Thanks to WUFT reporters Max Chesnes and Imani J. Jackson.
GOOD WORK by the journalists at the University of Florida's WUFT re: Fish Island and the slave graves here in St. Augustine. Fifty (50) of us testified against D.R. HORTON's proposed Planned Unit Development. We won. No appeal.
What's next? Buying Fish Island from the landowner, to make it part of the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore.
(Illustration by Jerald Pinson)
The Fate of Fish Island
America’s largest homebuilder proposes developing one of the last private-owned wild swaths in coastal St. Augustine. By Max Chesnes
America’s largest homebuilder proposes developing one of the last private-owned wild swaths in coastal St. Augustine.
Fish Island photograph courtesy Walter Coker
Perhaps it was a miracle that Fish Island survived the Spanish conquest of the 16th century. No cannons, colonies or conquistadors landed on this humble stretch of forest nestled alongside St. Augustine’s 312 bridge.
And perhaps it was another miracle that Fish Island survived the British buccaneers of the 17th century. In the midst of revolution, turmoil and political uncertainty, this 72-acre island of pine trees, eagle’s nests and wetlands remained unscathed by the series of raids and pillaging that marked the history of America’s oldest European settlement.
Then came the 18th century, when part of the island was developed as a citrus estate by a settler named Jesse Fish. Ultimately, nature took back the once-famed orchards and a plantation house.
But like many of Florida’s remaining forests and wetlands, Fish Island’s luck may be running out amid intense urban population growth in the 21st century. The largest homebuilder in America, D.R. Horton, has plans to develop the slim peninsula that also serves as a barrier to rising seas — and may hold archaeological evidence of enslaved Africans in a city that has done so much to preserve its Spanish heritage.
Company officials presented their proposal to St. Augustine’s Planning and Zoning Board in July. The development plan initially included 170 single-family housing units, two roadways and an amenity center.
Here’s what one segment of the Fish Island parcel might look like developed, compared to recent satellite imagery. Slide to compare.
After the initial request was denied because of a disagreement in Florida zoning codes, the company proposed an altered planned unit development (PUD) to the board in August. In what city staff described as “the highest attendance in the board’s history,” more than 100 citizens voiced their concerns about D.R. Horton’s plans.
The board unanimously denied the PUD application. And now, the company’s 30-day window to appeal has lapsed. Still, St. Augustine citizens are in the dark about the fate of Fish Island.
At 28, Jen Lomberk has helped lead the charge to save Fish Island from development, pushing against daunting trends: The third-fastest growing county in Florida, St. Johns County is also one of the fastest-growing in the nation, according to the U.S. Census.
“It’s completely understandable that people want to live here,” Lomberk said. “But our goal is to promote smart, sustainable development as opposed to irresponsible building.”
As the Matanzas Riverkeeper, Lomberk has a strong appreciation for water quality. Most of the threats and pollution found in the Matanzas are directly tied to urbanization and development, she said. So, she’s traded her daily routine of oyster gardening and educating children for an aggressive social media campaign informing the public on the importance of conserving Fish Island.
“The first thing that people see when they cross into our island shouldn’t be a bunch of D.R Horton houses,” Lomberk said.
Jim Young, president of the Young Land Group and current owner of the Fish Island property, declined to elaborate on the company’s next steps. His staff, and other owners of the property, will field no interviews until January at the earliest, he said. D.R. Horton representatives also declined to comment on the future of Fish Island.
St. Augustine City Commissioners who would ultimately decide on whether the development can proceed have been notably quiet on the matter.
The majority of the county commission, not bound by political obligation in the island’s fate, have voiced support for conserving Fish Island. Options to turn the land into a park, boat ramp or conservation site have all been discussed.
Not only would the projected development be an eyesore, Lomberk said, but it would have considerable environmental impact. It also seems to defy wisdom on coastal resilience in the face of rising seas.
An immersive 360-degree video of Fish Island. (May require desktop device and Google Chrome to view) Video by Max Chesnes.
According to Federal Emergency Management Agency flood standards for St. Johns County, all development must be built 9 feet above sea level. Fish Island, and most of the surrounding peninsula, sit at around 4 feet, according to a survey by Gulfstream Design Group engineer Matt Lahti.
If its plans are approved, D.R. Horton would have to clear and fill the grassy parcel because it’s so low, Lomberk said. Fish Island’s plant and animal life would suffer, and long-term, St. Augustine would lose yet another buffer between development and rising seas.
“There’s several places in the county that have been built in such low-lying, vulnerable places now that millions of dollars are being spent to retrofit the infrastructure,” Lomberk said. “People want to be close to the water, but we’re building on a lot of the property that is most vulnerable to sea level rise.”
At the plan board meeting this fall, former St. Augustine Beach Mayor Gary Snodgrass pointed to the beach town’s move to buy land for Ocean Hammock Park as a way local government can protect from over-development, preserve wildlife and better prepare for sea-rise. That project was funded with a grant from the Florida Communities Trust Fund.
Advocates also suggest that Florida Forever, the state’s public-land acquisition program, could be one source of funding to purchase Fish Island from its owners and preserve the land in the name of conservation and climate adaptation.
“But first, the state needs to know what’s happening here,” Lomberk said, “The people want to keep Fish Island as the doorway to our community.”
It’s a brisk October morning, about 48 degrees with ocean salt mixed into the chilled air. A small group of seven activists hoist a tent at the local St. Augustine farmers market, awaiting the surge of shoppers.
Today, Susan Hill’s fight is just beginning.
One local activist tells the story of Jesse Fish.
Hill and her husband, Jon Hodgin, have worked tirelessly to put together a “Save Fish Island” campaign ever since she heard of D.R. Horton’s plans, she said. As the city’s population continues to rise, she has since spent hundreds of hours researching, studying and communicating the history of Fish Island.
“We’re a grassroots project made of ordinary people” Hill said. “But today, we’re here to preserve and conserve Fish Island.”
An expert on the land’s history, Hill has made it her mission to spread awareness on Fish Island’s historic past, she said.
“Most people we speak to haven’t heard the story of Fish Island, which exists only in bits and pieces dating from the 1700s to the present,” Hill wrote in a 17-page historical narrative she co-authored with her husband, entitled Fish Island’s Historical Past: A Citizen’s Perspective on What We Stand to Lose.
“Sometimes we don’t realize the value of something until we stand to lose it, forever.”
Hill’s home is filled with hundreds of historical documents she collected from the St. Augustine Historical Society research library. There may be enough evidence, Hill believes, to prove there are unmarked slave burials on Fish Island.
This map, one of Hill’s many documents on Fish Island. depicts all potential land owned by Jesse Fish in the 18th century. / Photo: Max Chesnes
Susan Hill reviews a journal entry, one of her many documents on Fish Island’s history. / Photo: Max Chesnes
One online petition to save Fish Island has received over 3,500 signatures since its creation in July. While signatures are a great place to start, more action and advocacy need to take place, Hill said.
Hill’s drive to save the peninsula is inspired in part by what she sees on the south side of the 312 bridge as she drives toward the ocean from the mainland.
Like many St. Augustine residents, Hill commutes daily over the 312 bridge to get to US Highway 1. On one side of the bridge lies untouched Fish Island. The other is a warning sign for the island’s potential future.
Antigua, a future residential neighborhood by development group Dream Finders Homes, is under construction. All trees have been removed from the land.
“One day I looked to the right and saw this previously undeveloped land now looked like the face of the moon,” Hill said. “It was completely flattened.”
Lush Fish Island, with all of its trees and wetlands, stands in poignant juxtaposition to the construction project already underway, Hill said. It is a reminder for what could potentially happen to this land – and much more of St. Johns County and Florida.
“I was so horrified, I couldn’t believe it,” Hill said. “I’m so tired of seeing our natural resources disappear.”
Graves of the Enslaved?
By Imani J. Jackson
Evidence suggests enslaved African people may be buried on St. Augustine’s Fish Island, now eyed for luxury homes.
Florida oranges, depending on who you ask, represent varied histories. Some may know Florida supplies an outsized share of U.S. citrus. Others may know plantation labor kick-started citrus grove expansion. Even fewer likely know that if expedited development of Fish Island, where El Vergel plantation once operated, occurs then new luxury homes may bury human remains, unmarked graves, and other artifacts from enslaved African people who lived, labored and likely perished on the island.
Named for Jesse Fish, the English Protestant settler from New York who once owned it and most of St. Augustine, Fish Island lies near the Matanzas River. It forms part of Anastasia Island, its estimated 72 acres annexed in sprawl.
Born in 1724 or 1726, Jesse Fish later moved to St. Augustine as a child for work. About a decade later, he began trade with the city. Though he visited New York, South Carolina and Cuba, Fish maintained residence at his plantation El Vergel until he died there in 1790.
El Vergel, which means “the garden” or “the orchard,” fuels lore about Fish. In its heyday, plantation laborers produced globally lauded oranges, other citrus and “orange shrub,” an alcoholic beverage.
Fish Island riveted other colonial settlers. Andre Michaux, a French botanist, wrote praises after his 1788 visit to El Vergel. Michaux wrote that Fish’s oranges were succulent, large “and more esteemed than those brought from the West Indies.”
This line drawing in the December 1874 edition of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine accompanied a travelogue called the “The Ancient City” by the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson, who wintered in St. Augustine and wrote about Fish Island.
Of course, notable southern plantations did not run themselves. Enslaved African people, and sometimes indentured European people and captured Native American people, supplied the labor, despite sub-tropical heat and risk of infectious diseases. If Michaux’s time estimate — that Fish’s orchard had operated for 40 years by the time Michaux visited — held true, then Fish would have established El Vergel around 1750.
As Vanderbilt University historian Jane Landers wrote in her book Black Society in Spanish Florida, Fish introduced “most of the African-born slaves registered” in Florida between 1752 and 1763. Landers also noted Cuban records of these “slave imports” to Florida.
Visually, the record is jarring. One can consider whether the ubiquity of Fish’s name or his ownership of children ages five, eight and nine is more troubling. During this period, Fish is the listed owner of more than 100 African people.
A 1972 certificate placing Fish Island on the National Register of Historic Places signed by Governor Reubin Askew. Documents supporting the listing identified the site as Florida’s first orange grove.
Beyond those records, though, the Florida lives and fates of these African people is unclear. With gaps in the written and archaeological records, some St. Augustine residents have advanced cultural heritage and gravesite respect arguments in support of preserving the federally recognized property.
They hope city officials, a private landowner and a major home developer will consider whether irreparable harm will result if the community – proposed but uncertain — is constructed on the island.
These residents seek preservation of Fish Island as an archaeologically and environmentally significant site. They hope to inspire broader grassroots advocacy and knowledge of potential harm development could cause. At the same time, they are sensitive to not interfering with the developer’s contract given Florida jurors’ determination in a Stuart case earlier this year that a longtime environmentalist exceeded her free speech rights and illegally undermined a developer’s deal.
St. Augustine residents Susan Hill and Jon Hodgin have taken particular interest in Fish Island’s cultural preservation. The married, retired UF College of Medicine professors researched and wrote a text called “Fish Island’s Historical Past: A Citizen’s Perspective on What We Stand To Lose” to inform the community.
The work reflects concern that development of Fish Island may hasten Afro-erasure. “All parts” of St. Augustine history “are worthy of being told, recognized, and preserved,” Hill said.
This history includes a 1787 census, on which Fish reported 17 slaves, and several accounts that Fish owned, traded and managed many enslaved African people. The level of Fish’s slave ownership contributed to city archaeology experts’ statement: “it is probable that there was some mortality [on Fish Island].”
But, where? Whether enslaved African people died on Fish Island and, if so, the dispositions of their bodies, highlights colonial British and Spanish tensions. Modern Florida law also makes provisions for certain human burial sites.
In Black Society, Landers wrote that some Spanish Catholics in St. Augustine believed English Protestantism “infected” enslaved Africans. She also explained that some Black Catholics could be buried in mainland St. Augustine’s Tolomato cemetery, where Spanish, mixed race and other Catholics were often buried.
However, Fish was Protestant. Despite being bilingual (English and Spanish), his apparent Spanish cultural acumen and upbringing with a Spanish family, he did not “pass” for Catholic. To this point, as Hill and Hodgin wrote, “It [is] unlikely that he would have allowed his slaves to be baptized as Catholics.”
Where, then, would African, unbaptized, enslaved laborers for Fish be buried?
The city of St. Augustine balances its duties to respect private property rights with its obligations to protect archaeologically significant artifacts. An archaeological review at Anastasia Island, including parts of Fish Island, yielded a 2001 preliminary cultural resource assessment by archaeologists Andrea P. White and Carl D. Halbirt. They documented substantial findings, including evidence of Fish’s tomb, about 230 feet south of the main house, another tomb, and a wharf where “goods and people were transported across the bay [from the island] to St. Augustine.”
A 2001 preliminary cultural resource assessment by archaeologists Andrea P. White and Carl D. Halbirt described these stones at Fish Island as “the foundations to the once magnificent two-story coquina stone house of Jesse Fish.” While they documented “scattered artifact deposits” associated with a probable slave residence, the location of any slaves burials remains unknown.
They listed standard “data recovery” steps for these kinds of cultural assessments of property, including visual examination for surface remains; a systematic shovel-and-auger survey to determine the extent of human occupation across the area; and testing of excavated units.
White and Halbirt documented “scattered artifact deposits” associated with a probable slave residence on Fish Island. Moreover, they noted, “the possibility exists for slave burials on the island, but their location is unmarked and unknown.”
Given El Vergel’s decades of operation under Fish, including when the plantation boasted a reported 3,000 mature orange trees, and laborers provided international shipments of goods, “some [enslaved African people] surely must have died there,” Hill and Hodgin wrote.
Anthropologist and St. Augustine native Marsha A. Chance has professionally supervised surveys of Anastasia Island and parts of Fish Island. Chance expressed a sense that African burials were possible on Fish Island, tempered by practical challenges of proof.
“We know he had slaves and he had a lot of them,” Chance said. Based on customs of the era, she asserted the unlikelihood that unmarked graves of the enslaved would be close to primary plantation buildings. If present, slave graves, she said, would “be at a distance from that area.”
During a city planning and zoning board meeting in August, Chance was among about three dozen residents who spoke in opposition to an application to rezone the site for 170 homes and neighborhood amenities. Chance also requested “ground-penetrating radar to search for additional human burial remains.”
Who may be there?
The 2001 White and Halbirt report suggested Fish underreported the number of enslaved Africans on his plantation and raised the possibility of mixed-race Fish descendant remains on Fish Island.
By 1790, Jesse Fish, who established El Vergel, died. Because Fish died in debt, his estate, which included enslaved African people, was auctioned to satisfy creditors, as Landers wrote.
Fish’s son, Jesse Jr., later bought back part of his father’s estate. Jesse Jr. fathered seven children with an Afro-descendant woman named Clarissa who some historians describe as Jr.’s slave or mistress. Others called her his “common-law wife.”
Yet, “what became of the plantation and its occupants” after Jesse Fish Sr.’s wife, Sarah, died, “is presently unknown,” White and Halbirt wrote.
For now, connections between Fish Island history and prospective African burials are conceptual, Chance said. “The idea that there would be a slave cemetery is something that has been reached by logic.”
Logic, she reasoned, would also provide that if enslaved Africans — who, like Fish, were Protestant and not Catholic — died on El Vergel that they would not have been brought by boat from Fish Island for burial in mainland St. Augustine.
But definitive proof would require more-sophisticated investigation. “I can’t say there’s any one person who has walked every inch of that property,” Chance said.
So, are enslaved African people in, on, or around Fish Island? Are Fish descendants, free mixed-race people of color, buried there? What now?
The City of St. Augustine, state of Florida and University of Florida have “gone to great lengths in forming alliances to preserve the history” of St. Augustine, a place “we all love so much,” Hill and Hodgin wrote.
Those alliances produced UF Historic St. Augustine Inc. (UFHSA). In its articles of incorporation, the non-profit lists preservation, restoration and maintenance of “historical” landmarks, sites and remains in the St. Augustine area as reasons for its existence. That founding document further provides that UFHSA may “solicit, raise, accept and receive” grants, gifts and other property to support cultural and archaeological preservation in and around St. Augustine.
Given Fish Island’s location in and significance to St. Augustine, resolution of this challenge presents a special opportunity. The same trifecta that produced UFHSA could marshal its economic, intellectual and political resources to proffer sensitive alternatives to development.
Timely and equitable action for Fish Island would, as Hill and Hodgin said, let those who may be there “rest undisturbed in this place.”
From St. Augustine Report, by former Mayor George Gardner, concerning St. Augustine City Commissioner JOHN OTHA VALDES's interest in working on one of his longtime passions on reforming our dated laws on planning, building and zoning -- the prevalence of impermeable surfaces in the built environment in the City of St. Augustine. Good work!
I sincerely hope that Mr. Valdes will be our local thermal equivalent of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.
FDR hired JPK, Sr. to run the Securities and Exchange Commission to plug the legal loopholes he used to become rich as a stock market manipulator.
Valdes knows where the loopholes are -- I look forward to his helping plug them. Now.
On a related note, St. Augustine Beach Commissioner and hotelier RICHARD BURTT O'BRIEN told me Monday night after the SAB Commission meeting that he's spending $85,000 to redo his parking lot with permeable pavers. Good action. Merry Christmas!
Valdes begins his term
with focus on flooding
Newly seated City Commissioner John Valdes is bringing a lot of experience to the table, and at his first meeting last week let it be known he wants to use it to focus on some basic issues.
Basic like development that contributes to neighborhood flooding.
"I'd like to have the staff bring back to the City Commission the conversation about fill, foundations and permeable surface we're taking away," said the commissioner, a contractor with years of experience on city boards.
"Every time we put concrete slabs on the ground we're taking away permeable surface. I've been talking about it for 15 years and in 15 years we've had probably 100 houses built that have usurped our ability to manage rain water."
Over city campaigns in 2014 (he lost to Todd Neville) and 2018 he presented his case in a series of briefs.
"The truth is," he writes in one, "unlike St Johns County and the City of St Augustine Beach, we, the City of St Augustine, have no zoning regulations that prohibit an owner from paving their property from boundary to boundary, as in 100% impervious coverage.
"It would be a wise choice to put Impervious Material Lot Coverage limits into St Augustine's Zoning Code, a precaution to help ease the likelihood of future flooding of our neighborhoods and city streets," he writes.
Could there be an antitrust lawsuit in the future of St. Augustine tourism? The United States Supreme Court has decided that hotels affect interstate commerce, in the landmark civil rights case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964).
Local anti-union hotel monopolist and real estate speculator KANTI PATEL has purchased yet another property.
Does PATEL want to create affordable housing? Or does he wish to twist zoning laws (again) to destroy St. Augustine's unique character -- turning two office buildings into hotels?
We'll just see about that.
From former Mayor George Gardner's St. Augustine Report:
Hotelier Patel expands holdings
St. Augustine's hotel business is good, and apparently can get better, according to the city's most successful hotelier.
Kanti Patel, whose Jalaram Hotels owns six properties here, has added to his holdings the former Exchange Bank building on Cathedral Place, purchased in January for $10 million under Kasam Hospitality, and the Solla-Carcaba building at 88 Riberia Street in September for $2.25 million under Vista Hotel VIII.
The Solla-Carcaba building, a former cigar factory built in the early 1900s, will become a 50-room hotel, Patel says. No plans yet for the Cathedral Place property.
Also among Patel's real estate holdings, the former St Augustine-St Johns County Chamber of Commerce building at 1 Riberia Street, purchased in 2015 for $750,000 under Avak Hotels Group Two Inc.
Patel is in the process of building a Renaissance Hotel on West Castillo Drive and so far has been denied plans for a Hilton Garden Inn on the former Bozard Ford site on North Ponce de Leon Boulevard.
Patel's Jalaram Hotels here include the Hilton Historic Bayfront, Holiday Inn St. Augustine, Hampton Inn Historic, Best Western Bayfront Inn - St. Augustine, Best Western Historical Inn, and Best Western St. Augustine Beach Inn.
We're all in this together. We need creativity, adaptation and resiliency in the face of global ocean level rise. Florida's bipartisan Congresspeople understand that 22 of the 25 most vulnerable cities to sea level rise are right here in Florida. As Sir Winston Spencer Churchill said in the British House of Commons on November 12, 1936, “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
Crossing the aisle: Florida congressmen help craft bipartisan bill to combat global warming pollution
Palm trees are not supposed to be IN the water. Climate change evident in the Panhandle's St. Vincent Island. Susan Cerulean photo.
The Trump administration is thumbing its nose at international efforts to combat the pollution that causes global warming, but three Florida congressmen – all from low-lying areas where sea level rise is already impacting their constituents – are soldiering on the political battle to address climate change.
The three U.S. Representatives – Boca Raton Democrat Ted Deutch, St. Petersburg Democrat Charlie Crist and Naples Republican Francis Rooney – are part of a larger group crafting the first bipartisan-backed climate change bill announced this decade.
All three share regional concern: Of the 25 American cities most vulnerable to sea-level rise, 22 are in Florida, according to research conducted by Climate Central.
“If we’re going to seriously tackle this urgent issue, then we’re going to have to work together,” Deutch told the Phoenix. “We are bridging the divide between Democrats and Republicans on climate change and sending a powerful message to our colleagues and the American people that bipartisanship is possible.”
Called the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, the bill would place a tax on carbon pollution (which comes from sources like coal and petroleum.) It would charge energy companies $15 for each ton of carbon their products emit, with the price per ton increasing by $10 each year. Its six sponsors say it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by one-third in 10 years, and 90 percent by 2050. Proceeds from the tax would go back into the U.S. Treasury, benefitting citizens. If enacted, it be the first carbon tax measure ever passed in the U.S.
“I think it’s good for the environment. It’s good for the economy, it makes economic sense,” says Crist, who was proactive on climate change issues when he was Florida’s governor. “It has those who are causing the problem appropriately pay for it. And it has the American citizen benefit from the resources that are generated by it. I mean, what’s not to like?”
Considering events like the extra-intense Hurricane Michael and the raging wildfires in California, Crist says passing the bill would not only make the environment cleaner, but safer.
The idea of a carbon tax has been pushed for years by a group called the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which has grown from just a dozen chapters around the country to more than 400, with nearly one in nearly congressional district. Citizens’ Climate Lobby was highly influential in developing the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the U.S. House in 2016.
“We created this caucus because we wanted a space where Democrats and Republicans could work together on climate change,” said Deutch, who serves as chair.
Besides Deutch, Florida members of the 90-member caucus include Democrats Crist and U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, along with Republicans U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, and Rooney.
Rooney calls sea-level rise “one of the existential threats that we all face” in the Sunshine State, but he isn’t backing away from his comment at a town-hall meeting last year in Bonita Springs, where he questioned how much humans have to do with climate change. What truly matters, he says, is that it’s happening and needs to be addressed.
This year, volunteers with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby have been to Washington trying to get national Republican buy-in on tackling climate change.
“Our main ‘ask’ is that they make climate a bridging issue rather than a wedge issue,” says Bradenton resident John Darovec, who volunteers with the group.
There is, however, a political trade-off in the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act that benefits industry; it’s a provision to restrict the government’s existing authority to set carbon pollution limits through the Clean Air Act. The Natural Resources Defense Council says that while the legislation maintains the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to set standards for cars, trucks and other transportation, it would effectively bar such measures for power plants and industry for a decade or more.
The bill will be re-filed when the new Congress convenes in January, so changes might be made. Environmental groups say the legislation is a good starting point.
“The problem won’t be solved overnight, and this bill isn’t perfect, but it is a solid step in the right direction,” says Jonathan Webber, deputy director with Florida Conservation Voters. “With only 12 years left to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we welcome any bipartisan attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect Florida’s future.”
Two officials with the NRDC, David Doniger, director of the Clean Air and Climate Program and Derek Murrow, senior director of Climate & Clean Energy Program, surmised that even with the troubling provision that cuts some EPA power plant regulatory authority, the bill “reflects a serious effort to respond to the gravity of the climate disruption we are already experiencing and that will only worsen if we fail to act. Most importantly, it is supported by both Republicans and Democrats.”
Susan Glickman, Florida director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, has evaluated the bill.
“What’s fundamental to reducing dangerous carbon pollution is for it to have a value, so that’s the piece that’s been missing” in other efforts, she says.
The most critical reaction to the measure comes from the group Food and Water Watch, which labeled the proposal “stale” and “a dangerous distraction” from more serious measures to reduce carbon emissions.
“This carbon tax bill amounts to climate denial, not climate action,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the environmental group, Food and Water Watch. “Emissions pricing schemes like this one are actually supported by the world’s largest oil and gas corporations because they do nothing more than entrench the status quo – an economy dependent on polluting fossil fuel.”
Some conservative groups are also trashing the bill, calling it a tax on your electricity bill.
“The tax will be hidden in the price of all goods and services,” complained Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Various versions of a carbon tax have been tried. According to the World Bank, some 40 countries and more than 20 cities, states and provinces are using some carbon pricing mechanism, either by taxing carbon or enacting a cap-and-trade system – where companies trade “pollution credits.”
Sweden imposed the first carbon tax in 1991, but analysts say that it was the introduction of a 2008 carbon tax in British Columbia, Canada’s third largest province, that has been the “most significant” in the Western Hemisphere.
Results are mixed on how successful it’s been.
A study conducted by the Duke University Energy Initiative in 2015 showed that emissions had dropped between five and 15 percent since British Columbia’s tax went into effect. The study also noted that public opinion has shifted – a majority of people opposed the tax when it was first proposed, but three years later, a majority supported the tax.
However, a 2016 report from Food & Water Watch labeled the tax a “failed experiment” and argued that its proponents have “significantly overstated the purported beneficial effects.”
In the U.S., Washington state could have been the first to enact a tax on carbon emissions, but voters rejected it last fall for the second time in three years. Unlike the proposed federal bill, the Washington state legislation was not “revenue-neutral,” meaning instead of the revenue charged to the energy companies going back to taxpayers, the funds generated would have been used to fund conservation projects, renewable-energy farms and struggling communities throughout the state.
Energy analyst Susan Glickman says the bipartisan support for Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act is “fundamental” to the recognition that climate change is a serious problem that the country needs to deal with, while acknowledging that the bill will likely “evolve” and take a different shape when it’s ultimately re-introduced in 2019.
Nearly 30 years ago, Judge James L. Guill and I warned of the evil of these mandatory arbitration agreements in an article in American Bar Association Judges' Journal, "A Rush to Unfairness: The Downside to Alternative Dispute Resolution." Sadly, we were correct in our predictions as to mandatory cramdown arbitration agreements. What we predicted has come to pass. It's horrible.
Both former Democratic U.S. Senator Al Franken and defeated Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed that employee arbitration agreements should be illegal, violating our sacred Seventh Amendment right to jury trial, which Justice Rehnquist called "A bulwark against oppression."
Only four Supreme Court Justices agreed with that view, with the Supreme Court majority allowing powerful parties to compel arbitration through mandatory cramdown arbitration agreements.
Proud that workers' lawyers like Kent Williams are persisting, working for justice, even in unfair arbitration fora, calling employers' bluff.
For the record, I don't know if any of the wage theft cases involving Chipotle arise out of our St. Augustine, Florida location. I've loved Chipotle's food since an early location opened next to McDonald's on 17th Street in Washington, D.C.
A few years ago, the burrito chain Chipotle began requiring employees to sign mandatory arbitration agreements. The idea was to force the workers to give up their right to sue collectively over wage theft or workplace discrimination.
Chipotle’s plan seems to have worked out a little too well: The company is now facing a flood of arbitration cases from former employees determined to win the backpay they claim they are owed.
Facing potentially huge liabilities, Chipotle recently asked a federal judge to block the workers from seeking arbitration with lawyers who’d represented them in court ― despite the fact Chipotle had forced arbitration upon its workers via agreements they had to sign when they were hired.
The judge denied that request, calling Chipotle’s actions “unseemly.”
“This is their worst-case scenario, apparently ― and the scenario they asked for,” said Kent Williams, one of the attorneys representing the former Chipotle employees.
The mess all goes back to a Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to be a gift to powerful employers like Chipotle.
In May, the court ruled 5-4 in Epic Systems v. Lewis that it is legal for employers to require workers to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. By signing them, workers agree they won’t sue the employer in class- or collective-action lawsuits. Instead, the workers will have to take any claims individually to arbitration, where they have no collective power.
The ruling was one of the most contentious of the court’s term, with all four liberal justices dissenting, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called the decision “egregiously wrong.” Employer lobbies cheered the ruling, while employee advocates said it would strip legal recourse from some of the most vulnerable workers.
One reason employers prefer arbitration over court is that workers are less likely to bring a claim at all. A single person trying to recoup back wages worth a few hundred dollars is going to have a hard time finding an attorney willing to take an arbitration case with so little at stake. Big lawsuits, by contrast, allow hundreds or even thousands of workers to band together against the company in pursuit of large claims.
This is their worst-case scenario, apparently ― and the scenario they asked for.Kent Williams, attorney
With the Epic Systems v. Lewis ruling, the Supreme Court immediately legitimized the arbitration clause Chipotle had started slipping into its employee welcome packet in 2014. The company’s chief compliance officer, David Gottlieb, explained in court how these supposedly voluntary agreements work:
“[I]f you choose not to agree to the arbitration agreement, for example, once you have been given notice and an opportunity to look at it, read it, ask any questions, download it, save it, whatever you want to do ― if you don’t, then you don’t have to be an employee,” Gottlieb said.
When the Epic ruling came down, Chipotle was dealing with a collective action lawsuit involving roughly 10,000 current and former workers who said Chipotle systematically stiffed them on pay, violating minimum wage and overtime regulations. But nearly 3,000 of those workers had signed arbitration agreements.
As HuffPost reported in August, the judge in the case, John Kane, ruled that the Epic decision compelled him to expel those plaintiffs from the suit. That was precisely the outcome Chipotle had been hoping for.
But instead of taking their claims and going home, more than 150 of those workers filed requests for arbitration.
Unlike a collective- or class-action lawsuit, all of those claims would be administered separately, and they could get very expensive for Chipotle. A single case can run tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees and payments to the arbitrator service ― in this case, JAMS. The cost of litigating can dwarf the actual damages.
“If you start running the numbers on this thing, arbitration costs could top $30,000 or $50,000 [each],” said Williams. If hundreds or thousands of workers pursue cases, “You get up to, like, tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars very quickly, just in arbitration expenses.”
Under the arbitration rules, Williams said, the cases would be heard in the county where Chipotle last employed the worker in question, meaning the claims would be spread out all over the country. Chipotle has roughly 2,400 locations, according to its latest SEC filings. If so many cases were to move forward, they would present a logistical nightmare for the company.
Williams said Chipotle has so far refused to pay its share of the arbitration filing fee, which amounts to $1,100 per case, preventing those cases from proceeding. A similar situation has been unfolding for Uber drivers who also signed arbitration agreements. As Gizmodo reported earlier this month, some 12,000 drivers are pursuing arbitration with the ride-sharing giant. Like Chipotle, Uber has not paid the filing fees required in those cases.
A JAMS spokesperson declined to comment. Chipotle, which has said in the past that it does not comment on litigation, didn’t respond to emails about the matter.
But Chipotle’s court filings say plenty. The company wasn’t satisfied with getting nearly 3,000 mostly low-wage workers booted from a large lawsuit. It asked Kane, the judge, to forbid those workers from pursuing arbitration with Williams and his team as their attorneys. Their rationale: Because the workers had signed arbitration agreements, they never should have received notice about the collective-action lawsuit and become clients of Williams and his colleagues.
Kane rejected that argument, essentially saying that whatever happens in arbitration isn’t his court’s business. But once the arbitration filings started coming in, Chipotle appealed. “The arbitrations are going forward,” the company bemoaned in its filing, “causing immediate harm to Chipotle.”
The judge ruled against Chipotle yet again, and leveled a withering critique of the company’s legal strategy: “Chipotle’s attempts to delay and obfuscate the claims of the Arbitration Plaintiffs in both the courts and in arbitration (the forum to which it required these employees to submit) are unseemly.”
If so many arbitration cases were to move forward, they would present a logistical nightmare for Chipotle.
The pile of arbitration claims coming at Chipotle is pretty unique. It normally wouldn’t be worthwhile for a lawyer to pursue so many individual cases with modest claims, but Williams’ team and the workers had already built their case through the collective-action lawsuit. Ordinarily, Williams acknowledges, these workers probably wouldn’t have found lawyers to pursue arbitration for the $1,000 they believe they are owed.
In other words, mandatory arbitration will probably work out well for Chipotle in the long run, even if the company faces a potential legal debacle right now.
Companies like Chipotle like to say they prefer arbitration to the courts because it’s more efficient and better for both parties. But Chipotle’s resistance to arbitrating these claims ― after steering workers into arbitration ― suggests its policy was never really about fairness and efficiency, as Kane noted in a recent order.
“Congesting the federal courts with countless appeals to prolong arbitration proceedings for numerous employees provides no benefit to the public and flouts the efficient resolution Chipotle professes to seek,” the judge scolded.
Although Chipotle hasn’t paid filing fees yet, Williams said he plans to continue bringing more arbitration cases for any worker who wants to pursue arbitration after being kicked out of the lawsuit. After the new year, he hopes to file them in batches of 100 every couple of weeks, for as long as they come in.
“Everybody that we file for has individually retained us. We’ve talked to them and interviewed them,” Williams said. “These are all solid claims, and they’re not going away.”
What an amazingly talented actor. I loved Donald Moffat's portrayal of a wicked evil corporate lawyer in "Class Action" (1991) opposite Gene Hackman and Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and his portrayal of the corrupt American President in "Clear and Present Danger," (1994), opposite Harrison Ford. Donald Moffat will be greatly missed.
Thanks to Armistaud Maupin for sharing his recollections on Facebook of Donald Moffat, who starred as Edgar Halcyon in Tales of the City.
From The New York Times:
Donald Moffat, 87, a Top Actor Who Thrived in Second Billings, Dies
Donald Moffat as a corrupt president of the United States in “Clear and Present Danger” (1994), perhaps the most memorable of his many film roles.CreditParamount Pictures/Photofest
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Donald Moffat as a corrupt president of the United States in “Clear and Present Danger” (1994), perhaps the most memorable of his many film roles.CreditCreditParamount Pictures/Photofest
Donald Moffat, the character actor who nailed Falstaff’s paradoxes at the New York Shakespeare Festival, a grizzled Larry Slade in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” on Broadway and a sinister president in the film “Clear and Present Danger,” died on Thursday in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y. He was 87.
His daughter Lynn Moffat said the cause was complications of a recent stroke.
It might have surprised many Moffat fans to learn that this stage, screen and television actor was a naturalized, thoroughly Americanized Englishman who in the early 1950s had been a player with the Old Vic theater company, the London crucible of many of Britain’s most ambitious performing arts.
Mr. Moffat (pronounced MAHF-at) had long ago lost all traces of his British accent. And in a career of nearly a half-century, he amassed virtually all of his remarkable 220 credits in the United States — roles in some 80 stage plays (he directed 10 more), about 70 Hollywood and television movies and at least 60 television productions, including series, mini-series and anthologies.
Moving to America as a 26-year-old actor was the realization of a dream for Mr. Moffat, his daughter Lynn recalled in a telephone interview.
“One reason he was anxious to leave England was the class system,” she said. “He hated it. And he loved Americans.
“He met many American G.I.s in Totnes, in Devonshire, where he lived as a boy. It was in the American sector for the D-Day invasions. He also met many Americans after the war at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he studied, including his first wife, Anne Murray.”
American critics called Mr. Moffat a consummate pro who could play any supporting role from Shakespeare, O’Neill, Ibsen, Beckett, Pinter or Shaw, as well as the lawyers, doctors, husbands and tough guys who are the stock in trade of movies and television — characters that make the stars shine and place the accomplishments of the ensemble above personal glory.
Mr. Moffat was rarely accorded top billing. But when he played Falstaff, Shakespeare’s bravest coward, wisest fool and most ignoble knight, in Joseph Papp’s 1987 production of “Henry IV, Part 1” at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, he was the indisputable star. Mainly a comic figure, Falstaff, a sidekick to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V, embodies a depth more common to major Shakespeare characters.
“He is the con artist extraordinaire and the liar par excellence,” Mr. Moffat told The New York Times before going on. “He has no income, but he lives fairly well, entirely by his wits. He gets trapped into being exposed, but he always finds his way out — so on to another level. There are all kinds of variations on that theme throughout the play.”
Reviewing the production for The Times, Mel Gussow hailed Mr. Moffat’s “rich, full portrait,” adding: “His Falstaff seems himself like a character actor: a man of many parts. He is a self-dramatizer, easily able to switch from barroom roisterer to battlefield campaigner (and coward), while always retaining a comic sense of equilibrium and an affectionate regard for Hal, who will, of course, in the subsequent play, abandon him.”
Mr. Moffat also appeared at the Delacorte in 1989 in the title role of Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus,” and in 1992 as Touchstone, the fool who outwits one and all, in “As You Like It.”
With his long face and bushy eyebrows, Mr. Moffat was a familiar figure to audiences, even to fans who could not quite remember his name. He was almost never out of work — especially in the 1970s and ′80s, his peak years, when he sometimes packed into his annual schedule four movies, several plays in New York or regional theaters and a half-dozen television programs.
From left, William Sadler as Mark Twain, Tom McGowan as the former Union Army officer Adam Badeau and Mr. Moffat as Ulysses S. Grant in the 2002 Off Broadway production of John Guare’s “A Few Stout Individuals.” It was one of Mr. Moffat’s last performances.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
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From left, William Sadler as Mark Twain, Tom McGowan as the former Union Army officer Adam Badeau and Mr. Moffat as Ulysses S. Grant in the 2002 Off Broadway production of John Guare’s “A Few Stout Individuals.” It was one of Mr. Moffat’s last performances.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times
Mr. Moffat won an Obie for his 1983 portrayal of an artist’s aging father in an Off Broadway production of Tina Howe’s “Painting Churches.” He received two Tony Award nominations for best actor in 1967 for his portrayals of Lamberto Laudisi in Pirandello’s “Right You Are (if You Think You Are)” and of Hjalmar Ekdal, presiding over a household of lies, in Henrik Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck.”
He was also nominated for Drama Desk Awards as an abusive husband and father in Joanna McClellan Glass’s “Play Memory,” on Broadway in 1984, and as Larry Slade, the grubby fellow drinker of the saloon philosopher Hickey (Jason Robards Jr.) in a well-received 1985 Broadway revival of O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh.”
On television, Mr. Moffat appeared as Dr. Marcus Polk in the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live” (1968-69), as Rem the android in the CBS science-fiction series “Logan’s Run” (1977-78) and as the Rev. Lars Lundstrom in “The New Land,” the 1974 ABC drama series about Swedish immigrants. He was also seen in episodes of “Mannix,” “Ironside,” “Gunsmoke” and “The Defenders.”
Among Mr. Moffat’s better-known film roles were as Garry, the station commander, in John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), about an extraterrestrial monster that terrorizes researchers in Antarctica; as Lyndon B. Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” (1983), about America’s first astronauts; and as an arrogant corporate lawyer in Costa-Gavras’s “Music Box” (1989), about a Hungarian immigrant accused of having been a fascist war criminal.
His motion picture credits also included “Rachel, Rachel” (1968), “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” (1972), “The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid” (1972), “Showdown” (1973), “Earthquake” (1974) and “Winter Kills” (1979).
Perhaps his most memorable film role was as the corrupt president — with perfect pitch to make the hero look good — in “Clear and Present Danger” (1994), the Harrison Ford vehicle based on the Tom Clancy novel. When the C.I.A. agent Jack Ryan (Mr. Ford) bursts into the Oval Office and threatens to expose a plot involving President Bennett (Mr. Moffat), outrage crackles across the desk.
The president: “How dare you come in here and lecture me!”
Ryan: “How dare you, sir.”
The president: “How dare you come into this office and bark at me like some little junkyard dog? I am the president of the United States!”
Donald Moffat was born in Plymouth, England, on Dec. 26, 1930, the only child of Walter and Kathleen (Smith) Moffat. His parents ran a boardinghouse in Totnes, in western England. He attended the local King Edward VI School, performed national service with the Royal Artillery from 1949 to 1951 and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London until 1954.
That year he married Anne Ellsperman, an actress known professionally as Anne Murray. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1970 he married the actress Gwen Arner. Mr. Moffat died in hospice care at Kendal on Hudson, a retirement community in Sleepy Hollow.
Besides his wife and his daughter Lynn, he is survived by another daughter, Catherine Railton, from his second marriage; two children from his first marriage, Kathleen, known as Wendy, and Gabriel Moffat; 10 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Mr. Moffat also had a home in Hermosa Beach, Calif.
Mr. Moffat made his London debut at the Old Vic in 1954, playing the First Murderer in “Macbeth.” The next year he appeared there in several Shakespeare plays: as Sir Stephen Scroop in “Richard II,” as Earl of Douglas in “Henry IV, Part 1” and as the Earl of Warwick in “Henry IV, Part 2.” He made his film debut as an uncredited lookout aboard the H. M. S. Ajax in “The Pursuit of the Graf Spee” (1956).
Mr. Moffat moved to the United States in 1956, settling first in Oregon, his first wife’s home state. He worked as a bartender and lumberjack but soon resolved to return to acting and stay in America. He made his Broadway debut as two characters in “Under Milk Wood” (1957), the Dylan Thomas comedy about the inhabitants of a fictional Welsh village.
His working pace, still brisk in the 1990s, tapered off into retirement a few years later. One of his last appearances was as an aging, penniless former President Ulysses S. Grant in an Off Broadway production of John Guare’s “A Few Stout Individuals” (2002). Ben Brantley, reviewing it for The Times, said Mr. Moffat “registers a touching quality of imperiousness brought to its knees.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B12
Florida Governor-elect RONALD DION DeSANTIS deserves credit for moral leadership on the Groveland Four.
While I thought RON DeSANTIS was mediocre and maladroit as a Congressman and mean and base as a candidate for Governor, I'm delighted to say he's doing the right thing on the Groveland Four. As the late William F. Buckley, Jr. would say, I'm willing to give him "a plenary indulgence for all his past sins" for speaking truth about racism in Florida law enforcement.
The Groveland Four case was investigated by my late mentor, civil rights journalist-activist Stetson Kennedy, who knew the truth and told the world. No one cared. Successive decades of Governors of Florida have refused to right this wrong.
Finally, there's a Florida Governor willing to do the right thing by these four dead men.
Governor-elect DeSANTIS is using this case as a teachable moment. Perhaps the commitment of Democratic Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner-elect Nikki Fried has given RON DeSANTIS a spinal and testicular implant.
In any event:
Thank you!
Governor DeSANTIS has an opportunity to lead, in the spirit of great Governors past.
As Jimmy Carter said in his Inaugural Address in 1977:"Let us learn together and laugh together and work together and pray together, confident that in the end we will triumph together in the right.
The American dream endures. We must once again have full faith in our country--and in one another. I believe America can be better. We can be even stronger than before.
Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the basic principles of our Nation, for we know that if we despise our own government we have no future. We recall in special times when we have stood briefly, but magnificently, united. In those times no prize was beyond our grasp."
Gov.-elect DeSantis: Groveland Four pardons will be a ‘priority’
"And make no mistake: these men were victims," DeSantis said in a statement.
Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, far left, and an unidentified man stand next to Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd and Charles Greenlee.Florida Memory Project
Pardoning the Groveland Four will be a "priority" when Florida Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis takes office next month, he said Thursday, potentially bringing to an end a decades-long effort to clear the names of the four men wrongly accused of raping a white woman in 1949.
DeSantis, bucking current Gov. Rick Scott, who has refused to speed up the pardon process for the four, said "it is never too late to do the right thing."
"Seventy years is a long time. And that's the amount of time four young men have been wrongly written into Florida history for crimes they did not commit and punishments they did not deserve," DeSantis said in a statement. "Justice was miscarried for the Groveland Four beginning with events set in motion in 1949. Though these men now lie in graves, their stories linger in search of justice."
DeSantis said he applauded the Legislature last year unanimously asking Scott and the Cabinet to pardon the men and appreciated Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis requesting to speed up the pardon process this week.
The case of the Groveland Four, four black men who were murdered, tortured or wrongly imprisoned by a Lake County sheriff for a crime they didn't commit, is one of the worst acts of racism in the state's history.
But Scott, who leaves for the U.S. Senate next month, made no effort to make good on the Legislature's request. And calls for the pardons have grown in recent weeks, with Scott and two other members of the Cabinet about to leave office without making good on the Legislature's request.
DeSantis said he looked forward to "making the cases of the Groveland Four a priority for the first meeting of the Florida Cabinet in January."
Any pardon would require the vote of the governor and two members of the Cabinet. In addition to Patronis, incoming Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has supports a pardon, and Attorney General-elect Ashley Moody has expressed interest.
DeSantis said he urged "all Floridians to become acquainted with the facts of this case."
"And not only Groveland, but we must all learn from the past in its fullness," he said. "We should be shocked by the acts of evil that were done, yet inspired by the men and women of good will who have refused to let sleeping dogs lie."
I just wrote Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis requesting an independent forensic audit and civil, criminal and administrative investigation of the St. Johns County Sheriff's Department concerning the $700,000 embezzlement and the ongoing coverup of the September 2, 2010 murder of Michelle O'Connnell by Deputy JEREMY BANKS.
Here's the e-mail:
-----Original Message----- From: Ed Slavin Sent: Fri, Dec 21, 2018 8:51 am Subject: Gov.-elect DeSantis: Please order independent forensic audit and investigation of St. Johns County Sheriff's Office
Dear Governor-elect DeSantis:
1. Thank you for speaking out in favor of justice for the Groveland Four. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist No. 51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Our Florida governments badly need greater protections against conflicts of interest.
2. Please order an independent audit and a civil, criminal and administrative investigation of our St. Johns County Sheriff's office.
3. Sheriff David Shoar's direct report, Finance Director RAYE BRUTNELL, has admitted embezzlement of some $700,000 over five (5) years.
4. While Governor Rick Scott appointed Mr. Brian Haas as special prosecutor, Sheriff Shoar has chosen an undisclosed forensic auditor, keeping both special prosecutor Haas and our local St. Johns County government officials in the dark about it. Shoar brandishes his intent by boldly telling our local newspaper that he does not want a government audit, but a private sector audit. Wonder why?
See below for St. Johns County and 10th Circuit State's Attorney responses to my Open Records requests Nos. 2018-536 and 2018-537, establishing that they have no records on Shoar's selection of the forensic auditor, which Shoar still refuses to disclose. See editorial in Historic City News blog, stating inter alia:
"Now Shoar is trying to hide essential details about his choice. For over a week, Historic City News has been in communication with the sheriff’s office attempting to obtain the name of the forensic auditing firm. A response to that request remains unanswered. I think we all should pay close attention to who he’s hired since he clearly doesn’t want us looking into their role."
5. Sheriff Shoar's hiring the forensic auditor to investigate embezzlement in his own agency is unacceptable. This subtle corruption of our government is indefensible and must be ended at once. It is a blatant conflict of interest, illegal, immoral and unseemly, a stench in the nostrils of our Nation. As the United Supreme Court held in United States v. Mississippi Valley Generating Company (the "Dixon-Yates" case), 364 U.S. 520 (1960) all conflict of interest laws are based upon Matthew 6:24 ("A man cannot serve two masters"), which the unanimous Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Earl Warren deemed to be both a "moral principle" and a "maxim which is especially pertinent if one of the masters happens to be economic self-interest."
6. An independent government audit and investigation is required of the St. Johns County Sheriff's office, not one by Shoar's hand-picked auditor or his friend, the Polk County Sheriff. Shoar's side-stepping both FDLE and FBI was unseemly, and aimed at controlling the outcome of the case.
7. This $700,000 embezzlement and endemic corruption in St. Johns County Sheriff's office both urgently require action by the Governor pursuant to Florida's Constitution, which empowers you to suspend Sheriff David Shoar. Article IV, Section 7 of our Florida Constitution states in pertinent part:
Suspensions; Filling Office During Suspensions
(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor.
(b) The senate may, in proceedings prescribed by law, remove from office or reinstate the suspended official and for such purpose the senate may be convened in special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.
....
8. Two judges found probable cause that Deputy JEREMY BANKS murdered Michelle O'Connell, but BANKS has still not been brought to justice Please order an independent investigation of Sheriff Shoar's ongoing coverup of the September 2, 2010 Michelle O'Connell homicide by Deputy JEREMY BANKS, which included $1000 bonus checks given by Shoar to some 600 SJSO employees the month after the murder of Michelle O'Connell.
9. Please order an independent investigation of Sheriff Shoar's unseemly attacks on Michelle O'Connell's grieving family, including accusing them of "molesting" her body by arranging for an independent autopsy that found her jaw was broken (an essential finding missed by 23rd District Medical Examiner Dr. Predrag Bulic, M.D., who was later disciplined but not fired for some of his actions involving the O'Connell case).
10. Please order an independent investigation of Sheriff Shoar's obstruction of justice, including his campaign of retaliation against FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers, an ethical FDLE Special Agent who did his job "too well," without fear or favor. Wasting tax funds, Sheriff Shoar invested hundreds of hours of staff time in persecuting SA Rodgers, attempting to get Special Agent Rodgers criminally prosecuted and fired, while promoting a bogus, retaliatory civil rights lawsuit against him by Deputy BANKS in 2013. Based on a 3000 page record, that lawsuit was dismissed by United States District Judge Brian J. Davis on March 30, 2018 (Good Friday/Passover). Judge Davis' decision was not appealed. It is now res judicata without possibility of appeal. Judge Davis found that there was probable cause to believe that BANKS killed Michelle O'Connell. Judge Davis is the second respected judge to find probable cause that JEREMY BANKS committed murder, joining our respected County Court Judge Charles Jay Tinlin, who also found probable cause and ordered search warrants in 2014, which became the subject of JEREMY BANKS' retaliatory civil rights lawsuit.
Query: Who paid for JEREMY BANKS'' attorney, ROBERT LESTER McLEOD a/k/a "MAC" McLEOD, whom Shoar recruited?
11. Please appoint a new special prosecutor, one with independence and integrity, to investigate the Michelle O'Connell homicide case and sequelae, including the source of funds used to pay JEREMY BANKS' attorney, ROBERT LESTER McLEOD. Please, Governor-elect DeSANTIS, don't make the mistakes that Governor Scott made in appointing two (2) incurious second-raters, both appointed from neighboring judicial districts(apparently the routine habit and practice of Governors in appointing most special prosecutors).
12. Your speaking out about the Groveland Four case speaks volumes about the kind of Governor that you want to be, and I salute you. Please feel free to call me to discuss the Michelle O'Connell case, which was first reported by Folio Weekly's and First Coast News's Anne Schinder, then by Walt Bogdanich of PBS Frontline and The New York Times, and later by NBC, ABC, People, et al.
Season 31 Episode 15 | 53m 41s. On the night she broke up with her police officer boyfriend, Michelle O ..
13. Sheriff Shoar persists in spreading material falsehoods about Michelle O'Connell, FDLE Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers and this case to this day on his website, abusing the public trust and wasting tax money, further reason for the Governor to suspend him from office under our Florida Constitution, Article IV, Sec. 7. http://www.sjso.org/?page_id=7109
14. This is the ninth Christmas that Alexis O'Connell has now spent without her mother. Is Michelle O'Connell's blood on all of our hands here in Florida due to our collective silence, insouciance and inaction, aiding and abetting corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar's ongoing coverup? As Nancy Shaver wrote in The St. Augustine Record in 2013 (before she was elected and twice re-elected as our St. Augustine Mayor):
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 her 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.
15. We deserve "clear-eyed justice," in Mayor Nancy Shaver's eloquent words. Now. As the American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote, "to sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men."
Thank you, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and best wishes for your doing justice as Governor of Florida.
On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 3:32 PM Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com> wrote:
Dear Governor-elect DeSantis:
1. As additional evidence, attached is a copy of United States District Judge Brian J. Davis' March 30, 2018 final order granting summary judgment in Banks v. Rodgers. No appeal was filed. The findings are res judicata.
2. Two (2) respected judges have now found probable cause to believe that Deputy JEREMY BANKS killed Michelle O'Connell on September 2, 2010. Probable cause was found in 2018 by Judge Davis, an Article III federal judge, and in 2011 by St. Johns County Court Judge Charles J. Tinlin.
3. Please appoint an independent special prosecutor in State of Florida v. JEREMY BANKS, with an Executive Order to present the case to a grand jury, based on ALL of the evidence, without fear or favor, including two (2) unrebutted probable cause findings by two (2) distinguished jurists.
4. Today I received an e-mail from St. Johns County Clerk of Courts and Comptroller Hunter S. Conrad in response to my Request No. 2018-539, establishing that there are NO Clerk of Court documents on the putative forensic audit.
5. St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar apparently NEVER checked with our St. Johns County government, our St. Johns County Clerk of Courts and Comptroller or the special prosecutor before choosing a still-undisclosed forensic auditor. (I have appended the response in Request No. 2018-539 below, after my earlier e-mail and beneath the two e-mails that accompany it, concerning my Requests Nos. 2018-536 and 2018-537, from our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners and the 10th Circuit State's Attorney's office, the special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Scott on State of Florida v. RAYE BRUTNELL).
6. Please don'tlet Deputy JEREMY BANKS get away with murder.
7. Please don't let Sheriff David Shoar get away with choosing his own forensic auditor.
8. Thank you and God bless you, Governor-elect DeSantis. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
This electronic transmission and any documents accompanying it contains information intended solely for the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may include confidential information. This information will be made available to the public upon request (Florida Statute 119.01) unless the information is exempted according to Florida law. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential information contained herein is prohibited by Federal Regulations (42 CFR Section 481.101), HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and State law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message or a person responsible for delivering it to the addressee, you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy, use, distribute, publish or take any action in connection therewith. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential information is subject to prosecution and may result in a fine or imprisonment. If you do not want your email address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing. If you have received this communication in error, do not distribute it. Please notify the sender immediately by electronic mail and delete this message. Thank you
From: Betty Dixon Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 2:53 PM To:easlavin@aol.com Cc: Regina Ross <rross@sjcfl.us>; Diane Lehmann <dlehmann@sjcfl.us> Subject: RE: Request No. 2018-536: St. Johns County Sheriff's forensic audit
Dear Mr. Slavin,
I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your public records request. St. Johns County will determine if it has any records that are responsive to your request. If any such records are located, we will compile them and redact any exempt material prior to providing them to you. Per St. Johns County Administrative Code 104.6, the County may request a deposit for costs if an extensive records search takes more than fifteen (15) minutes to locate, review for exempt information, copy (if requested), and re-file the requested material. Should it be determined that the nature or volume of the public records requested requires the extensive use of information technology resources, or extensive clerical or supervisory assistance, or both, then we will first respond with an estimate of the additional charges for the actual costs incurred, and whether a deposit will be required. In such instance, the records will be compiled only after you approve the charges and the County receives any required deposit. Payment for the total or remaining costs can be made when the records are available. If the actual cost is less than your deposit, you will be refunded the balance. If you fail to provide the cost deposit within thirty (30) days, your request will be closed.
This electronic transmission and any documents accompanying it contains information intended solely for the individual or entity to which it is addressed, and may include confidential information. This information will be made available to the public upon request (Florida Statute 119.01) unless the information is exempted according to Florida law. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential information contained herein is prohibited by Federal Regulations (42 CFR Section 481.101), HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley and State law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message or a person responsible for delivering it to the addressee, you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy, use, distribute, publish or take any action in connection therewith. Unauthorized disclosure of confidential information is subject to prosecution and may result in a fine or imprisonment. If you do not want your email address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing. If you have received this communication in error, do not distribute it. Please notify the sender immediately by electronic mail and delete this message. Thank you
From: Ed Slavin [mailto:easlavin@aol.com] Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 1:30 PM To: Jesse Dunn; Michael Wanchick; Patrick McCormack Subject: Request No. 2018-536: St. Johns County Sheriff's forensic audit
Good afternoon: Please send me the RFP, RFQ, contract and scope of work documents on the St. Johns County Sheriff's forensic audit.
Dear Messrs. Haas and Orr: 1. Is the special prosecutor deferring to Sheriff Shoar, a potential defendant, the selection of the forensic auditor?
2. Or is the special prosecutor hiring his own forensic auditor?
3. Is the special prosecutor investigating whether embezzlement may have been the source of any of the funds that were used to pay Mr. McCloud, counsel for Deputy Jeremy Banks in his lawsuit against FDLE and Special Agent Rusty Ray Rodgers?
-----Original Message----- From: Jacob Orr <jorr@SAO10.COM> To: 'Ed Slavin'<easlavin@aol.com> Cc: Paul Sessions <psessions@SAO10.COM> Sent: Thu, Dec 20, 2018 1:35 pm Subject: RE: Request No. 2018-537: State of Florida v. Raye Brutnell -- SJSO Forensic Audit
Mr. Slavin: This Office does not have any documents that are responsive to your request.
Thank You,
Jacob S. Orr
Assistant State Attorney
10th Judicial Circuit, Florida
P.O. Box 9000 Drawer SA
Bartow, FL 33831
863-534-4801
From: Ed Slavin [mailto:easlavin@aol.com] Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 1:37 PM To: Jacob Orr Cc: Paul Sessions; Brian Haas; waltbog@nytimes.com Subject: Request No. 2018-537: State of Florida v. Raye Brutnell -- SJSO Forensic Audit
Dear Mr. Orr: Please send me the documents on the forensic audit(s) of the St. Johns County Sheriff's office, including the RFP, RFQ, references, evaluations, statement of work and contract(s).
This email is intended for the addressee(s) indicated above only. It may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. Any dissemination, review, use of this email or its contents by persons other than the addressee is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately.
From: Brad Bradley Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2018 3:18 PM To: Lisa L. Smith Cc: Brad Bradley; Lisa L. Smith Subject: RE: Request No. 2018-539: SJSO Forensic Audit
This email is intended for the addressee(s) indicated above only. It may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. Any dissemination, review, use of this email or its contents by persons other than the addressee is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately.
From: Lisa L. Smith Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 1:48 PM To: Brad Bradley Cc: Hunter Conrad Subject: FW: Request No. 2018-539: SJSO Forensic Audit
Dedicated to Excellence - Committed to Improvement
Serving with Kindness
This email is intended for the addressee(s) indicated above only. It may contain information that is privileged, confidential or otherwise protected from disclosure. Any dissemination, review, use of this email or its contents by persons other than the addressee is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately.
From: Ed Slavin <easlavin@aol.com> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2018 1:39 PM To: Lisa L. Smith <lsmith@sjccoc.us>; Hunter Conrad <hconrad@sjccoc.us> Subject: Request No. 2018-539: SJSO Forensic Audit
Dear Mr. Conrad: Please send me the documents on the forensic audit(s) of the St. Johns County Sheriff's office, including the RFP, RFQ, references, evaluations, statement of work and contract(s).
50 years ago, at age 11.5, I saw the photos from Apollo 8. All Americans, and everyone on our frail planet, were deeply moved, both by the images and the words that accompanied them. As JFK said at American University in 1963, "Let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
We Are All Riders on the Same Planet
Seen from space 50 years ago, Earth appeared as a gift to preserve and cherish. What happened?
By Matthew Myer Boulton and Joseph Heithaus
Mr. Boulton is a writer and a filmmaker. Mr. Heithaus is a poet.
The "Earthrise" photograph taken by William Anders on Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve in 1968.CreditNASA
Image
The "Earthrise" photograph taken by William Anders on Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve in 1968.CreditCreditNASA
On Christmas Eve 1968, human beings orbited the moon for the first time. News of the feat of NASA’s Apollo 8 mission dominated the front page of The New York Times the next day. Tucked away below the fold was an essay by the poet Archibald MacLeish, a reflection inspired by what he’d seen and heard the night before.
Even after 50 years, his prescient words speak of the humbling image we now had of Earth, an image captured in a photograph that wouldn’t be developed until the astronauts returned: “Earthrise,” taken by William Anders, one of the Apollo crew. In time, both essay and photo merged into an astonishing portrait: the gibbous Earth, radiantly blue, floating in depthless black space over a barren lunar horizon. A humbling image of how small we are — but even more, a breathtaking image of our lovely, fragile, irreplaceable home. The Earth as a treasure. The Earth as oasis.
When the Apollo 8 commander, Frank Borman, addressed Congress upon his return, he called himself an “unlikely poet, or no poet at all” — and quoted MacLeish to convey the impact of what he had seen. “To see the Earth as it truly is,” said the astronaut, quoting the poet, “small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now that they are truly brothers.”
The message offered hope in a difficult time. Not far away on that same front page was a sobering report that the Christmas truce in Vietnam had been marred by violence. These were the last days of 1968, a divisive and bloody year. We’d lost Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy that year, gone through a tumultuous election, and continued fighting an unpopular and deadly war. For MacLeish, these images of Earth from space would help usher in a new era, overturning the old notion of humanity as the center of the universe and the modern view of us humans as little more than “helpless victims of a senseless farce.” Beyond these two extremes, MacLeish suggested, was an image of the planet as a kind of lifeboat, “that tiny raft in the enormous, empty night.”
Commander Borman himself compared Earth to an “aggie,” no doubt recalling playing marbles as a boy, drawing circles in the dirt. The famous “Blue Marble” image — one of the most reproduced photographs in human history — came four years later, from Apollo 17. But for Commander Borman and MacLeish alike, what “Earthrise” revealed wasn’t a marble made vast but a planet made small. A little blue sphere, a child’s precious aggie, floating alone in the abyss.
Much later, Carl Sagan would pick up this line of thought in his 1994 book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” in which the Earth, as photographed in 1990 from the Voyager 1 from 3.7 billion miles away, became “a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.” For Sagan, this new image challenged “the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe,” and at the same time “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Since then, we’ve learned a great deal more. When Voyager 1 took that picture, we weren’t yet sure whether there were any planets at all outside our solar system. But today, largely thanks to space telescopes peering out from Earth’s orbit, we know we look up at night into a galaxy with more planets than stars. We may now perceive, as never before, the Earth’s exquisite rarity and value. We live on a marvel to behold.
We also know how our own DNA links us to one another and to life on our planet in general. We need not imagine ourselves as brothers and sisters, because science tells us that we are one family of life that includes plants, animals, birds, insects, fungi, even bacteria. All of life rides on Earth together. By the time Sagan delivered his message “to preserve and cherish” our planet, the awareness of our responsibility to care for the Earth had already taken hold. In 2018, it is virtually impossible to see “Earthrise” without thinking of the ways the planet’s biosphere — proportionally as thin as a coat of paint on a classroom globe — is not only fragile but also under sustained attack by human actions. It is hard not to conclude that we have utterly failed to uphold the grave responsibility that the Apollo 8 crew and “Earthrise” delivered to us.
Our precious “raft” is losing members — species are dying — as our climate changes and our planet warms. The very technologies that flung us around the moon and back, the dazzling industrial genius that gave us fossil-fuel-fed transport and electricity, animal agriculture and all the rest, have fundamentally changed our Earth, and they now threaten to cook us into catastrophe. We may be afloat in MacLeish’s “eternal cold,” but what MacLeish couldn’t yet see was how, even then, we were madly stoking the furnace.
It’s all there in “Earthrise,” if we look closely enough. Those spiraling ribbons of clouds foreshadow the extreme weather to come. In the foreground, the gray moon testifies to how unforgiving the laws of nature can be. And behind the camera, so to speak, is the sprawling apparatus of the modern industrial age, spewing an insulating layer of haze around that little blue marble, the only home we’ve ever known.
Today, against the backdrop of our enormous challenge in salvaging the Earth, MacLeish’s message almost seems quaint, if not dated. (He wrote of brothers, no sisters mentioned.) And yet, the poet still has a point. The vision of “Earthrise” is still one of awe and wonder. As we continue to venture out beyond Earth’s orbit, we citizens of Earth can at least hope that we will still be humbled by each new vision of our lonely planet from space.
[Below, watch "Earthrise: Riders on the Earth Together," a short, animated video by SALT Project, produced and narrated by Matthew Myer Boulton.]
In the end, “Earthrise” is an icon of hope, not despair. That Christmas Eve 50 years ago, Commander Borman and his crewmates turned to another kind of poetry, some of the oldest on Earth. Broadcasting live from lunar orbit to what was then the largest television audience in history, the astronauts read the opening verses of the Book of Genesis, ending with verse 10: “And God called the dry land Earth. … And God saw that it was good.”
“And from the crew of Apollo 8,” said Commander Borman, signing off as the ship slipped around to the dark side of moon and out of broadcast contact, “good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas — and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.” In the silence of the moon’s dark side, they later recalled, the skies appeared brighter and deeper — all except for the ink-black disc of the lifeless moon itself, blocking out the stars.
Matthew Myer Boulton, a writer and a filmmaker living in New Hampshire, is the co-founder and creative director of SALT Project. Joseph Heithaus is a professor of English at DePauw University and the author of the poetry collection “Poison Sonnets.”
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: We Are All Riders on This Planet.
I support a civil, criminal and administrative investigation of Florida Power and Light on this issue. “'FPL is improperly attempting to retain all of the [federal income] tax savings for the benefit of its shareholder, NextEra Energy, Inc., rather than flowing back these dramatic windfall cost savings to its customers,' the petition said, referring to FPL’s parent company."
FPL cries foul over $736 million customer refund petition
Jim Saunders News Service of Florida Sun-Sentinel December 26, 2018
TALLAHASSEE — Describing the case as “legally and factually baseless,” Florida Power & Light has asked state regulators to reject a petition that seeks to force the utility to refund as much as $736 million to customers and reduce base electric rates.
The state Office of Public Counsel, which represents utility customers, and two business groups filed the petition Dec. 5, focusing in part on FPL’s tax savings under the federal tax cuts approved last year. But FPL last week filed a 22-page response that disputed the arguments and urged the Florida Public Service Commission to deny the petition.
FPL said it has complied with a 2016 rate settlement signed by the Office of Public Counsel and one of the business groups filing the petition, the Florida Retail Federation. Along with the tax savings, the dispute involves a complex mix of issues including Hurricane Irma restoration costs and a profit limit and a financial reserve that are parts of the 2016 settlement.
“Petitioners’ advocate an interpretation of the settlement agreement for which there is simply nothing that comes close to exhibiting a good faith basis,” FPL’s response said.
But in the petition, the Office of Public Counsel, the Florida Retail Federation and the Florida Industrial Power Users Group contended that the utility is seeing as much as $736.8 million a year in tax savings from the federal tax overhaul. They argue that should be passed along to customers.
“FPL is improperly attempting to retain all of the tax savings for the benefit of its shareholder, NextEra Energy, Inc., rather than flowing back these dramatic windfall cost savings to its customers,” the petition said, referring to FPL’s parent company.
The Public Service Commission approved the 2016 settlement, which froze FPL’s base rates with some limited exceptions. The multi-year settlement included numerous provisions, including setting a maximum return on equity of 11.6 percent and approving FPL’s use of a reserve. In the petition and response this month, both sides indicated the reserve was designed to provide financial flexibility for FPL.
When Hurricane Irma tore through the state in September 2017, it caused massive damage to the electric grid, with FPL saying its restoration costs were about $1.3 billion. That was followed about three months later by Congress and President Donald Trump approving the federal tax overhaul, which, among other things, lowered the corporate income-tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent.
Florida utilities have long been allowed to pass along storm-restoration costs to customers. But FPL paid its Irma storm-restoration costs and made an accounting entry to charge off those costs against the reserve created in the 2016 settlement. It then planned to replenish the reserve with savings from the tax cuts.
In the response, FPL said the move allowed it to avoid increasing customers’ bills to cover the storm-restoration costs. If it had not used the strategy, FPL said typical residential customers would have seen increases of about $4 a month in 2018, with the amount going to more than $5 a month in 2019 and 2020.
But the Office of Public Counsel and the business groups contend that nothing in the 2016 settlement allowed the “resurrection” of the reserve after it was exhausted following Hurricane Irma.
They argue that FPL should instead be required to pass through the tax savings to customers on monthly bills and contend that FPL is exceeding the maximum allowed return on equity. The petition requested that the commission “initiate a comprehensive review of FPL’s base rates” and order a permanent rate reduction based on the tax savings.
I agree. Another example of elected officials subverting constitutional amendments is our Florida Sunshine and Open Records laws.
Public officials constantly violate Article I, Section 24 of our Florida Constitution, which created our Sunshine and Open Records laws, in 1992 -- by 83% of the voters (3.8 million people).
Legislators constantly figure out new ways to weaken Sunshine laws. Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT was a rebarbative, recidivist, retromingent vile violator of those Sunshine laws during his eight year Reign of Error.
On Amendment 4, ACLU will probably have to sue after the amendment takes effect on January 8, 2019. Why?
Because Governor-elect RONALD DION DeSANTIS is sputtering about a law to implement Amendment 4, the restorative justice that 64% of Florida voters supported, for automatic re-registration of convicted felons who completed their sentences and all fines and probation (other than those convicted of homicide or sexual assault convict, who would have to petition the Governor and Cabinet for re-enfranchisement, as under current law).
That's ok. If DeSANTIS tries to play GEORGE CORLEY WALLACE and stand in the Courthouse door, the courts are always open to sue him. Governor SCOTT repeatedly lost in the Courts, on issues ranging from Gay Marriage to automatic drug testing of benefits recipients and Florida state employees.
From Tampa Bay Times:
Subvert the will of the voter? It’s a Florida thing.
Who can blame supporters of Amendment 4, which would restore voting rights of most ex-felons, for thinking that lawmakers can't be trusted to implement the measure? Just look at how other recent ballot measures fared once passed by wide margins.
Supporters of voting rights for felons marched in Fort Lauderdale [STEVE BOUSQUET - Times]
A heavy dose of skepticism greeted Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis earlier this month when he claimed that the implementation of Amendment 4 should be delayed until lawmakers can pass a bill finalizing it that he can then sign.
For supporters of the ballot measure, which would restore voting rights of most felons who have served their sentences, any delay tactic was a ploy to dilute the measure, at best, or kill it outright, at worst.
Who can blame the skeptics for assuming the worst?
Check out these examples of ballot referendums with high hopes that passed by wide margins, only to run aground in their execution.
Class size
Kindergarten teacher Melissa Pizzo’s 2012 class brimmed over the state cap, at 20 students. The Pasco school district continues to deal with class size concerns. [Times | 2012]The issue: On Nov. 5, 2002, Floridians voted to amend the state Constitution to require that every school allow only a certain number of students in each class.
Advocates had complained for years that Florida's class sizes were ballooning.
The measure specified maximums of 18 students in prekindergarten through third grade, 22 students in grades four through eight and 25 students in grades nine through 12. It required the state, not school districts, to shoulder the cost of building more classrooms and hiring more teachers. And it said the maximums were to be in place by 2010.
The vote: The amendment passed with 52 percent voting yes. That was before a change that later required 60 percent approval to change the Constitution.
The rollout: The amendment faced pushback from Day 1. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders feared the cost would "blot out the sun" and launched the first efforts to undercut it.
But in addition to being expensive, the amendment was hard to implement. Public schools never know how many kids are going to show up on the first day, and many students move around during the year. The new law forced districts to add teachers and move kids around after the school year started.
Rather than comply, many districts found it cheaper to pay penalties for violating the maximums.
As the years wore on, advocates of all stripes — including some who originally supported the amendment — questioned whether smaller class sizes were worth the trouble and expense, and whether they really helped kids learn.
Early efforts to derail the amendment included legislative resolutions to get it repealed or limited to the lower grades. They failed. After that came efforts to relax the strict class-by-class maximums, which failed in the Legislature and at the polls.
In 2011, the Legislature reduced the number of classes subject to the class size limits, and allowed districts to account for late-arriving students by letting classes temporarily exceed the maximum by only a handful of kids.
Two years later, lawmakers allowed class sizes to be calculated using a schoolwide average instead of looking at every classroom. Dozens of districts have taken advantage of that provision to avoid penalties, and many class sizes are larger as a result.
Over the last 16 years, the state says $43 billion has been spent on class size efforts.
Environmental land-buying
This photograph, which appears in the 2012 Florida Forever calendar, was taken by Mac Stone in the Green Swamp, which feeds water to the Hillsborough River.
The issue: On Nov. 4, 2014, Floridians voted by an overwhelming margin for Amendment One, which amended the state Constitution to require $10 billion in tax money over the next 20 years for environmentally sensitive land and protecting wildlife and water resources.
Florida once led the nation in environmental land purchases. Despite the political popularity of preservation efforts, the Legislature sharply cut the money for land buying, preferring to spend it on other priorities.
Then in 2011, in his first year in office, Gov. Rick Scott cut it out completely. Scott's administration then spent three years dismantling the state Department of Environmental Protection division in charge of assessing and acquiring environmental land, according to former state employees.
Formally known as the Florida Water and Land Conservation Amendment, Amendment 1 aimed to return Florida to its days of prolific land preservation. It required no new taxes. Instead, it called for one-third of the documentary tax paid on real estate transactions to be spent on conservation spending programs.
Backers of Amendment One such as Audubon Florida, the Sierra Club and 1000 Friends of Florida collected 68,000 petition signatures to get it on the ballot. Leaders of the petition drive boasted that they had seen no organized opposition.
The vote: Amendment One passed with 75 percent of the people who went to the polls voting yes.
The rollout: The weakness in Amendment 1 was that its implementation relied on the very people it was intended to rebuke, state lawmakers. At the first legislative session after passage, lawmakers earmarked a mere $17.4 million for the acquisition of parks and wildlife habitat, a far cry from the $300 million that Amendment 1 backers had intended.
About half of the Amendment 1 money would be spent on projects and programs that were historically paid for out of other parts of the budget. One part of the spending plan was specifically aimed at helping an agricultural giant named Alico hang onto a state contract. Legislative leaders contended that those things met the somewhat vague requirements of Amendment 1's language.
Gov. Scott, who during his reelection campaign had called for spending $150 million a year on environmental programs, did not endorse Amendment 1, and did not fight for it in the Legislature. Instead, his environmental agency proposed selling off hundreds of parcels of surplus parks and preserves to finance more land-buying. The list of potential surplus properties created such an uproar that the Scott administration scuttled the idea without selling a single parcel.
Environmental groups sued, accusing legislators of thwarting the will of the people. Attorneys for the House and Senate argued that the amendment was vague enough to allow them to spend the money on things like the management of already-purchased conservation land, staffing of agencies or buying easements to save working farms and ranches.
In June, the judge hearing the case ruled against the Legislature and in favor of the environmental groups. Legislators have taken the case to the First District Court of Appeals. Meanwhile the attorney representing the environmental groups, David Guest of Earthjustice, said that when he read the language of the felon voting measure, Amendment 4, he began screaming.
"It's exactly the same" as Amendment 1, he explained.
Medical marijuana
Cathy Jordan inhales a marijuana joint in 2013 to slow the progression of ALS. Florida doesn’t allow the smoking of medical marijuana. [CHERIE DIEZ | Tampa Bay Times]The issue: On Nov. 8, 2016, Florida voters approved Amendment 2, which legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Florida already had a medical marijuana law in place from 2014, but it limited use of cannabis to those who were terminally ill and had less than a year to live. And it only allowed products with low levels of THC, the psychoactive ingredient found in marijuana.
This new measure allowed physicians to "recommend" medical marijuana as treatment in the form of edibles, electronic vaping, tincture sprays and oils, and in pill form. And it opened up cannabis use to patients who suffered from a longer list of ailments: cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, HIV, AIDs, PSD, ALC, Crohn's disease, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and chronic pain.
The vote: The amendment passed with 71 percent approval from voters.
The rollout: While Amendment 2 officially went into effect in January 2017, the delays that followed prompted critics to accuse the state of dragging its feet. Legislators approved implementation measures during the last day of a special session.
They opened the marijuana industry in the state to a select group of companies that were in charge of producing marijuana, manufacturing it, selling it in their own dispensaries and delivering it. Patients would have to wait 90 days before receiving marijuana products. They also had to submit a form, a doctor's note and pay $75 to receive a license from the state.
The state health department opened the "Office of Compassionate Use" to oversee it all, but officials were quickly overwhelmed after 100,000 patients signed up. Meanwhile, fewer than 2,000 doctors in the state got licenses to give cannabis recommendations.
Critics say the long waits and regulatory hurdles have delayed patients' access to treatment they need.
At the same time, municipalities began to pass their own ordinances, limiting where marijuana companies could open their dispensaries.
A Tallahassee judge recently ruled that the law passed to implement the amendment was unconstitutional because it both required marijuana operators to grow, process and distribute related products while also capping the number of marijuana licenses. About 20 lawsuits still swirl around the issue, including many petitions for licenses from parties that were denied one, and a challenge to the state's ban on smoking medical marijuana.
"I hate shallowness," as Hal Holbrook's FBI whistleblower character said in All The President's Men.
I just examined and voted in Folio Weekly's "Best of St. Augustine" poll (online now). Why this matters: FOLIO WEEKLY's "Best of St. Augustine" categories, nomination and voting process leave much to be desired.
The list of faux pas is longer than the list of Sheriff DAVID SHOAR's' sins, torts and crimes:
Misspelling local beloved guitarist-songwriter Sam Pacetti's name
Listing Patrick Canan's law firm TWICE in several categories
You can vote every day!
Allowing business owners to nominate themselves
Listing "Seaside Villas" as best in several categories, despite massive code violations reported by the St. Augustine Record for several years, and under administrative adjudication before St. Augustine Beach
Allowing the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association to make its putative martyrdom a thing -- chauvinists apparently had Folio's ear
Campaigns for advertising are the goal. Make money to revive Folio, in hopes it starts covering St. Augustine and St. Johns County under new editorship. (We MISS Anne Schindler!)
There are a few serious categories, like environmental activists, with only two (2) options (no write-ins allowed) -- HARRUMPH, how haughty.
But there's "no there there" in its approach to St. Augustine. The character of our town, its people, its characters and its history and nature and businesses are barely hinted at by this maladroit effort.
Most of the nominations involve places to spend your money, of which there is no shortage. Just five or fewer options, the wrong ones, in some cases (and no write-ins allowed -- how bossy is that?).
On Friday, December 21, 2018, I left a message about the pejorative category involving an attempted force vote for Tom Reynolds (since deleted -- good call). (Was Folio bamboozled by dodgy St. Augustine Beach Civic Association in its nomination process for "Best of St. Augustine" this year??)
On the lackluster list of dull nominations, it's much better than the St. Augustine Record's "Best of St. Augustine" list, which was unadorned by ANY categories not involving sales of goods or services.
On Saturday, December 22, 2018, I sent some suggestions for nominations to Folio Weekly, whose editor left me a nice message earlier today (we've not talked yet).
Here are my nominations, FYI:
Best Mayor:
Nancy Shaver City of St. Augustine
Worst Mayor:
Undine George, City of St. Augustine Beach
Biggest Bloviating Developer Mouthpiece:
Douglas Nelson Burnett, St. Johns Law Group
Sidney Franklyn Ansbacher, Upchurch Bailey and Upchurch
Ellen Avery Smith, Rogers Towers
John Metcalf, Hutson Companies
David Douglas Birchim, St. Augustine City Planning and Building Director
Ronald Wayne Brown, former St. Augustine City Attorney
Best Government Attorney:
Regina Ross, Assistant St. Johns County Attorney
James Patrick Wilson, St. Augustine Beach City Attorney
Henry Dean, St. Johns County Commissioner
John Cary, Assistant St. Augustine City Attorney
Worst Government Attorney:
Frank Upchurch, St. Johns County School Board attorney (falls asleep in meetings)
Isabelle Christine Lopez, St. Augustine City Attorney
Patrick Francis McCormack, St. Johns County Attorney
Ronald Wayne Brown, former St. Augustine City Attorney
Whiniest political lawyers:
Undine Celeste Pawlowski George, St. Augustine Beach Mayor
Joseph Lester Boles, Jr., disgraced former St. Augustine Mayor
Best Consumer Lawyer:
Jack Spence, Naples and Spence
Best First Amendment Lawyer:
Thomas Elihah Cushman
William Sheppard
Bryan DiMaggio
Best Patent Lawyer:
Jamin Douglas Rubenstein
Best Public Interest Lawyer:
Megan Wall
Best City Manager:
John Patrick Regan, P.E., City of St. Augustine
Worst City Manager:
Bruce Max Royle, City of St. Augustine Beach (falls asleep in meetings)
Best Lawman:
Robert Hardwick, St. Augustine Beach Police Chief
Barry Fox, St. Augustine Police Chief
Worst Lawman:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
James Parker, former SABPD Commander, now back at State's Attorney office
Biggest Big-Shot Crook:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
Ralph Joseph Larizza, 7th Circuit State's Attorney
William Barry Harriss, Sheriff Shoar's $1500/month "independent contractor, runs St. Johns County Sheriff's Office Four Star Association, Inc., former St. Augustine City Manager, 1998-2010
Meanest Person In Town:
Rev. Ronald Rawls, Jr.
Virginia Whetstone
Robert Keith Mathis
William Barry Harriss
Dr. William L. Proctor, Ed.D.
Timothy Burchfield, St. Augustine Assistant City Manager
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
Conscience of Our Community:
Jeffrey Marcus Gray
Capt. Lee Geanuleas, U.S.N. (Ret.)
Tom Reynolds
B.J. Kalaidi
Kenneth McClain
Jen Lomberk
Susan Agresta
Lifetime Achievement Award for Activism:
Tom Reynolds
B.J. Kalaidi,
Roger Jolley
Diane Mills
Judith Seraphin
Gregory Travous
Dr. Robert S. Hayling, D.D.S.
Robin Nadeau
Dr. Patricia Gill, Ed.D.
Best Elected Official:
Jeanne Moeller, Anastasi Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County
Nancy Shaver, Mayor, City of St. Augustine,
Margaret England, Vice Mayor, St. Augustine Beach
Maggie Kostka, Commissioner, City of St. Augustine Beach
Henry Dean, Commissioner, St. Johns County (former Executive Director of St. Johns River Water Management District, South Florida Water Management District, former General Counsel of Florida Department of Natural Resources)
Best Former Elected Official:
Sherman Gary Snodgrass, former St. Augustine Beach Mayor/Commissioner
Ben Rich, Sr., former St. Johns County Commission Chair
Joseph Kenneth Bryan, Former St. Johns County Commission Chair
Best Volunteer Government Board Member:
Karen Zander, St. Augustine Planning and Zoning Board, former member of St. Augustine Beach PZB
Carl Blow, St. Augustine Planning and Zoning Board
Toni Wallace, St. Augustine Historic Architectural Review Board
Kevin Sweeney, St. Augustine Beach Code Enforcement Board
Susan Agresta, former PZB Chair, St. Augustine
Matthew Shaffer, former PZB Chair, St Augustine
Jerry Dixon, former PZB Chair, St. Augustine
William Rosenstock, former St. Augustine Beach Code Enforcement Chair
Most Frequently Fined Local Elected Official
Richard Burtt O'Brien, St. Augustine Beach City Commission. (by default -- there are no other nominees even possible)
Worst Elected Official:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
Richard Burtt O'Brien, St. Augustine Beach City Commission
Todd David Neville, C.P.A. St. Augustine Vice Mayor (chose not to run for re-election in 2018 -- We, the People ran him off)
Jay Morris, former St. Johns County Commission Chair (chose not to run for re-election in 2018 -- We, the People ran him off, too.)
Priscilla "Rachael" Bennett, former St. Johns County Commission Chair (chose not to run for re-election in 2016 -- We, the People ran her off, too.)
Biggest Nixonian Coverup Artist:
St. Johns County Administrator Michael David Wanchick
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994,
Richard Burtt O'Brien, St. Augustine Beach City Commission
Bruce Max Royle, St. Augustine Beach City Manager (falls asleep in meetings)
Most responsive local agency on public records requests:
City of St. Augustine
City of St. Augustine Beach
St. Johns County Property Appraiser
St. Johns County Tax Collector
St. Johns County Clerk of Courts and Comptroller
Least responsive/most obstinate local agency on public records requests:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
Clerk of Courts and Comptroller Hunter S. Conrad
Supervisor of Elections Vicki Oakes and her heyboy, Wayne Fusco
Biggest First Amendment Violator and Retaliator:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
Cheapest Philanthropist:
Norbert Tuseo
Farid Ashdji
Joseph Lester Boles, Jr.
Claude Leonard Weeks, Jr.
Best Non-profit group:
St. Augustine Historical Society and its Research Library
Worst Putative Non-profit group:
St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, Inc., dodgy 501c4 that once ran Wednesday Farmer's Market
Biggest Boondoggles:
No-bid below-market lease for 81 St. George Street from City of St. Augustine to ex-Mayors Joseph Lester Boles, Jr. and Claude Leonard Weeks, Jr. (August 2014 Folio Weekly cover story)
Sheriff David Shoar's $15 million training center proposal (come speak out January 15, 2019)
St. Augustine Beach proposed parking app (continuing saga)
Renaming of St. Augustine Airport without state legislature approval (Douglas Nelson Burnett, Airport Authority, bears blame)
St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, Inc., dodgy 501c4 for:
No-bid contract from St. Johns County for Wednesday Concerts by the Sea
No-bid contract (cancelled) from St. Johns County for St. Augustine Beach Wednesday Market
Worst Local Bus Company:
Sunshine Bus Company
Worst Developments:
Antigua
Madeira
Fish Island (proposed)
The Collector Hotel, St. Augustine Beach (former Dow Museum of Historic Homes)
Embassy Suites Hotel, St. Augustine Beach
Nocatee (another Leviathan Levittown)
Dodgiest Developer:
David Barton Corneal
Hutson Companies
D.R. Horton
Anyone represented by Douglas Nelson Burnett and St. Johns Law Group
Best Judge:
Howard O. McGillin, Circuit Court
Charles Jay Tinlin, County Court
J. Michael Traynor, Circuit Court. (retiring)
Henry Lee Adams, Jr., U.S. District Court
Brian J. Davis, U.S. District Court
Matthew Corrigan, U.S. District Court
Biggest Developer Doormats:
St. Augustine Record newspaper
St. Augustine City Commission
St. Augustine Beach City Commission,
St. Johns County Commission
St. Johns River Water Management District
St. Augustine Record"Development" beat reporter Stuart Korfhage
St. Augustine Beach Civic Association, Inc.
Best Deceased Activists:
Robin Nadeau
David Thundershield Queen,
Stetson Kennedy
Carrie Johnson
Gregory Travous
Dr. Robert S. Hayling, D.D.S.
Best Local TV News
New4Jax
First Coast News
Best Local TV Internet News:
First Coast TV. (not to be confused with First Coast News)
Best Newspaper:
Folio Weekly
Worst Newspaper:
St. Augustine Record
St. Augustine Beaches News Journal
Jacksonville, Florida Times-Union
Worst Employer:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994
St. Johns County School Board
A number of labor-baiting tourist traps that underpay workers in cash under the table
A Hastings potato farmer whose crew leaders were convicted of enslaving farmworkers
Worst Radio News:
WFOY (Kris Phillips' Limbaugh-loving hate radio, 250 watts),
WFCF (Flagler College, no news except City of St. Augustine weekly PR program),
WJCT (mossback NPR affiliate, eschews coverage of St. Augustine and St. Johns County)
Biggest disappointments:
Sheriff David Shoar, who legally changed his name from "Hoar" in 1994,
St. Augustine Beach Mayor Undine Celeste Pawlowski George
Andrea Samuels, disgraced former St. Augustine Beach Mayor and former President of the St. Augustine Beach Civic Association.
Folio Weekly
League of Women Voters, moribund, which held NO local candidate election forum in 2018
St. Augustine Record and its new corporate master, GateHouse, which refused to work with League of Women Voters on election fora, while repeatedly neglecting its watchdog function.
I filed an FCC complaint about NPR affiliate WJCT, whose license is up for renewal during 2019-2020. No response from WJCT to my concerns until late in the day on Friday, December 28, 2018.
Look forward to talking with station management next week.
Here's the list:
1. Dead air and technical difficulties. Frequent times with no sound, as for 32 minutes commencing 9:59 PM, December 24, 2018, dropped network programs or nonfunctioning local telephone call-in equipment. 2. Conflicts of interest. Frequent fawning coverage of sponsors and prospective purchasers of radio station property. 3. Tunnel vision coverage of matters of interest mainly to Jacksonville, especially to downtown economic interests, eschewing any investigative coverage of interest to residents of other counties in WJCT's claimed service area. Is WJCT becoming a "vast wasteland," in former FCC Chair Newton Minow's words? 4. Ignoring St. Johns County corruption and development issues. 5. Failure in 2018 to cover corrupt St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar's office Michelle O'Connell murder coverup and financial scandals ($700,000 embezzlement). 6. Failure to cover development, clearcutting, tree killing wetland destroying coastal "developers" that are ruining St. Augustine and St. Johns County. 7. Payola? Affording Jacksonville Business Journal and others access to present as news what is essentially PR handouts, while allowing Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Currie free publicity for his re-election campaign by playing a hurricane PSA hundreds of times, annoyingly mispronouncing the word "library"). 8. Spending 56+ hours/week of low-cost repetitive canned music, where other NPR stations carry BBC, CBC and other original programming. 9. Bragging in its fundraising about its signal failure to work with university communications department, failing to afford learning opportunities for journalism students, while running a "news" operation in name only, one that manages one decent interview program five days a week, but one that can 't or won't investigate wrongdoers in our Northeast Florida region. 10. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "our lives begin to end the moment we stop caring about the things that matter." 11. Please request WJCT to e-mail me its public inspection file and discuss with FCC and me the ways it can do better in 2019. 12. That might start with local coverage on Sheriff David Shoar's corruption equal to or exceeding the "PEAK FLORIDA" investigative coverage by University of Florida's NPR affiliate, WUFT, concerning development (a series that provided excellent coverage of St. Augustine's Fish Island development) a series still NOT carried by WJCT, a provincial station that censors criticism of dodgy developers' demolition derby of our nature and history here in the Nation's Oldest City and environs.
PETER ANTONACCI lied about Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT's blind trust with 20/20 vision, and was appointed to be Broward County Election Supervisor as his reward. Some people will do anything for money. But will The Florida Bar investigate SCOTT's former General Counsel's outrageous, invidious falsehoods?
PETER ANTONACCI SWEARING IN DEC. 3 AS BROWARD SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS. PHOTO: WSVN7NEWS
Gov. Rick Scott’s newly appointed Broward elections boss was a staunch defender of Scott’s sham blind trust, and falsely told the Florida’s ethics commission five years ago that it was “modeled on” a federal blind trust.
Peter Antonacci, who replaced controversial elected supervisor Brenda Snipes, was Scott’s general counsel in August 2013 when he wrote to the commission seeking an opinion that would allow the governor to take advantage of a new state law authorizing so-called “qualified blind trusts.” The law, passed by a GOP-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Republican Scott, essentially provided immunity from prohibited or voting conflicts of interest regarding tens of millions of dollars in stocks, partnerships and other assets Scott held in his blind trust.
At the time, Scott already had a blind trust into which he had placed “substantially all of his financial assets,” Antonacci wrote in a letter co-signed by James T. Fuller, a tax attorney at the influential Washington, D.C. firm Williams & Connolly. Scott had established the blind trust a few months after taking office in January 2011, and now Antonacci was asking the ethics commission to confirm that it was in compliance with the new state law.
“That trust was modeled on the blind trust of the federal Office of Government Ethics, and on prior legislative proposals to recognize such trusts under Florida law,” Antonacci wrote. “The purpose of the trust arrangement was to preclude any appearance of a conflict of interest between the governor’s financial assets and his duties as governor.”
Scott, now Florida’s U.S. senator-elect, quickly obtained the eight-member commission’s blessing. The commissioners featured five Scott appointees, including attorney Linda Robison, the former Broward Health commissioner who is today awaiting trial with four other current and former hospital district commissioners and executives on criminal charges of violating Florida’s Government-in-the-Sunshine law.
The starkest difference between the federal and state rules is in who is allowed to serve as a trustee of blind trust. Federal law requires trustees and their employees to be “independent of and unassociated with any interested party so that it cannot be controlled or influenced in the administration of the trust.”
GOV. RICK SCOTT, RIGHT, AND BLIND TRUST EXECUTIVE ALAN BAZAAR
Scott, however, chose Hollow Brook Wealth Management and its chief executive, Alan Bazaar, to manage his blind trust. Before announcing his first run for governor, Scott employed Bazaar for more than a decade as his managing director and portfolio manager at Scott’s eponymous investment firm, Richard L. Scott investments.
Federal laws and rules regulating blind trusts include additional safeguards not found in Florida’s statute. For example, federal rules make trust agreements and any amendments public records, but not in Florida. And federal public officials, their spouses or independent trustees or other fiduciaries who violate obligations under the law or the trust instrument face civil penalties of up to $10,000. Florida’s blind trust law imposes no penalties for violations.
At the time of the April 2014 story, Antonacci was asked about his letter to the ethics commission, why Florida’s blind trust statute does not include many of the federal level safeguards and whether those safeguards should be added to state law. He did not respond.
An ill-conceived assertion
Antonacci’s notion that the blind trust would “preclude any appearance of a conflict of interest between the governor’s financial assets and his duties as governor” soon proved to be ill-conceived.
PETER ANTONACCI PHOTO: WSVN7NEWS
In March 2014, Florida Bulldog reportedhow Scott and his wife, Ann, had made more than $17 million selling hundreds of thousands of shares of Argan Inc. Those profits included the blind trust’s sale of nearly 141,000 Argan shares worth $2.5 million.
The blind trust was ineffective in blinding both Scott and the public to the specifics of his vast holdings. In this case, it was because of public reporting requirements at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Scott owned so many Argan shares that he was required to report his Argan stock sales to the SEC. He even personally signed the reports.
Four months later, Florida Bulldog reported that Gov. Scott had a financial stake in Spectra Energy, the company that would build and operate the $3 billion Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline in North Florida. The story reported that in May and June 2013, Scott signed into law two bills designed to speed up permitting for the project, a controversial 474-mile pipeline from Alabama and Georgia south to a hub in Central Florida, south of Orlando.
In November 2013, the Florida Public Service Commission, whose five members were appointed by Scott, unanimously approved construction of Sabal Trail. Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, overseen by the governor, also backed the pipeline by, among other things, awarding a crucial environmental permit to Sabal Trail Transmission LLC, a joint venture of Houston-based Spectra and Florida Power & Light parent NextEra Energy. Last year, Spectra merged with Canadian energy infrastructure company Enbridge.
Scott’s financial disclosure form filed six months later showed that as of the end of 2013 he owned more than $700,000 worth of units in Texas-based giant Energy Transfer Equity and related entities. Energy Transfer owned 50 percent of the Florida Gas Transmission pipeline, the state-regulated principal transporter of natural gas to Florida.
Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest, real and apparent, rooted in the governor’s enormous portfolio have continued to emerge. In 2016, Florida Bulldog reported that Scott previously disclosed owning shares of Mosaic Company, owner of the Central Florida fertilizer plant where 215 million gallons of contaminated wastewater drained through a sinkhole into an aquifer that provides drinking water for millions of Floridians. The company has said it spent millions to seal the sinkhole, which was completed earlier this year, and installed monitoring wells and pumps to find and remove pollutants. The state monitored the spill.
In October, Florida Bulldog reported that Rick and Ann Scott have at least $5 million invested in Puerto Rico’s devastated electric company via their stake in AG Superfund, a New York hedge fund. That includes a blind trust investment of at least $1 million. Without disclosing the nature of his investment, Scott led a delegation of utility providers to Puerto Rico last year to help the hurricane-ravaged island.
The governor, via his blind trust, and his wife also had a huge, hidden financial stake in the Chinese railway company that supplied components to the U.S. contractor that built Brightline passenger trains for All Aboard Florida, a venture the governor strongly backed, Florida Bulldog reported in August.
The Scotts acquired their interest in Qingdao Victall Railway Group Ltd. in 2014 when it partnered with their company, Continental Structural Plastics, to form a 50-50 joint venture called CSP Victall (Tangshan) Structural Composites Co. Ltd. At the time, the Scotts were majority owners of Michigan-based Continental.
Continental was sold to the Japanese conglomerate Teijin for $825 million in January 2017. The sale produced a $200 million windfall for Gov. Scott personally, and another $350 million for his wife and 11 smaller investor-partners. Scott held his Continental investment in his blind trust and did not timely disclose his bonanza from the sale.
Controversial Florida Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT may soon be the wealthiest member of either House of Congress.
On his way out the door as Governor, after eight years, Governor SCOTT has bestowed exactly what for West Augustine, Hastings, and other impoverished areas and the people who live there here in St. Johns County?
Without citing any reason at all, Governor SCOTT vetoed money for West Augustine sewers in 2016.
Blatant racism and discrimination -- there was NO veto of money to restore a river at the beach.
I filed a civil rights complaint, which incurious TRUMP Administration janissaries refused to investigate, natch.
Florida's rebarbative repulsive reptilian retromingent Republican Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT would not even vote to pardon the long-dead Grovesvlle Four, leaving the job to Governor -elect DeSANTIS and his cabinet.
Pitiful.
Here's a story from the Florida Bulldog:
Scott delivers economic development ‘gifts’ as state’s unemployment rate plummets to 3.3 percent By John Haughey | Watchdog.org 17 hrs ago
Florida Governor Rick Scott speaks at a press conference stop in Jacksonville on August 15, 2017.
Photo courtesy of Florida Gov. Rick Scott's office
Before Gov. Rick Scott departs Tallahassee for Washington in early January, he’s leaving behind a few gifts under the Christmas tree to boost regional economic development projects across the state.
The term-limited Republican governor, who will join the U.S. Senate in 2019, is allocating $29.5 million from the state’s Job Growth Grant Fund to four projects in Orange, Escambia, Pasco and Gadsden counties.
The Job Growth Grant Fund was created in 2017 by Scott and the Legislature to help fund regional infrastructure projects vital to economic and workforce development initiatives.
In its first year, the fund provided $85 million for projects around the state. With the Dec. 21 allocation of $29.5 million from this year’s $85 million set-aside, Scott is gifting the remaining $27 million for his successor, Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis, to dole out after he assumes office on Jan. 8.
The four recipient projects were among more than 100 proposals requesting a combined $610 million submitted to the DEO. They are:
$16 million to Orange County to expand Kirkman Road to six lanes and alleviate congestion in the corridor that feeds the Orange County Convention Center and other nearby destinations. $10 million to Escambia County’s expansion project at Pensacola International Airport, including additional taxiways and ramps and completing work on hangars. $3.09 million to Pasco County to create Overpass Business Park, a 100-acre economic development site along Interstate 75. $357,328 to Gadsden Technical Institute to develop a diesel-system technician training program. Florida’s estimated jobless rate was 3.3 percent in November, according to the Department of Economic Opportunity, which translates to 335,000 Floridians qualifying as being unemployed from a labor force of 10.26 million. That's nearly 8 percentage points lower than when Scott was first elected in 2010. The nation’s unemployment rate in November was 3.7 percent.
Monroe County, which includes the Florida Keys, had the lowest jobless mark in November, 2.4 percent, followed by St. Johns and Okaloosa counties at 2.5 percent.
The two counties directly hit by Hurricane Michael in October have the state’s highest unemployment rates -- Gulf County’s at 8.4 percent and Bay County at 6.1 percent. Both had 2.8 percent unemployment rates in October.
Accompanying the DEO announcement, a statement from Scott’s office said Florida businesses have created more than 1.67 million private-sector jobs during his eight-year tenure, with the state’s employment growth rate outpacing the nation in 79 of the last 80 months — all but September 2017 in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
The DEO bases it estimates on household and employer surveys. Its analysis indicates significant job growth occurred in the state’s leisure and hospitality sectors, which combined to add 53,200 new jobs thus far in 2018.
Next highest job-generating sectors were education and health services jobs, up 50,700 positions, followed by professional and business services, 45,400 jobs, and construction, 32,900 jobs. Government jobs, most at the local level, declined by 9,600 in the same period.
In Scott’s statement, he noted that when he took over the governor’s office in January 2011, the state’s jobless mark stood at 11.1 percent, which was higher than the nation’s 9.4 percent rate as the country recovered from the recession.
Scott’s 2010 campaign included a seven-step economic program that “over a seven-year period will have a positive economic impact and create over 700,000 jobs for the state of Florida."
Eight years later, he may have exceeded that campaign goal by nearly a half-million jobs.
“Being governor is the best job in the world, and I am excited about the economic success that Florida has been able to achieve over the past eight years,” Scott said.
Scott will have an opportunity to apply lessons learned in creating jobs in Florida on a national scale when he arrives in Washington, where he has been assigned to the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Committee on the Budget.
Scott will be sworn into office on Jan. 8, five days after Congress convenes, to avoid a gap between him and Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis.
It's basic engineering to keep wastewater and poop out of our pristine waters here in Florida, but insouciant Florida cities cant seem to get the ethics and engineering required.
With good management, there should be no wastewater or poop emitted by local govvernments. This is self-evident.
It reminds me of a case where the Mississippi Supreme Court could “imagine no reason why, with ordinary care human toes could not be left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it seems to us that somebody has been very careless.” Pillars v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 78 So. 365 (Miss. 1918).
Devious St. Augustine City "Manager" WILLIAM BARRY HARRIS escaped criminal prosecution for his sewage and solid waste pollution environmental crimes under lax FDEP regulation. As the late David Thundershield Queen put it best, "DEP stands for 'Don't Expect Protection."
While we're grateful for the consent order, we wish that government regulators did not go all soft and squishy when the polluter in quo is a government agency.
IF only City of St. Augustine officials responsible for sewage pollution were criminally prosecuted circa 2008-2012, our State of Florida would not have such frequent sewage spills.
In my four decades of experience, whether the City of St. Augustine, Tennessee Valley Authority, U.S. Department of Energy, or otherwise, government polluters betray the public trust and must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
We need:
Zero tolerance for governments that violate environmental laws.
Jail for polluters.
From Tampa Bay Times:
Nearly 1 million gallons of wastewater spilled around Tampa Bay
The recent incidents have occurred in the area's three largest cities, with the largest happening in Clearwater
25
DIRK SHADD | Times Beach closed for swimming signs at North Shore Park in St. Petersburg Tuesday afternoon (09/13/16). The city of St. Petersburg estimates 70 million gallons of partially treated sewage has been dumped into the waters of Tampa Bay after the drenching rains of Hurricane Hermine. For 10 straight days, the city discharged waste from its overwhelmed sewage system into a pipe that emptied about a quarter of a mile off the downtown shoreline. That finally ended Friday.
The three largest cities in the Tampa Bay area have spilled almost 1-million gallons of wastewater combined in recent days, records from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection show.
Clearwater was responsible for the largest spill, which happened Friday and involved 750,000 gallons of wastewater. It also had a much smaller spill the day before.
Tampa had a spill the same day that resulted in about 38,000 gallons of wastewater flowing onto property and into a stormwater ditch. St. Petersburg has reported three incidents since Friday, which together poured about 70,000 gallons into the storm water system.
Heavy rains last week contributed to the Tampa spill, though the rain did not appear to affect what happened in St. Petersburg. It was unclear what role, if any, stormwater runoff played in the Clearwater incidents. Cities are required by law to post public notices of spills to a state Department of Environmental Protection website within 24 hours of the incident being discovered. While it appears Clearwater and Tampa met that deadline, St. Petersburg was late reporting two of its spills.
The St. Petersburg incidents are the latest in its ongoing sewage saga, which peaked in 2015 and 2016 and has resulted in more than one-billion gallons of wastewater being dumped, much of which made it into Tampa Bay.
The first of the recent spills happened Thursday, when water levels at Clearwater's Northeast Water Treatment Facility in Safety Harbor overflowed, spilling about 38,000 gallons, according to a report city water officials sent to the state. The spill remained on the facility's property and did not reach the storm water system, officials said.
A partially blocked pipe was a factor in Tampa's spill, which caused about 38,000 gallons of wastewater to overflow into a storm ditch adjacent to E Adamo Drive and onto low-lying property at 6501 E Adamo Drive, its report said. Crews were sent out to clean up the site.
The next day, the same Clearwater facility had another, much larger spill. Three-quarters of a million gallons poured out. Officials said that spill did not leave the facility's property or reach the stormwater system.
St. Petersburg's first incident happened Friday night, when a corroded clamp failed and about 29,000 gallons of reclaimed water leaked from a pipe along Brightwaters Boulevard NE, which is in Snell Isle, according to a report. About 1,366 gallons soaked into the ground and the rest entered a storm drain on the 1900 block of Brightwaters Boulevard. Officials said they posted signs warning of contamination and had begun testing.
The second incident happened Saturday night, when a reclaimed water pipe sprang a leak along the 6100 block of 16th Lane NE, alongside the Northeast Water Reclamation Facility in Shore Acres, officials wrote. When workers tried to close a valve to stop the leak, the valve broke, causing a second leak. In all, about 4,000 gallons of water spilled, almost all of it entering a storm drain which leads to a nearby lake, the report said.
AXIOS is doing a good job. Its short stories made me skeptical when I first met its editor after a Flagler College talk. But over time, I've grown to appreciate its punch. Here's a story about the 30-year data on global climate change, in the three decades since Dr. Hansen testified:
Special report: A 30-year alarm on the reality of climate change
Three decades have passed since then-NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the Senate Energy committee and alerted the country to the arrival of global warming.
Why it matters: The predictions of the world's leading climate scientists have come true, with dire consequence for the planet.
In the 30-year period prior to Hansen’s testimony, the Earth’s surface was, on average, less than 0.2°F warmer than the 20th-century average. In the 30 years since, the planet’s surface has, on average, undergone a six-fold temperature increase.
Hansen's temperature projections weren't exactly on target, since he projected a slightly higher amount of warming than what has occurred, but about two-dozen climate scientists told Axios that overall, his main conclusions were right.
So warm, in fact, that the temperature trend was almost certainly due to the greenhouse effect, which is enhanced by emissions of gases like carbon dioxide and methane from burning fossil fuels.
As a result, summer heat waves and other extreme weather events will become more common.
"The greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now,” Hansen said. When he spoke, 1988 was on track to become the hottest year of all-time. Since then, that record has been broken six more times – in 1990, 1998, 2010, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
In an interview with the Guardian this week, Hansen gave a bleak assessment of the last thirty years. “All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” he said. “We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it.”
Be smart: Uncertainty is often cited as a reason for not addressing climate change, but the longer we go without addressing it, the harder it will be to cut emissions and avert major impacts.
As Andrea Dutton, a climate scientist at the University of Florida, told Axios:
"The true debate lies in the solutions and in mobilizing the social and political will to act upon our knowledge. Deciding not to act is a choice itself, and one that we cannot correct later. The time to act is always now. Because the longer we wait, the worse the outcomes will be."
About the graphic:
The spinning globes compare the average temperature of the Earth's surface during the 30-year periods before and after Hansen's testimony, relative to the average surface temperature from 1901–2000.
The data used to create the graphic was downloaded from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The land surface temperature data is from a GISS analysis, while the ocean temperature data comes from NOAA. The smoothing radius was set to 1,200 kilometers.
Local governments in St. Johns County oppose seismic testing, but nary a word about it in dull local news media, once again failing to fulfill the watchdog function our Founders have in mind.
Our local news media consists of poor timid souls who think they're setting the agenda with their puny vision of what's possible in politics.
I will never forget how disgraced St. Augustine Mayor JOSEPH LESTER BOLES, JR. once told concerned Leonardi Street residents, "We can't tell a Big Oil company what to do." (Amerigas ended up relocating in light of safety concerns on LP gas deliveries cutting through a residential neighborhood.).
Generations of American politicians from the state house to the White House have catered to Big Oil companies, and their cowardice is helping ruin our frail planet.
"We can't tell a Big Oil company what to do," corrupt Mayor JOE BOLES said. (That was the moment I concluded he was dangerous, both wicked and stupid, and decided he needed to retire as Mayor for Life.)
In sharp and marked contrast to whorish JOE BOLES, St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver, Commissioner Roxanne Horvath and other local elected officials are on record -- and pass resolutions and attend demonstrations -- against seismic testing. Let's hope they join the litigation. at least with a "me too"amicus curiae brief.
Curiously, our State of Florida and its news media seems not to care, not joining the chorus of outrage from other coastal states. Like the dog that did not bark in the Sherlock Holmes story!
Are Flori-DUH ATTORNEY GENERAL PAMELA JO BONDI and Governor RICHARD LYNN SCOTT both incompetent or merely wicked?
Here's an editorial on seismic testing from the Gannett newspaper in the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia peninsula:
Seismic testing and offshore drilling — Absolutely not. Editorial
The Daily Times Editorial BoardPublished 6:43 a.m. ET Dec. 21, 2018
The federal government moved to authorize the use of seismic airguns to find oil and gas formations on the East Coast. Jenna Miller, Salisbury Daily Times
Bipartisanship is still possible, when the threat is clear, imminent and universal.
East Coast states vary greatly in their political leanings, yet most of these states are united in opposition to offshore seismic testing.
Seismic testing is a precursor to offshore drilling.
Just as coastal states, including Maryland, are opposed to seismic testing, they are also opposed to offshore drilling.
Nov. 30, the National Marine Fisheries Services announced final authorizations to allow seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean. Dec. 20, Maryland joined eight other states in announcing it would sue the federal government to prevent the testing for offshore oil exploration.
East Coast states also share waterfront property and its associated tourism.
Marine life and water quality are major concerns with seismic testing.
The process essentially involves the blasting of pressurized air into the ocean, creating powerful sound waves that provide information about the sea floor. The sound waves echo back to the surface and are captured by audio monitors called hydrophones. The blasts are loud, often producing sounds at and above 140 decibels. These blasts happen every few seconds for days, weeks or months at a time.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources has repeatedly expressed concern about the individual and cumulative impacts on marine species and habitats.
Like Ocean City, many coastal communities rely on tourism — but only as long as the beach, surf and fisheries are clean and healthy.
Drilling is a risky enterprise capable of destroying a coastline and poisoning its marine ecosystem for generations in the event of a catastrophic spill.
Oil on water spreads with no regard for state lines. The impact on the Chesapeake Bay, oyster beds and more would be devastating and long-lasting.
This risk to property, economy, tourism, jobs and environment explain why such disparately thinking groups have come together against seismic blasting, exploration and offshore drilling for oil.
Drilling off Atlantic states will not make us less reliant on foreign oil.
Will it lead to lower gas prices? More affordable fuel oil for furnaces? Will it provide long-term and high-paying jobs for local residents of these coastal communities?
Not likely.
The blasting can be heard up and down the entire coast, and a spill, should one occur, would affect waters and beaches from Florida to Maine.
This is how to unite left and right, red and blue, conservative and liberal, progressive and libertarian alike: Pose a threat that knows no boundaries, neither geographic, ideological, religious or political.
Opposition to offshore exploration and drilling is something we should all be able to get behind, to protect our home as well as the future home of our descendants.
Our View represents the opinion of the Editorial Board members Laura Benedict Sileo, news director, and Susan Parker, engagement and community content editor.
Now that the Parkland high school murders investigative reports are in, Sheriff SCOTT ISRAEL's ineffectual management requires a response. Read the Miami Herald article, down below.
On or after January 8, 2019, when Governor Ron DeSantis suspends Broward County Sheriff SCOTT ISRAEL, he will have the thanks of a grateful state.
Let Sheriff SCOTT ISRAEL defend his actions before the Florida State Senate.
Our Florida Constitution provides:
Text of Section 7:
Suspensions; Filling Office During Suspensions
(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor.
(b) The senate may, in proceedings prescribed by law, remove from office or reinstate the suspended official and for such purpose the senate may be convened in special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.
(c) By order of the governor any elected municipal officer indicted for crime may be suspended from office until acquitted and the office filled by appointment for the period of suspension, not to extend beyond the term, unless these powers are vested elsewhere by law or the municipal charter.[1]
Less than two weeks before Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis is to be sworn into office, embattled Broward Sheriff Scott Israel sent a letter Wednesday to a state-appointed safety committee, highlighting policy changes in his department following the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The publicly released letter, addressed to MSD High School Public Safety Commission Chairman Bob Gualtieri, outlined seven previously announced initiatives by Israel’s department taken since the shooting in Parkland that killed 17 and wounded 17 others.
The letter‘s publication came hours before the release of new witness statements that highlight the contrast between the response of Coral Springs police, which has generally received favorable reviews, and the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which has been harshly criticized. Among the issues the safety panel pointed out: BSO deputies seemed to take their time putting on vests upon arrival and took cover behind their cars, rather than entering the school to confront the shooter — until Coral Springs police took the initiative.
Deputies also struggled to communicate on an aged radio system as students and teachers bled. “It was like two separate agencies running two separate incidents,” Coral Springs officer Richard Best told agents from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “We should all be able to communicate with everybody. And — that did not take place there.”
Reached Wednesday evening, Israel defended his leadership and said his letter to the committee was an effort to let members know what changes had been made. He called it a “work in progress.”
Still, the sheriff said whatever policy had been in place at the time of the shooting wouldn’t have changed the response of the school’s resource officer, an armed deputy who hid behind a wall during the rampage by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz rather than entering the building.
“It is the strong belief of this sheriff that no policies, no words would have led to Deputy [Scot] Peterson going into that building,” Israel said.
Peterson, who spent about a decade patrolling Stoneman Douglas’ grounds, was the only officer on the scene when the shooting began. Video shows him concealing himself behind a wall as the massacre occurred inside the freshman building. Not long afterward, the sheriff suspended him pending an investigation. Peterson later resigned.
Israel’s letter came as the elected sheriff is being battered over the chaotic response — and in some cases, inaction — by his officers on Feb. 14, when former student Cruz walked onto the high school’s campus, unimpeded by school security, and shot and killed 17 students and administrators with a high-powered rifle.
The steps outlined in the sheriff’s letter represent the first comprehensive attempt to catalog changes by the sheriff’s office following the shooting. They include yearly active shooter training for all officers, internal affairs investigations into the inaction of two officers and a change to the department’s active shooter policy that will now require that officers immediately move toward and try to confront an active shooting threat. The previous policy said they “may” do so.
Also planned: a new threat assessment unit that will evaluate violent threats. BSO was warned repeatedly about Cruz’s violent outbursts prior to the Parkland shooting, but took no decisive action.
Criticism of Israel has centered on the delay by BSO deputies in entering the building where gunshots were fired and the resulting failure to confront the shooter. Critics include parents whose children were killed, the police union that represents most BSO officers and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is investigating the response.
The safety committee Gualtieri chairs began public hearings on the shooting in November. The group, appointed by outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, is expected to make its findings public after the New Year — possibly after DeSantis takes office Jan. 8. An FDLE report is expected around the same time.
It’s unclear how much influence the safety committee will have on Israel’s future. But during the gubernatorial campaign, DeSantis was clear about his views on Israel’s performance.
“I’ve been saying he [Israel] should resign for quite some time. We even took billboards out,” said Jeff Bell, a DeSantis appointee to his transition team’s safety committee and president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, which represents most of Broward’s 1,400 deputies.
If DeSantis were to suspend Israel, the Broward sheriff could request a trial before the Florida Senate. On Wednesday, Israel said he has “no plans to resign.”
“I have never had the opportunity to speak with the governor-elect. We’ve never met,” said Israel. “I can assure the committee I’m honored to serve and that I’ve never come close to malfeasance.”
Jan Jordan, the captain at the scene, offered her resignation after it was learned she did not urge her deputies to immediately confront Cruz.
On Wednesday, more criticism of Israel came from the South Florida Sun Sentinel. In a scalding editorial titled “The Failed Leadership of Broward Sheriff Scott Israel,” the editorial board called his testimony before the safety committee “troubling” and called for the sheriff’s removal from office, a reversal of its previous stand.
Even while defending his department’s actions, Israel has sometimes hurt his own cause. Shortly after the February shooting during a now-infamous television interview, Israel told CNN news anchor Jake Tapper that he should only be held responsible for the things he knew about during the Parkland shooting. In the same interview, he touted his own “amazing leadership.”
During his November testimony before the commission, Israel said he purposely placed the word “may” in the active shooter policy to offer deputies discretion.
“I want an effective tactical response, not a suicide response,” Israel told committee members in November. “The goal of any agency’s response is to save lives. ‘May’ allows a deputy discretion.”
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a committee member, criticized Israel’s decision in committee testimony last month. “Words matter,” Judd said to Israel.
Israel’s defense didn’t sway some of BSO’s critics, especially those who lost loved ones in the February shooting.
Ryan Petty, a member of DeSantis’ public safety committee who is also on the transition team and whose 14-year-old daughter Alaina was killed in February, said he’s been calling for Israel to resign for several months. He said he found Israel’s testimony troubling, especially where he admitted to changing the word “shall” to “may” when it came to an officer confronting an active shooter.
Petty also said failed radio communications that contributed to the chaos should have been solved two years ago, when they were revealed after a gunman from Alaska killed five travelers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in January 2017.
“He should have been screaming from the top of the sheriff’s office, ‘I need this resolved,’ ” said Petty. “Instead, he’s been radio silent.”
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed, has also called for Israel’s removal and urged reforms of gun laws.
“I’ve made my feelings on the need for Sheriff Israel to be removed quite clear for some time now. Nothing has changed,” Guttenberg said.
Among the new elements in Wednesday’s records release: a complaint that politicians showed up at Stoneman Douglas around the time officers were looking for Cruz, sometimes getting in officers’ way. Coral Springs officer Best said Sheriff Israel walked up to a command post accompanied by “all the politicians.”
Coral Springs Chief Clyde Parry, who was deputy chief of operations at the time of the shooting, told investigators that he grew frustrated as politicians and their aides began to crowd the command bus while police were still managing the scene.
“Once the politicians started to show up ... again, if it were my scene, I would’ve set up a place away from us and put them there,” Parry said. “I would have a question or something that needed to be asked, and I’m waiting for one of the political aides to walk down off the ladder... and it’s like ‘I need something here, you gotta — you gotta get out of my way,’ ya know?”
None of the politicians were identified in the documents released Wednesday.
Miami Herald staff writer Sarah Blaskey contributed to this report.
Ryan Petty speaks with voters at a polling place at Century Village in Pembroke Pines, Fla., Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2018. His daughter Alaina was killed in the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and he was running for the Broward County School Board.JOE CAVARETTASUN SENTINEL
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article223567075.html#storylink=cpy
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