Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

Hunt, Black face off over DEP consent order
City manager caged match proves to be an audience favorite; final score: Black 1, Hunt 0
-- John Patten, 07/28/04
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

He's baaaa-ack
Venice's ex-exec made a rare appearance at yesterday's city council meeting. Armed with an impressive looking bound notebook that was filled with documents (and I spent the entire meeting hoping that was all he was armed with), former City Manager George Hunt created quite a stir with just his presence. Sitting in the audience in close proximity to utilities heads John Lane and Patricia 'Pat' Wilson, Hunt was a curiosity for many audience members.

During the second half of the council meeting, it became readily apparent why Hunt had come. The city, under City Manager Marty Black's direction, had already announced that it would concede to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's consent order. Basically, the city is admitting culpability in a variety of charges and is agreeing to pay civil fines in the amount of $68,000, most of which can be worked off in a sort-of court ordered community service program.

It's that implied admission of guilt that had Hunt worked up. Hunt spoke before council and gave his best attempt at an impassioned plea in a last ditch attempt to get the city to fight the DEP's consent order. Despite Black's statements that it would be best to fess up, pay the fines and move on, Hunt stated that the city ought to fight the charge, that it was a winnable case.

John Lane then joined Hunt at the podium for a bizarre and nearly surreal Q&A session. Hunt fired off a series of lawyer-like questions at Lane in an obviously staged performance. It took the audience, council, and myself several minutes to figure out what exactly the two were talking about. Hunt started firing off questions about sewage spills with no contextual references, Lane answered the questions in a matter-of-fact manner while everyone else in the room scratched their heads wondering what in the hell was going on.

"And out of all the people that were at the scene, how many stated it was over 10,000 gallons?"

"Only one."

That's when the pair first started to make sense, at least to the very few in the room who already knew the details of the story that Hunt and Lane were referencing. This pseudo-legal Q&A dialog revolved around the sewage spill that took place in the Groveland neighborhood during Tropical Storm Gabrielle in 2001. Hunt was fighting to keep the city from making an admission of guilt in that incident, a seemingly useless endeavor considering the city had already made such an admission to the press several weeks before.

In the grand scheme of things, agreeing to concede to the DEP consent order means very little. The city pays a fine, the state grants forgiveness, everybody moves on and out of a sticky situation that has existed for a couple of years. The DEP has set themselves on a collision course with Venice and they aren't going to back down -- this baby is headed for certain litigation if the city doesn't back down first.

Even assuming Hunt is right in stating that the city does have a winnable case (which I don't believe for a second), the legal and ancillary costs, plus the continuation of bad blood between Venice and the DEP, would make such a fight nothing more than a long shot attempt at an empty victory. Such a victory, unlikely as it seems, would still be hollow -- a battle won, war lost kind of thing.

So why would Hunt and Lane tie their boats together to try this upstream battle? Well, there still is an EPA criminal investigation that is hovering out there somewhere, and Hunt knows it. The spill in the Groveland neighborhood is one of the incidents covered in the EPA's investigation. The Groveland spill is also a peripheral part of why the FBI ended up taping Hunt in his disciplinary deal-making with utils supervisor Warren 'Skip' Petitt. Admitting to DEP's charges could seriously affect the EPA's investigation and not necessarily in Lane and Hunt's favor. In that context, Hunt's protestations suddenly make a heck of a lot of sense.

To Black, this was all immaterial. Black stated to Hunt several times that the city was making no specific admissions of guilt in their final paperwork, that they were just agreeing not to fight the DEP and to pay the fines.

Hunt continued to push the issue of innocence in the Groveland spill and Black explained it again.

Hunt stated that this was a winnable case from the city's perspective and that the city should fight the DEP all the way.

Black shrugged.

It was a battle of wills between Hunt and Black over the direction that the city would take in handling the ongoing environmental investigations, a battle of wills in which Hunt pulled out all the stops in an attempt to talk council into intervening. To the casual bystander, this appeared to be simply an ideological difference of opinion between the former and the current top municipal execs. As with many things at city hall, nothing is ever quite so simple. This was an intense knock-down drag-out brawl disguised as a low-keyed difference of opinion. Black didn't blink, council backed him all the way and Hunt walked away having achieved nothing from the conflict.

And so, the city will pay the fine, do the community service to work off most of it and ultimately move on.

Lane reeling from the punches
For John Lane, the day will no doubt go down in his mind as one of the worst days in his life. Lane began the day in a meeting with Black and Lane's utilities supervisory staff. At the meeting, Black announced his intent to explore the possibility of privatizing utilities management in an attempt to rein in the department's out-of-control budgetary problems (see Gondo story dated 07/28/04). That meeting started at 8:00 AM. Ten minutes into the meeting, Black's computer fired off an e-mail to nearly all municipal employees. The e-mail informed the city workers of Black's intent to explore privatization. By the time Lane and company emerged from the meeting, the rest of the city already knew what had transpired behind those closed doors.

Black followed this up with a memo to council that explained his proposal in much greater detail. That memo was posted to this web site at 12:15 PM.

Black has scheduled a council workshop on August 16 to further discuss the privatization option.

Additionally, Lane took hits from this web site about the department's handling of asbestos concrete. A presentation was made at the end of the city council meeting that covered much of the same ground as an article that appeared on this web site a few days ago.

"George Hunt was city manager for 13 years, John Lane has held his job for 20 years, and yet neither of them ever took the time to start an asbestos compliance program." Council was further told that as of the present time, the utilities department cannot legally fix their own asbestos concrete sewage pipes in the event of a break as none of their employees are properly trained and the department lacks the proper safety equipment.

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.