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Gondolier attacks Levine
In an editorial published on November 3, the Gondolier Sun muddied the waters surrounding the arrest of Herb Levine and the recently filed lawsuit; Venice Florida! dot com attempts to clear the air by restating a few simple and provable facts
-- John Patten, 11/10/04
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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RELATED:
Gondo's Vedder compares Levine to Osama bin Laden
-- Venice Florida! dot com, 11/07/04
Anybody else want to come forward and get arrested?
-- Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/01/02
Levine vs. City of Venice, Calamaras, Hunt, Slapp
-- full text of civil complaint from court records, filed in court on 10/29/04

An edited-for-space version of this article appeared as a guest column in the 11/10/04 print edition of the Venice Gondolier Sun under the title "Levine's arrest was politically motivated." The edits were previously agreed upon by the author.

Politically motivated lawsuit? Politically motivated editorial?
The Gondolier Sun's editorial of November 3 condemned Venice Taxpayers League prez Herb Levine's lawsuit as politically motivated, citing the fact that Levine's lawsuit was filed just days before the 2004 general elections.

Such fingerpointing seems more than a tad hypocritical: the unlawful arrest of Levine was the ultimate politically motivated act, designed to deflect Levine's assertions at the time that enterprise funds were being used to cover general and administrative expenses.

The truth is that enterprise funds were making the bulk of the contributions to the city's overall general revenues. They still are. City hall, under the new administration, has found itself in the quandary of having to unwillingly continue this bad fiscal policy in order to financially survive. One of City Manager Marty Black's chief goals is to return city hall's finances to sound fiscal management, which means proper journaling of services and billing between departments.

At the Sept. 24, 2002 budget meeting that ended with Levine's arrest, then-City Manager George Hunt went off on a tear. Levine had previously accused Hunt of raiding the enterprise funds in an article in the Venice Taxpayers League newsletter. Hunt didn't like it, and the response was his typical straw man argument tactics. Hunt twisted Levine's allegations, stating that Levine was suggesting that the city should raid the enterprise funds to pay for city hall's general and administrative costs. Then Hunt stated that what Levine was suggesting was illegal.

The anger and sheer outrage in Hunt's voice is unmistakable in the audio recording of Hunt's rant. While Hunt never mentioned Levine by name, it was clearly a quite vicious and personal attack on Levine (MP3 audio file - 2.5 MBs - 3:44).

Levine, Roy Stout and a few others took Hunt's comments with humor -- they can be heard applauding Hunt's passionate performance. Mayor Dean Calamaras, apparently oblivious as to who was applauding and why, gracefully accepted the applause as vindication of Hunt's tirade.

Hunt lied
Nevertheless, Hunt lied when he attacked Levine, and he did it in an attempt to cover up an indefensible position.

In response to Hunt's tirade, Levine waited almost an hour until the end of the meeting. At the public speaking portion, which was the last event of the meeting, Levine called Hunt a liar. Then came the much-talked about brouhaha, which ended in Levine, then-75, being led out of city hall in handcuffs (MP3 audio file - 1.6 MBs - 2:22).

As if to make things even more surreal, while council watched and commented on Levine being dragged past their front windows, Hunt lamented that he didn't have his gun on him that day (MP3 audio file - 1.9MBs - 2:43).

Currently, Levine is being urged to let bygones be bygones, to be the bigger man, all by people who probably have never worn a pair of handcuffs.

Bear in mind, this all happened at the tail end of the meeting. This didn't happen in the middle of the meeting as some would have you believe. While Hunt's goading was done early on in the meeting, Levine's response came over an hour later during the public speaking portion, which  was at the tail end of the meeting. Moreover, Levine was the only one to speak. There was no further business after that.

Levine stepped up to the microphone, gave his views on Hunt's comments in less than 35 seconds (in sharp contrast to Hunt's three-minute rant), and attempted to walk away. All Calamaras had to do to avoid the ensuing fiasco was to bang the gavel and end the meeting. Levine would have been left in twiddling his thumbs in an empty auditorium.

Instead, council responded with an explosion of insults, Levine responded back and you know the rest of the story if you listened to the audio.

History has relegated the incident as a disruption of a meeting that was still in progress, as though the incident threw the meeting into an uproar and prevented council from being able to focus on the business at hand. Nothing could be further from the truth -- for all intents and purposes, the meeting was over when Levine stepped up to the microphone. Council had the mere formality of listening to a few minutes of public input and then it was time to head home for supper.

The myth of "insufficient evidence"
Then there is this myth of "insufficient evidence," a bit of word twisting, which the Gondo editorial helped to perpetuate. There was and is an overabundance of evidence. Over 20 witnesses filled out witness affidavits. Prosecutor Kurt Hoffman took over 20 witness depositions. There is a taped audio recording of Levine's arrest and all of the events leading up to it and after it. There is absolutely no mystery of any of the details of what really happened at the fateful budget hearing.

Hoffman dropped the criminal charges against Levine, not due to "insufficient evidence," but due to "insufficient evidence to support the charge." In this case, that means there was an abundant and overwhelming amount of evidence, but the evidence clearly and abundantly showed that Levine had done nothing that allowed the police to arrest him, thus the evidence against Levine was legally "insufficient" to justify his arrest.

Politically motivated arrest?
As to the Gondo's observation that Levine's lawsuit was filed just before the election, it should be noted that the ill-fated arrest of Levine took place on Tuesday, September 24, a mere six weeks to the day before the 2002 city council elections. On November 5, 2002, John Moore defeated Jim Leis in a council race while Rick Tacy ran unopposed. Also on the ballot that year was a council pay raise with a rider that would take future council pay rates out of the hands of the voters -- the raise was voted down, primarily due to the rider.

Nobody ever heard Levine whining that this was an election tactic. Levine stayed mum for quite a while, mostly due to orders from his then-attorney, Derek Byrd.

Lost in the circus that surrounded the arrest were Levine's assertions about the city's enterprise funds, which were the original source of Hunt's anger. With the public now focused on reviling Levine, the spotlight was off of Hunt and Finance Director Mike McPhail. The city's oddball internal billing procedures continued, unabated and unnoticed by the press and the public. Hunt wanted Levine's assertions to go away, and by and large, Hunt got what he wanted. For a while, anyway.

Vedder takes up smoking
Bob Vedder's first column that followed the arrest congratulated Mayor Dean Calamaras for his victorious vanquishing of the evil known as Herb Levine:

Congrats to Mayor Dean Calamaras for causing an arrest of Herb Levine, who went too far in his classless haranguing of council and George Hunt. Those meetings deserve to be civil. Way to go, Dean.
-- Bob Vedder, Venice Gondolier-Sun, print edition, 09/28/02

I was shocked then by Vedder's response. I am even more shocked by the recent follow-up editorial on November 3 of this year, which I strongly suspect came straight from Vedder's keyboard. Then there's the the hoof-in-mouth job Vedder would do a few days later, on November 6, by comparing Levine to Osama bin Laden.

To Vedder, I can only say this: For someone who works for a newspaper that relies on First Amendment protections for its mere existence to applaud such an erosion of First Amendment rights is mind-boggling. This is the logic of someone who lights up a cigarette while filling an automobile with gasoline.

As to the Gondolier's editorial statement, I could not disagree more, but as Beatrice Hall wrote in a quote that is commonly misattributed to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Hall's statement is a stance that Vedder and the Gondolier should have been taking all along with regards to Herb Levine's arrest.

CORRECTION
The original version of this story contained an account from Herb Levine that he was placed in ankle manacles at city hall during his arrest. Levine has long insisted that the incident happened at city hall and then again when he was transported from the police station in Venice to Sarasota. In a conversation that took place earlier today, Levine was still adamant that it happened.

Immediately after publication, the Venice Police Department, through Chief Jim Hanks, insisted that it didn't happen at city hall, but that ankle manacles were placed on Levine by the Sarasota Sheriff's Office when he was transported from the South County Jail to the main jail in Sarasota by officers from the SSO Corrections Department. Both the VPD and Levine agree that Levine was placed in ankle manacles by the SSO for the inmate transfer process.

In the interest of provable accuracy, the disputed items in the above story were removed. Both Levine and the VPD did not contest any other portion of this article.
-- J.P., 11/10/04

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.