lot of households. It's not insignificant for a lot of very poor families,” Hammond said. “People are expecting miracles from a very weak bargaining position. If Rubio hadn't done this, we would have wound up with nothing.”
But other tax experts criticized the decision not to expand the credit for the poor, saying it would render 10 million families at the very bottom of the income distribution eligible for only the “token” tax credit of under $75, said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
“The saddest part is that the single mom who works for the minimum wage as a home health aide and has two kids was left out of the final agreement,” Marr said.
Beyond offering virtually no relief for the very poorest workers, the compromise tax credit also faces scrutiny over how it would be financed. Originally, Rubio wanted to pay for the higher tax credit by shrinking the size of the bill's proposed corporate tax cut. But lawmakers instead chose to raise some of the money for the provision by scrapping the draft's increase in the age of the child who qualified for the Child Tax Credit from 16 to 17, and by lowering the income threshold when the tax credits begin to phase out. In other words, lawmakers moved money around within the credit, rather than adding to total spending on working households by reducing the bill's tax cuts for corporations and the rich.
The final bill kept a new provision that requires proof of a valid Social Security number to claim the tax credit, effectively ending it for close to 1 million children, most of them undocumented immigrants brought to America by their parents, according to Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Senate is expected to vote on the final tax plan as soon as Tuesday. It has Rubio's support.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the City of Jacksonville's unconstitutional "vagrancy ordinance."
So when some misguided people in St. Augustine started a vigilante group with the word "Vagrant" in the title, I called their attention to the Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville decision.
Written by Justice William Orville Douglas, one of my legal heroes, Papachristou cabins what we can do to people we don't like.
Read it.
Learn from it.
If you don't have love in your heart and honor the Constitution, stay away from trying to influence our laws.
St. Augustine is a "Compassionate City," and in the spirit of Justice William O. Douglas, let's keep it thattaway!
Justice William O. Douglas
United States Supreme Court
PAPACHRISTOU v. CITY OF JACKSONVILLE, (1972)
No. 70-5030
Argued: December 8, 1971 Decided: February 24, 1972
The Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance, under which petitioners were convicted, is void for vagueness, in that it "fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute," it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions, it makes criminal activities that by modern standards are normally innocent, and it places almost unfettered discretion in the hands of the police. Pp. 161-171.
236 So.2d 141, reversed.
DOUGLAS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which all Members joined except POWELL and REHNQUIST, JJ., who took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Samuel S. Jacobson argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioners.
T. Edward Austin, Jr., argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were James C. Rinaman, Jr., and J. Edward Wall.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves eight defendants who were convicted in a Florida municipal court of violating a Jacksonville, Florida, vagrancy ordinance. 1 Their convictions [405 U.S. 156, 157] were affirmed by the Florida Circuit Court in a consolidated appeal, and their petition for certiorari was denied by the District Court of Appeal on the authority of Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d 852. 2 The case is [405 U.S. 156, 158] here on a petition for certiorari, which we granted. 403 U.S. 917 . For reasons which will appear, we reverse.
At issue are five consolidated cases. Margaret Papachristou, Betty Calloway, Eugene Eddie Melton, and Leonard Johnson were all arrested early on a Sunday morning, and charged with vagrancy - "prowling by auto."
Jimmy Lee Smith and Milton Henry were charged with vagrancy - "vagabonds."
Henry Edward Heath and a codefendant were arrested for vagrancy - "loitering" and "common thief."
Thomas Owen Campbell was charged with vagrancy - "common thief."
Hugh Brown was charged with vagrancy - "disorderly loitering on street" and "disorderly conduct - resisting arrest with violence."
The facts are stipulated. Papachristou and Calloway are white females. Melton and Johnson are black males. Papachristou was enrolled in a job-training program sponsored by the State Employment Service at Florida Junior College in Jacksonville. Calloway was a typing and shorthand teacher at a state mental institution located near Jacksonville. She was the owner of the automobile in which the four defendants were arrested. Melton was a Vietnam war veteran who had been released from the Navy after nine months in a veterans' hospital. On the date of his arrest he was a part-time computer helper while attending college as a full-time student in Jacksonville. Johnson was a tow-motor operator in a grocery chain warehouse and was a lifelong resident of Jacksonville.
At the time of their arrest the four of them were riding [405 U.S. 156, 159] in Calloway's car on the main thoroughfare in Jacksonville. They had left a restaurant owned by Johnson's uncle where they had eaten and were on their way to a nightclub. The arresting officers denied that the racial mixture in the car played any part in the decision to make the arrest. The arrest, they said, was made because the defendants had stopped near a used-car lot which had been broken into several times. There was, however, no evidence of any breaking and entering on the night in question.
Of these four charged with "prowling by auto" none had been previously arrested except Papachristou who had once been convicted of a municipal offense.
Jimmy Lee Smith and Milton Henry (who is not a petitioner) were arrested between 9 and 10 a. m. on a weekday in downtown Jacksonville, while waiting for a friend who was to lend them a car so they could apply for a job at a produce company. Smith was a part-time produce worker and part-time organizer for a Negro political group. He had a common-law wife and three children supported by him and his wife. He had been arrested several times but convicted only once. Smith's companion, Henry, was an 18-year-old high school student with no previous record of arrest.
This morning it was cold, and Smith had no jacket, so they went briefly into a dry cleaning shop to wait, but left when requested to do so. They thereafter walked back and forth two or three times over a two-block stretch looking for their friend. The store owners, who apparently were wary of Smith and his companion, summoned two police officers who searched the men and found neither had a weapon. But they were arrested because the officers said they had no identification and because the officers did not believe their story.
Heath and a codefendant were arrested for "loitering" and for "common thief." Both were residents of Jacksonville, Heath having lived there all his life and being [405 U.S. 156, 160] employed at an automobile body shop. Heath had previously been arrested but his codefendant had no arrest record. Heath and his companion were arrested when they drove up to a residence shared by Heath's girl friend and some other girls. Some police officers were already there in the process of arresting another man. When Heath and his companion started backing out of the driveway, the officers signaled to them to stop and asked them to get out of the car, which they did. Thereupon they and the automobile were searched. Although no contraband or incriminating evidence was found, they were both arrested, Heath being charged with being a "common thief" because he was reputed to be a thief. The codefendant was charged with "loitering" because he was standing in the driveway, an act which the officers admitted was done only at their command.
Campbell was arrested as he reached his home very early one morning and was charged with "common thief." He was stopped by officers because he was traveling at a high rate of speed, yet no speeding charge was placed against him.
Brown was arrested when he was observed leaving a downtown Jacksonville hotel by a police officer seated in a cruiser. The police testified he was reputed to be a thief, narcotics pusher, and generally opprobrious character. The officer called Brown over to the car, intending at that time to arrest him unless he had a good explanation for being on the street. Brown walked over to the police cruiser, as commanded, and the officer began to search him, apparently preparatory to placing him in the car. In the process of the search he came on two small packets which were later found to contain heroin. When the officer touched the pocket where the packets were, Brown began to resist. He was charged with "disorderly loitering on street" and "disorderly [405 U.S. 156, 161] conduct - resisting arrest with violence." While he was also charged with a narcotics violation, that charge was nolled.
Jacksonville's ordinance and Florida's statute were "derived from early English law," Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d, at 854, and employ "archaic language" in their definitions of vagrants. Id., at 855. The history is an oftentold tale. The breakup of feudal estates in England led to labor shortages which in turn resulted in the Statutes of Laborers, 3 designed to stabilize the labor force by prohibiting increases in wages and prohibiting the movement of workers from their home areas in search of improved conditions. Later vagrancy laws became criminal aspects of the poor laws. The series of laws passed in England on the subject became increasingly severe. 4 [405 U.S. 156, 162] But "the theory of the Elizabethan poor laws no longer fits the facts," Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 174 . The conditions which spawned these laws may be gone, but the archaic classifications remain.
This ordinance is void for vagueness, both in the sense that it "fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden by the statute," United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617 , and because it encourages arbitrary and erratic arrests and convictions. Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88 ; Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242 .
Living under a rule of law entails various suppositions, one of which is that "[all persons] are entitled to be informed as to what the State commands or forbids." Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453 .
Lanzetta is one of a well-recognized group of cases insisting that the law give fair notice of the offending conduct. See Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 ; Cline v. Frink Dairy Co., 274 U.S. 445 ; United States v. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U.S. 81 . In the field of regulatory statutes governing business activities, where the acts limited are in a narrow category, greater leeway is allowed. Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, 342 U.S. 337 ; United States v. National Dairy Products Corp., 372 U.S. 29 ; United States v. Petrillo, 332 U.S. 1 .
The poor among us, the minorities, the average house-holder are not in business and not alerted to the regulatory [405 U.S. 156, 163] schemes of vagrancy laws; and we assume they would have no understanding of their meaning and impact if they read them. Nor are they protected from being caught in the vagrancy net by the necessity of having a specific intent to commit an unlawful act. See Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91 ; Boyce Motor Lines, Inc. v. United States, supra.
The Jacksonville ordinance makes criminal activities which by modern standards are normally innocent. "Nightwalking" is one. Florida construes the ordinance not to make criminal one night's wandering, Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d, at 855, only the "habitual" wanderer or, as the ordinance describes it, "common night walkers." We know, however, from experience that sleepless people often walk at night, perhaps hopeful that sleep-inducing relaxation will result.
Luis Munoz-Marin, former Governor of Puerto Rico, commented once that "loafing" was a national virtue in his Commonwealth and that it should be encouraged. It is, however, a crime in Jacksonville.
"[P]ersons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children" - like habitually living "without visible means of support" - might implicate unemployed pillars of the community who have married rich wives.
"[P]ersons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children" may also embrace unemployed people out of the labor market, by reason of a recession 5 or disemployed by reason of technological or so-called structural displacements. [405 U.S. 156, 164]
Persons "wandering or strolling" from place to place have been extolled by Walt Whitman and Vachel Lindsay.6 The qualification "without any lawful purpose or object" may be a trap for innocent acts. Persons "neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting . . . places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served" would literally embrace many members of golf clubs and city clubs.
Walkers and strollers and wanderers may be going to or coming from a burglary. Loafers or loiterers may be "casing" a place for a holdup. Letting one's wife support him is an intra-family matter, and normally of no concern to the police. Yet it may, of course, be the setting for numerous crimes.
The difficulty is that these activities are historically part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence.
They are embedded in Walt Whitman's writings, especially in his "Song of the Open Road." They are reflected, too, in the spirit of Vachel Lindsay's "I Want to Go Wandering," and by Henry D. Thoreau. 7 [405 U.S. 156, 165]
This aspect of the vagrancy ordinance before us is suggested by what this Court said in 1876 about a broad criminal statute enacted by Congress: "It would certainly be dangerous if the legislature could set a net large enough to catch all possible offenders, and leave it to the courts to step inside and say who could be rightfully detained, and who should be set at large." United States v. Reese, 92 U.S. 214, 221 .
While that was a federal case, the due process implications are equally applicable to the States and to this vagrancy ordinance. Here the net cast is large, not to give the courts the power to pick and choose but to increase the arsenal of the police. In Winters v. New York, 333 U.S. 507 , the Court struck down a New York statute that made criminal the distribution of a magazine made up principally of items of criminal deeds of bloodshed or lust so massed as to become vehicles for inciting violent and depraved crimes against the person. The infirmity the Court found was vagueness - the absence of "ascertainable standards of guilt" (id., at 515) in the [405 U.S. 156, 166] sensitive First Amendment area. 8 Mr. Justice Frankfurter dissented. But concerned as he, and many others, 9 had been over the vagrancy laws, he added:
"Only a word needs to be said regarding Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451 . The case involved a New Jersey statute of the type that seek to control `vagrancy.' These statutes are in a class by themselves, in view of the familiar abuses to which they are put. . . . Definiteness is designedly avoided so as to allow the net to be cast at large, to enable men to be caught who are vaguely undesirable in the eyes of police and prosecution, although not chargeable with any particular offense. In short, these `vagrancy statutes' and laws against `gangs' are not fenced in by the text of the statute or by the subject matter so as to give notice of conduct to be avoided." Id., at 540.
Where the list of crimes is so all-inclusive and generalized 10 as the one in this ordinance, those convicted [405 U.S. 156, 167] may be punished for no more than vindicating affronts to police authority:
"The common ground which brings such a motley assortment of human troubles before the magistrates in vagrancy-type proceedings is the procedural laxity which permits `conviction' for almost any kind of conduct and the existence of the House of Correction as an easy and convenient dumping-ground for problems [405 U.S. 156, 168] that appear to have no other immediate solution." Foote, Vagrancy-Type Law and Its Administration, 104 U. Pa. L. Rev. 603, 631. 11
Another aspect of the ordinance's vagueness appears when we focus, not on the lack of notice given a potential offender, but on the effect of the unfettered discretion it places in the hands of the Jacksonville police. Caleb Foote, an early student of this subject, has called the vagrancy-type law as offering "punishment by analogy." Id., at 609. Such crimes, though long common in Russia, 12 are not compatible with our constitutional [405 U.S. 156, 169] system. We allow our police to make arrests only on "probable cause," 13 a Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment standard applicable to the States 14 as well as to the Federal Government. Arresting a person on suspicion, like arresting a person for investigation, is foreign to our system, even when the arrest is for past criminality. Future criminality, however, is the common justification for the presence of vagrancy statutes. See Foote, supra, at 625. Florida has, indeed, construed her vagrancy statute "as necessary regulations," inter alia, "to deter vagabondage and prevent crimes." Johnson v. State, 202 So.2d 852; Smith v. State, 239 So.2d 250, 251.
A direction by a legislature to the police to arrest all "suspicious" persons 15 would not pass constitutional muster. A vagrancy prosecution may be merely the cloak for a conviction which could not be obtained on the real but undisclosed grounds for the arrest. People [405 U.S. 156, 170] v. Moss, 309 N. Y. 429, 131 N. E. 2d 717. But as Chief Justice Hewart said in Frederick Dean, 18 Crim. App. 133, 134 (1924):
"It would be in the highest degree unfortunate if in any part of the country those who are responsible for setting in motion the criminal law should entertain, connive at or coquette with the idea that in a case where there is not enough evidence to charge the prisoner with an attempt to commit a crime, the prosecution may, nevertheless, on such insufficient evidence, succeed in obtaining and upholding a conviction under the Vagrancy Act, 1824."
Those generally implicated by the imprecise terms of the ordinance - poor people, nonconformists, dissenters, idlers - may be required to comport themselves according to the lifestyle deemed appropriate by the Jacksonville police and the courts. Where, as here, there are no standards governing the exercise of the discretion granted by the ordinance, the scheme permits and encourages an arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement of the law. It furnishes a convenient tool for "harsh and discriminatory enforcement by local prosecuting officials, against particular groups deemed to merit their displeasure." Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U.S. 88, 97 -98. It results in a regime in which the poor and the unpopular are permitted to "stand on a public sidewalk . . . only at the whim of any police officer." Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham, 382 U.S. 87, 90 . Under this ordinance,
"[I]f some carefree type of fellow is satisfied to work just so much, and no more, as will pay for one square meal, some wine, and a flophouse daily, but a court thinks this kind of living subhuman, the fellow can be forced to raise his sights or go to jail as a vagrant." Amsterdam, Federal Constitutional Restrictions on the Punishment of Crimes of Status, [405 U.S. 156, 171] Crimes of General Obnoxiousness, Crimes of Displeasing Police Officers, and the Like, 3 Crim. L. Bull. 205, 226 (1967).
A presumption that people who might walk or loaf or loiter or stroll or frequent houses where liquor is sold, or who are supported by their wives or who look suspicious to the police are to become future criminals is too precarious for a rule of law. The implicit presumption in these generalized vagrancy standards - that crime is being nipped in the bud - is too extravagant to deserve extended treatment. Of course, vagrancy statutes are useful to the police. Of course, they are nets making easy the roundup of so-called undesirables. But the rule of law implies equality and justice in its application. Vagrancy laws of the Jacksonville type teach that the scales of justice are so tipped that even-handed administration of the law is not possible. The rule of law, evenly applied to minorities as well as majorities, to the poor as well as the rich, is the great mucilage that holds society together.
The Jacksonville ordinance cannot be squared with our constitutional standards and is plainly unconstitutional.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE POWELL and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
Footnotes
[ Footnote 1 ] Jacksonville Ordinance Code 26-57 provided at the time of these arrests and convictions as follows:
"Rogues and vagabonds, or dissolute persons who go about begging, common gamblers, persons who use juggling or unlawful games or plays, common drunkards, common night walkers, thieves, pilferers or pickpockets, traders in stolen property, lewd, wanton and lascivious persons, keepers of gambling places, common railers and brawlers, [405 U.S. 156, 157] persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object, habitual loafers, disorderly persons, persons neglecting all lawful business and habitually spending their time by frequenting houses of ill fame, gaming houses, or places where alcoholic beverages are sold or served, persons able to work but habitually living upon the earnings of their wives or minor children shall be deemed vagrants and, upon conviction in the Municipal Court shall be punished as provided for Class D offenses."
Class D offenses at the time of these arrests and convictions were punishable by 90 days' imprisonment, $500 fine, or both. Jacksonville Ordinance Code 1-8 (1965). The maximum punishment has since been reduced to 75 days or $450. 304.101 (1971). We are advised that that downward revision was made to avoid federal right-to-counsel decisions. The Fifth Circuit case extending right to counsel in misdemeanors where a fine of $500 or 90 days' imprisonment could be imposed is Harvey v. Mississippi, 340 F.2d 263 (1965).
We are advised that at present the Jacksonville vagrancy ordinance is 330.107 and identical with the earlier one except that "juggling" has been eliminated.
[ Footnote 2 ] Florida also has a vagrancy statute, Fla. Stat. 856.02 (1965), which reads quite closely on the Jacksonville ordinance. Jacksonville Ordinance Code 27-43 makes the commission of any Florida misdemeanor a Class D offense against the City of Jacksonville. In 1971 Florida made minor amendments to its statute. See Laws 1971, c. 71-132.
Section 856.02 was declared unconstitutionally overbroad in Lazarus v. Faircloth, 301 F. Supp. 266. The court said: "All loitering, loafing, or idling on the streets and highways of a city, even though habitual, is not necessarily detrimental to the public welfare nor is it under all circumstances an interference with travel upon them. It may be and often is entirely innocuous. The statute draws no distinction between conduct that is calculated to harm and that which is essentially innocent." Id., at 272, quoting Hawaii v. Anduha, 48 F.2d 171, 172. See also Smith v. Florida, post, p. 172.
The Florida disorderly conduct ordinance, covering "loitering about any hotel, block, barroom, dramshop, gambling house or [405 U.S. 156, 158] disorderly house, or wandering about the streets either by night or by day without any known lawful means of support, or without being able to give a satisfactory account of themselves" has also been held void for "excessive broadness and vagueness" by the Florida Supreme Court, Headley v. Selkowitz, 171 So.2d 368, 370.
[ Footnote 3 ] 23 Edw. 3, c. 1 (1349); 25 Edw. 3, c. 1 (1350).
[ Footnote 4 ] See 3 J. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England 203-206, 266-275; 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *169.
Ledwith v. Roberts, 1937. 1 K. B. 232, 271, gives the following summary:
"The early Vagrancy Acts came into being under peculiar conditions utterly different to those of the present time. From the time of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century till the middle of the 17th century, and indeed, although in diminishing degree, right down to the reform of the Poor Law in the first half of the 19th century, the roads of England were crowded with masterless men and their families, who had lost their former employment through a variety of causes, had no means of livelihood and had taken to a vagrant life. The main causes were the gradual decay of the feudal system under which the labouring classes had been anchored to the soil, the economic slackening of the legal compulsion to work for fixed wages, the break up of the monasteries in the reign of Henry VIII, and the consequent disappearance of the religious orders which had previously administered a kind of `public assistance' in the form of lodging, food and alms; and, lastly, the economic changes brought about by the Enclosure Acts. Some of these people were honest labourers who had fallen upon evil days, others were the `wild rogues,' so common in Elizabethan times and literature, who had been born to a life of idleness and had no [405 U.S. 156, 162] intention of following any other. It was they and their confederates who formed themselves into the notorious `brotherhood of beggars' which flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were a definite and serious menace to the community and it was chiefly against them and their kind that the harsher provisions of the vagrancy laws of the period were directed."
And see Sherry, Vagrants, Rogues and Vagabonds - Old Concepts in Need of Revision, 48 Calif. L. Rev. 557, 560-561 (1960); Note, The Vagrancy Concept Reconsidered: Problems and Abuses of Status Criminality, 37 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 102 (1962).
[ Footnote 5 ] In Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160, 177 , in referring to City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 102, 142, decided in 1837, we said: "Whatever may have been the notion then prevailing, we do not think that it will now be seriously contended that because a person is without employment and without funds he constitutes a `moral pestilence.' Poverty and immorality are not synonymous."
[ Footnote 6 ] And see Reich, Police Questioning of Law Abiding Citizens, 75 Yale L. J. 1161, 1172 (1966): "If I choose to take an evening walk to see if Andromeda has come up on schedule, I think I am entitled to look for the distant light of Almach and Mirach without finding myself staring into the blinding beam of a police flashlight."
[ Footnote 7 ] "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, - who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully [405 U.S. 156, 165] derived `from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going a la Sainte Terre,' to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, `There goes a Sainte Terrer,' a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels." Excursions 251-252 (1893).
[ Footnote 8 ] For a discussion of the void-for-vagueness doctrine in the area of fundamental rights see Note, The Void-For-Vagueness Doctrine in the Supreme Court, 109 U. Pa. L. Rev. 67, 104 et seq.; Amsterdam, Federal Constitutional Restrictions on the Punishment of Crimes of Status, Crimes of General Obnoxiousness, Crimes of Displeasing Police Officers, and the Like, 3 Crim. L. Bull. 205, 224 et seq. (1967).
[ Footnote 9 ] See Edelman v. California, 344 U.S. 357, 362 (Black, J., dissenting); Hicks v. District of Columbia, 383 U.S. 252 (DOUGLAS, J., dissenting); District of Columbia v. Hunt, 82 U.S. App. D.C. 159, 163 F.2d 833 (Judge Stephens writing for a majority of the Court of Appeals); Judge Rudkin for the court in Hawaii v. Anduha, 48 F.2d 171.
The opposing views are numerous: Ex parte Branch, 234 Mo. 466, 137 S. W. 886; H. R. Rep. No. 1248, 77th Cong., 1st Sess., 2; Perkins, The Vagrancy Concept, 9 Hastings L. J. 237 (1958); People v. Craig, 152 Cal. 42, 91 P. 997.
[ Footnote 10 ] President Roosevelt, in vetoing a vagrancy law for the District of Columbia, said:
"The bill contains many provisions that constitute an improvement [405 U.S. 156, 167] over existing law. Unfortunately, however, there are two provisions in the bill that appear objectionable.
"Section 1 of the bill contains a number of clauses defining a `vagrant.' Clause 6 of this section would include within that category `any able-bodied person who lives in idleness upon the wages, earnings, or property of any person having no legal obligation to support him.' This definition is so broadly and loosely drawn that in many cases it would make a vagrant of an adult daughter or son of a well-to-do family who, though amply provided for and not guilty of any improper or unlawful conduct, has no occupation and is dependent upon parental support.
"Under clause 9 of said section `any person leading an idle life . . . and not giving a good account of himself' would incur guilt and liability to punishment unless he could prove, as required by section 2, that he has lawful means of support realized from a lawful occupation or source. What constitutes `leading an idle life' and `not giving a good account of oneself' is not indicated by the statute but is left to the determination in the first place of a police officer and eventually of a judge of the police court, subject to further review in proper cases. While this phraseology may be suitable for general purposes as a definition of a vagrant, it does not conform with accepted standards of legislative practice as a definition of a criminal offense. I am not willing to agree that a person without lawful means of support, temporarily or otherwise, should be subject to the risk of arrest and punishment under provisions as indefinite and uncertain in their meaning and application as those employed in this clause.
"It would hardly be a satisfactory answer to say that the sound judgment and decisions of the police and prosecuting officers must be trusted to invoke the law only in proper cases. The law itself should be so drawn as not to make it applicable to cases which obviously should not be comprised within its terms." H. R. Doc. No. 392, 77th Cong, 1st Sess.
[ Footnote 11 ] Thus, "prowling by auto," which formed the basis for the vagrancy arrests and convictions of four of the petitioners herein, is not even listed in the ordinance as a crime. But see Hanks v. State, 195 So.2d 49, 51, in which the Florida District Court of Appeal construed "wandering or strolling from place to place" as including travel by automobile.
[ Footnote 12 ] J. Hazard, The Soviet Legal System 133 (1962):
"The 1922 code was a step in the direction of precision in definition of crime, but it was not a complete departure from the concept of punishment in accordance with the dictates of the social consciousness of the judge. Laying hold of an old tsarist code provision that had been in effect from 1864 to 1903 known by the term `analogy,' the Soviet draftsmen inserted an article permitting a judge to consider the social danger of an individual even when he had committed no act defined as a crime in the specialized part of the code. He was to be guided by analogizing the dangerous act to some act defined as crime, but at the outset the analogies were not always apparent, as when a husband was executed for the sadistic murder of a wife, followed by dissection of her torso and shipment in a trunk to a remote railway station, the court arguing that the crime was analogous to banditry. At the time of this decision the code permitted the death penalty for banditry but not for murder without political motives or very serious social consequences."
"On the traditionally important subject of criminal law, Algeria is rejecting the flexibility introduced in the Soviet criminal code by the `analogy' principle, as have the East-Central European and black African states." Hazard, The Residue of Marxist Influence in Algeria, 9 Colum. J. of Transnat'l L. 194, 224 (1970).
[ Footnote 15 ] On arrests for investigation, see Secret Detention by the Chicago Police, A Report by the American Civil Liberties Union (1959). The table below contains nationwide data on arrests for "vagrancy" and for "suspicion" in the three-year period 1968-1970.
Total Rate Total Rate Total Rate rptd. per rptd. per rptd. per Year * arrests 100,000 arrests 100,000 arrests 100,000 ____ _________________ _________________ _________________
Don't let KEY INTERNATIONAL, INC. and MIAMI's ARDID FAMILY STEAL OUR ST. JOHNS COUNTY OCEAN AND FISHING PIER. Ask questions. Demand answers. Make disclosures. Expect democracy.
Here's the text of the referendum vote that added a tax increase of one mill for one year and rebuilt our 75 year old pier, which opened in 1984 and was half-destroyed by storm that same year:
"Shall St. Johns County levy and collect an additional ad valorem tax of only one mill for one year upon the assessed value of all taxable real estate in St. Johns County for the sole purpose of financing the acquisition, design, construction, maintenance and operation of a county-owned ocean pier in St. Johns County substantially provided in County Resolution No. 82-117."
Enacted by 39 vote margin of 5537 to 5498 on November 2, 1982 that's a squeaker of a voting margin -- 50.17671047% to be exact. (Thanks to St. Johns County Supervisor of Elections for documentation).
Here's a St. Augustine Record article from 2014:
Posted December 28, 2014 10:01 pm - Updated December 29, 2014 10:02 am By Sue Bjorkman sue.bjorkman@staugustine.com St. Johns County Ocean Pier has weathered 75 years
On New Year’s Eve, as fireworks are shot into the air from the St. Johns County Ocean and Fishing Pier, the wooden landmark will have seen 75 years of history.
Through the years, the pier has been the center of a constant tug-of-war with erosion and storms and keeping the fishermen and beachgoers happy. It has been torn apart by numerous nor’easters and rebuilt again, all while bearing witness to the constant ebb and flow of the tides.
Administered by the St. Johns County Recreation and Parks Department, the pier is part of a 4-acre beachfront park that includes a pavilion, volleyball courts, playground and Splash Park. Some of the activities there include the Wednesday St. Augustine Beach Farmers Market, a Summer Concert Series and the popular New Year’s Eve Beach Blast-Off.
Compared to famous piers with amusement rides and restaurants, such as California’s Santa Monica pier or Maryland’s Ocean City Pier, St. Augustine’s pier is plain and simple. It lacks any permanent structures, except for the benches and the fish-cleaning station. Still, it has that nostalgic feel, with the compelling soundtrack and slight sway of the ocean waves beneath. In the Visitors Information Center located in the pier gift shop, the guest registry shows visitors from 12 different states and two countries in just one day. Simple as it may be, it’s a popular attraction year-round.
Some visitors come for the distant lighthouse view, the chance to watch birds diving for fish or surfers catching a wave. Others hope for a wildlife sighting — a dolphin, a sea turtle or just maybe a North Atlantic Right Whale this time of year. The fishermen come for the advantage of dropping a line deep into the ocean without needing a boat. And for the camaraderie of those doing the same.
A New Deal for St. Augustine
In the 1800s, Anastasia Island were called South Beach. From St. Augustine, beachgoers took a ferry over the Matanzas River at King Street, then rode a donkey cart on dirt roads to the lighthouse. Later a wooden bridge was built and visitors took the South Beach Railroad from the bridge to the beach.
The beach was always a popular recreational area, but it lacked a fishing pier. When Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal economic recovery program came about in the late 1930s, county leaders saw their opportunity.
In 1937, they applied to the federal Works Progress Administration for funds to construct a recreation complex that would include a seawall, boardwalk and fishing pier, flanked by a pair of hotel buildings.
St. Augustine Historical Society documents show the county received about $66,000 to construct a 1,344-foot pier and 840 feet of concrete seawall. The next year they asked for another $68,000 to construct two coquina rock buildings to house a life-saving station and recreational rooms.
Susan Parker, executive director of the St. Augustine Historical Society, wrote in her article, “The St. Augustine Beach Hotel; A New Deal Project,” that these projects were “conceived as an impetus for beach development.”
Completed in July 1939, the 1,300-foot wooden pier was believed to extend further into the ocean than any other pier along the Atlantic Coast.
This boast was very short-lived, though. The first of many damaging tropical storms hit in October 1939, wiping out 500 feet of the pier and demolishing the rest room pavilion. Another 500 feet were heavily damaged. The county applied for WPA funds to rebuild the pier, adding a T-shape at the end. It had to be shortened to just 800 feet.
During St. Augustine’s 375th anniversary celebration in 1940, they held a “gala opening” for the official St. Augustine Beach Recreation Project.
All too soon World War II “dampened the leisurely, carefree character of the beach front complex,” Parker wrote.
In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, the Coast Guard controlled all access to the beach during WWII. Civil defense volunteers searched the sea for submarines and the skies for enemy airplanes. No one was allowed on Anastasia Island after dark without identification and those few allowed through had to drive with their headlights off.
Turbulent times
St. Augustine Beach was incorporated in 1959. The pier was holding its own until the fall of 1962 when a nor’easter rendered the original pier structurally unsound. The beach suffered terrible erosion.
In the summer of 1964, the beach around the pier made international news when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) held civil rights demonstrations, known as “swim-ins” or “wade-ins,” in an attempt to integrate all-white beach areas. Historians said this particular tactic was unique to St. Augustine Beach.
In fall of 1964, Hurricane Dora, the first hurricane in 50 years to strike St. Augustine directly, tore off the end of the pier and sent waves crashing over the seawall into the coquina buildings.
The pier stayed open for fishing but the beach erosion and the damaged buildings made the area unattractive to visitors. The hotel and restaurants closed. Erosion continued to threaten the seawall, especially during a northeaster in Feb. 1973.
A nor’easter in 1978 took another piece off the end and caused extensive damage to the pilings. Concrete shields were placed around them, but they were damaged when Hurricane David blew through.
A concrete-bolstered pier opened in 1984 to replace the wooden New Deal pier. It was now 1,000 feet long.
Recreation and renourishment
The pavilion, which hosts concert and events, was built in 1998. After this, the era of sand renourishment officially began. Between 2001 and 2012, millions of yards of sand were added to the beach in three big installment projects, according to The Record archives. These projects were done by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as part of a 50-year commitment to keep the beach renourished.
The pier was again rebuilt in 2002, with the help of a $17 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to restore the coastline. In 2011, the county approved $300,000 for repair work hoping to extend the life of the pier for another 10 years.
Barring another hurricane or mean nor’easter, the pier as it appears as 2014 comes to a close this week, is how it is likely to stay until around 2021. Plain and simple.
We can pledge the income stream from bed tax revenue to build a nice new pier (or let the old one collapse into history). Florida Statute 125.0104 allows us to use bed tax money "to acquire, construct, extend, enlarge, remodel, repair, improve, maintain, operate, or promote one or more zoological parks, fishing piers or nature centers which are publicly owned and operated or owned and operated by not-for-profit organizations and open to the public." Ask questions. Demand answers . Expect democracy. Support the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
Do I understand correctly from those who saw the film that the PBS St. Augustine documentary omits the first anti-Gay hate crime in North American history?
The murder of a Gay man was ordered in 1566 by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, whose brother-in-law wrote it down.
There was no trial.
It was a murder on orders of Florida's first Governor.
Adelantado Pedro Menendez de Aviles's thugs followed orders to kill "Guillermo," a Gay French interpreter of the Guale Indian language, who Menendez called "a Sodomite and a Lutheran."
"Guillermo" was garroted.
This irrefragable historical fact helped persuade Judge Henry Lee Adams, Jr. to order the City of St. Augustine to fly 49 Rainbow flags for Gay Pride on our Bridge of Lions and Bayfront June 8-13, 2005.
The University of Florida has omitted this hate crime from its curatorship of the Governor's House museum, too.
Why does UF (and now PBS) airbrush Gay history and anti-Gay hate crimes?
Waiting for an answer:
From: Ed Slavin To: poppell Cc: nshaver ; jregan ; mary ; marylawrence ; revjen ; commkostka ; bcc5hdean Sent: Wed, Dec 20, 2017 10:58 am Subject: Request No. 2017-709: "Secrets of Spanish Florida" Script
Dear Mr. Poppell: 1. Please send me the script for "Secrets of Spanish Florida."
2. Do I understand correctly that the PBS documentary omits the first anti-Gay hate crime in North American history, on orders of Pedro Menendez in 1566?
3. If so, please explain why, and kindly provide pertinent decision documents.
Exciting news -- accountability is finally winning the day. St. Johns County Commissioners voted December 19th a $500/week charge for the St. Augustine Beach Farmer's Market, granting only a two-month extension of the expiring no-bid no-cost lease by the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, Inc. The vote was after a 47 minute discussion. "I think this is going to shock the hell out of them," said Commissioner JAY MORRIS (R-4th District/RPM International).
Thanks to our St. Johns County Commissioners for doing their jobs without fear or favor, to SABCA, for drawing a line in the sand on accountability, and finally charging fees to use the entire Pier Parking lot for weekly farmers' markets.
Secretive SABCA has been extravagantly subsidized by both St. Johns County and the City of St. Augustine. For the farmer's market, SABCA pays no rent, benefitting from some $50,000/year county subsidy, according to County Administrator MICHAEL DAVID WANCHICK, who later tried to crawdad away from his numbers when Commissioners discussed fees.
SABCA supports developers and their politicians, and is a de facto political action committee, an IRS 501c4 "non-profit" whose leaders hate accountability, tried to ban First Amendment protected activity (and arrest Bill Rosenstock) and insult open records requesters in public meetings.
Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's Civil Process Supervisor, SABCA President WILLIAM JONES was not present for the vote, on an item addressed by SABCA members in general public comment.
The vote was not advertised and no public comment was invited.
Thus, the otherwise righteous vote may have violated F.S. 286.0144
IF the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, Inc. sues, it won't overturn the vote, but it will earn attorney fees. It's time our local governments complied with F.S. 286.0144, no matter whose ox is being gored.
Thus, County Commissioners almost got this one right, but need better legal advice from maladroit County Attorney PATRICK FRANCIS McCORMACK.
What do you reckon?
Of course, flagrant lawbreaker SABCA's "unclean hands" could be raised as a defense, so perhaps SABCA will not choose to sue, effectively leading with its chin. SABCA's ANDREA SAMUELS, disgraced ex-Mayor of St. Augustine Beach, was profiled on this blog last year, before she lost to newcomer Maggie Kostka. Here's what I wrote last year.
HECKLER ROBERT SAMUELS, et ux, Commissioner ANDREA SAMUELS
Left to right: SABCA President WILLIAM JONES, Commissioner ANDREA SAMUELS, et ux, SABCA VP ROBERT SAMUELS, tedious tendentious serial First Amendment violators.
Another dodgy "non-profit" corporate wrongdoer caught red-handed by the Department of Justice. Reckon Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's "Four Star Association" administrators are shaking in their boots?
Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Florida FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, December 21, 2017 United States Settles False Claims Allegations Against Haven Hospice For More Than $5 Million
Jacksonville, Florida – Acting U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow announces that Haven Hospice (Haven), a hospice company headquartered in Gainesville, Florida, has agreed to pay $5,085,024 to resolve allegations that Haven violated the False Claims Act by knowingly billing the government for medically unnecessary and undocumented hospice services.
The government alleges that Haven knowingly submitted false claims to the Medicare and Medicaid programs for medically unnecessary hospice care for certain patients who had lengths of stays greater than three years. Typically, federal health care programs only pay for hospice care when patients are in a terminal condition and have a life expectancy of less than six months.
Since June 1, 2011, Haven treated at least 63 patients with lengths of stay exceeding three years. The government contends that for those 63 patients, Haven either knowingly or recklessly failed to document a valid basis for the initial start of hospice care and/or subsequent hospice coverage. Haven’s diagnoses were not adequately supported, or were supported only with inconsistent practitioner information. Many patients failed to demonstrate objective indications of decline throughout their time in the company’s care, despite some being in hospice for nearly six years. Some patients had their hospice diagnoses changed after several years when they did not show decline under their original “terminal” diagnosis. The government has agreed to accept $5,085,024 to resolve these allegations based on Haven’s ability to pay.
“Unfortunately, some healthcare providers seek to defraud Medicare by billing for unnecessary hospice services,” stated Acting U.S. Attorney Muldrow. “Left unchecked, this misconduct would deplete funds available for terminally ill patients desperately in need of the relief that hospice care provides. This settlement should serve as notice to others who consider similar practices that we will vigorously pursue them.”
“Charging taxpayers for unnecessary health care services such as hospice care is intolerable,” said Special Agent in Charge Shimon R. Richmond of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General. “Working closely with our law enforcement partners, we will vigorously protect the integrity of our Federal health care programs and hold health care companies accountable.”
The settlement concludes a lawsuit originally filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida by a former employee of Haven Hospice, Dr. John Simons. The lawsuit was filed under the qui tam, or whistleblower, provisions of the False Claims Act that permits private individuals to sue on behalf of the government for false claims and to share in any recovery. The Act also allows the government to intervene and take over the action. Dr. Simons will receive roughly $900,000 of the proceeds from the settlement with Haven.
The government’s action in this matter illustrates the emphasis on combating health care fraud, and one of the most powerful tools in this effort is the False Claims Act. Tips from all sources about potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement can be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, at 800-HHS-TIPS (800-447-8477).
This settlement was the result of a coordinated effort by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, SafeGuard Services LLC (Medicare’s Zone Program Integrity Contractor), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General. It was handled by Assistant United States Attorney Shea Gibbons.
The case is captioned United States ex rel. Simons v. North Central Florida Hospice, Inc. d/b/a Haven Hospice, Case No. 3:16-cv-330-J-32JRK. The settlement resolves the United States’ claims in that case. The claims resolved by the settlement are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.
Posted December 18, 2013 02:15 pm By NANCY SHAVER St. Augustine Letter: Something for Alexis' stocking The St. Augustine Record
Editor: The Empty Stocking fund appeal always brings me to thoughts of children, and this year to seven-year-old, Alexis O’Connell, whose mother, Michelle, died of a gunshot in 2010 under circumstances that are at best unclear. At the age of four Alexis was left to wonder why, if the Sheriff’s office investigation were to be believed, her mother who loved her so deeply, and called to say she was on her way to her, suddenly decided to kill herself and leave Alexis alone.
I’ll make a donation to the Empty Stocking fund as many of us will. But this year I’ll also take the time to contact [the] … United States Attorney, and ask [him] to investigate the handling of Michelle’s death. Nothing will restore Michelle to this earth, but clear-eyed justice can give Alexis some measure of peace.
Please consider adding your voice to this request….
A comprehensive and professional inquiry would be a gift not only to Alexis and her family, but also to all of us who look to the law to protect and serve us equally.
Justice for Michelle O'Connell. Eloquent letter by Mayor Nancy Shaver, published the year before she was elected. Write the United States Attorney here: Hon. W. Stephen Muldrow Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Florida 300 N. Hogan Street Suite 700 Jacksonville, Fl. 32202 Main Line: 904-301-6300 Fax Line: 904-301-6310
Stephen Muldrow is currently the Acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida. From July 2013 to March 2017, he served as the First Assistant U.S. Attorney to United States Attorney A. Lee Bentley, III. Mr. Muldrow has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Florida since 2001, where he also served as an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) prosecutor, a Senior Litigation Counsel, and Chief of the Major Crimes Section. Before that, he was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Puerto Rico from 1995 to 2001, where he served as that district’s Lead OCDETF Attorney and Coordinator for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Task Force. In 1989, Mr. Muldrow joined the Department of Justice through the Honors Program as a Trial Attorney in the Tax Division, Civil Trial Section, Northern Region (Washington, D.C.), where he remained until 1995. From 1988 to 1989, he worked as a Law Clerk for the United States Marshals Service, Office of Legal Counsel (Washington, D.C.). Mr. Muldrow earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics with a minor in Spanish from Bucknell University (1986), his law degree with honors from The American University, Washington College of Law (1989), and a Master of Arts in Law & International Affairs, also from The American University (1989).
This reminds me of how misguided St. Augustine Beach City CFO MELISSA BURNS misappropriated servers' tip jars at the December 31, 2016 Beach Blast event. This is immoral and possibly illegal.
The Trump Administration to Restaurants: Take the Tips!
Photo
CreditYarek Waszul
Most Americans assume that when they leave a tip for waiters and bartenders, those workers pocket the money. That could become wishful thinking under a Trump administration proposal that would give restaurants and other businesses complete control over the tips earned by their employees.
The Department of Labor recently proposed allowing employers to pool tips and use them as they see fit as long as all of their workers are paid at least the minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour nationally and higher in some states and cities. Officials argue that this will free restaurants to use some of the tip money to reward lowly dishwashers, line cooks and other workers who toil in the less glamorous quarters and presumably make less than servers who get tips. Using tips to compensate all employees sounds like a worthy cause, but a simple reading of the government’s proposal makes clear that business owners would have no obligation to use the money in this way. They would be free to pocket some or all of that cash, spend it to spiff up the dining room or use it to underwrite $2 margaritas at happy hour. And that’s what makes this proposal so disturbing.
The 3.2 million Americans who work as waiters, waitresses and bartendersinclude some of the lowest-compensated working people in the country. The median hourly wage for waiters and waitresses was $9.61 an hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, there is a sordid history of restaurant owners who steal tips, and of settlements in which they have agreed to repay workers millions of dollars.
Not to worry, says the Labor Department, which argues, oddly and unconvincingly, that workers will be better off no matter how owners spend the money. Enlarging dining rooms, reducing menu prices or offering paid time off should be seen as “potential benefits to employees and the economy over all.” The department also assures us that owners will funnel tip money to employees because workers would quit otherwise.
It is hard to know how much time President Trump’s appointees have spent with single mothers raising two children on a salary from a workaday restaurant in suburban America, seeing how hard it is to make ends meet without tips. What we do know is that the administration has produced no empirical cost-benefit analysis to support its proposal, which is customary when the government seeks to make an important change to federal regulations.reading the main story
The Trump administration appears to be rushing this rule through — it has offered the public just 30 days to comment on it — in part to pre-empt the Supreme Court from ruling on a 2011 Obama-era tipping rule. The department’s new proposal would do away with the 2011 rule. The restaurant industry has filed several legal challenges to that regulation, which prohibits businesses from pooling tips and sharing them with dishwashers and other back-of-the-house workers. Different federal circuit appeals courts have issued contradictory rulings on those cases, so the industry has asked the Supreme Court to resolve those differences; the top court has not decided whether to take that case.
Mr. Trump, of course, owns restaurants as part of his hospitality empire and stands to benefit from this rule change, as do many of his friends and campaign donors. But what the restaurant business might not fully appreciate is that their stealth attempt to gain control over tips could alienate and antagonize customers. Diners who are no longer certain that their tips will end up in the hands of the server they intended to reward might leave no tip whatsoever. Others might seek to covertly slip cash to their server. More high-minded restaurateurs would be tempted to follow the lead of the New York restaurateur Danny Meyer and get rid of tipping by raising prices and bumping up salaries.
By changing the fundamental underpinnings of tipping, the government might well end up destroying this practice. But in doing so it would hurt many working-class Americans, including people who believed that Mr. Trump would fight for them.
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