Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

To everything (spin, spin, spin), there is a season (spin, spin, spin)
Local media, citizens, council all wanted Hunt to stay -- or at least that's what they are saying now
-- John Patten, 01/15/04
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Both the Herald-Tribune and the Venice Gondolier are being overt in their attempts to mend fences, both papers are making it clear that they never called for Hunt's removal. Which is absolutely true. In nearly every editorial over the past few years when Hunt was criticized in print media, it was almost uniformly tied to the statement, "Council needs to give more guidance to Hunt." Both papers made the statement so frequently that it became a running joke even amongst the staffs of the publications.

Council rarely did give more guidance to Hunt. On the few occasions when they did give more guidance, Hunt went passive-aggressive: he'd agree to obey council's wishes, then he'd go off and do what he bloody well wanted to anyway in spite of their directions. The FAA/VGA affair and the Sharky's lease are two prime examples of Hunt's thumb-nosing to council and the press.

Hunt became a wayward and often abusive husband who all too easily betrayed his betrothal oaths, while council and the newspapers collectively played the part of the foolish wife, ever eager to take him back no matter with whom he had slept. The thought of a divorce was inconceivable. What would our neighbors, North Port and Sarasota County, say?

And so the media would hum along, forgiving Hunt until the next domestic disaster. Out would come a few more editorials: "Council needs to give more guidance to Hunt." Council would (or more often wouldn't) give some direction to Hunt and everyone would be off and running for a few more weeks until the next scandal when the cookie-cutter editorial would appear again. In a strange variation of the old "Hi Bob" drinking game, It got to the point where informal betting was taking place as to which newspaper would print the phrase first whenever any new scandal would emerge, as it was a sure bet that neither was ever going to call for his firing or resignation.

In the end, despite all of the pieces on this web site calling for Hunt's removal, despite all of Venice Taxpayers League prez' Herb Levine's protestations, and despite council's claims to the contrary, it was indeed Venice's City Council that finally did give more guidance to Hunt: Quit or be fired.

Oh yes, make no mistake, and do not be fooled by what you are reading in the papers: It was council, through a lot of behind the scenes moves that stayed just barely within the provisions of the Sunshine Laws, that determined that Hunt must go, and it was largely over Hunt's secretive moves to hook up county residents to city water without telling the public, council, or even the county whose roads they were digging under to do the job. It was the last straw for a mostly new council that was sick of taking the heat for Hunt's fiascos. According to sources, the informal, but legal, polling was 5-2 to get rid of Hunt, with Calamaras and Myers still supportive of Hunt right to the end.

It was not Levine that turned the tide. It was not this web site, although it played a significant factor. It was not Hunt's health, although his health also played a contributing factor.

Hunt had no choice, he was told in no uncertain terms: Quit or be fired.

No, really -- Hunt just needed more guidance
It is true that Hunt had considered resigning on at least a couple of occasions during the previous year. It is true that Mayor Calamaras talked him out of it. But it is not true that Hunt, when it came to the end, went willingly. Quietly? Yes, so far at least, but not willingly.

Hilariously and ironically, the Herald-Tribune was still holding to the "Council needs to give more guidance to Hunt" stance on the day after he resigned, and nobody that I know of had bet that they would:

Council members needed to steer Hunt back on course. Instead, most of them circled the wagons, defending themselves and the manager. Hunt must have realized that the questioning would persist. He didn't need to resign, but says he did so for health reasons.
-- editorial, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 01/14/03

For years, council, citizens, city employees and the media watched bungle after bungle emerge from Hunt's office, often with the most ludicrous, unbelievable and contradictory cover stories attached. Levine blamed council. Council blamed Levine. Levine and I blamed Hunt. Hunt blamed Levine and this web site. The press alternately blamed council and Levine.

For my part, I am unapologetic. I have followed my conscience and have put my ass out in the wind more times than I can count. I have agonized over stories that I have published, often enduring sleepless nights knowing the impact my words would have on events and on real people. The tongue is a sword, words can kill, and I never for a second forgot that basic Sunday School lesson. Working on these stories and trying to dig down to the heart of the scandals was a vastly fascinating affair, but it was rarely a fun one.

So who really failed us?
There's another entity that needs to be taken to task, perhaps more than anyone else.

As well as council and Hunt, I blame the press. The Fourth Estate, the ever-so-necessary watchdog that watches both the government and other watchdogs.

On occasions too numerous to count, the Herald-Tribune and the Gondolier took the more politically expedient route, seemingly unwilling to ruffle the feathers of local power brokers by challenging them to expel their wayward and obviously incorrigible child when it was clearly obvious that Hunt's behavior in Venice would be similarly tolerated in very few other towns in the United States. Oh sure, they held Hunt's and council's collective feet to the fire on more than a few occasions, but the fire was most often little more than a sputtering candle.

A prime example was the series of stories that this web site did on (what we lovingly referred to as) PuterGate. In those stories, I painstakingly took the reader through a rather simple case of fraud by publishing city documents, purchase orders, invoices and even a canceled check  to show how the city's computer department head, Charles 'Steve' Randall, had secretly been billing the city for goods that the city had never received.

To be fair, the story was covered in the papers nearly a year earlier. However, Hunt and then-Police Chief Joe Slapp had come up with a rather lame and transparent cover story about the incident, that Randall had made an honest mistake and that the city had received more than it had paid for in the form of software, training and support.

This was a big scandal, a criminal one that never made it to criminal court for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that the press never took Hunt and Slapp to task for the cover-up. It wasn't until nearly a year later that I went back and reinvestigated the case, only to discover that the city never received any training or software at all -- NONE -- and that the support that the city received was all work that would normally fall under Randall's job description.

It was a story that the newspapers should have gotten right the first time. It was a story that, when it was finally revealed, should have called for resignations of Hunt, Slapp and Randall. It was a story that should have called for criminal prosecution(s). It was a story that would have received major scrutiny in any other community. It was a story that ultimately was dropped by print media before it was ever fully told. It was a story that should have been pursued vigilantly and had it been pursued would have arguably prevented a lot of future scandals from happening by putting Hunt and council on notice: you will not get away with these types of shenanigans.

But the press didn't follow the story, the press called for little to no accountability and the lesson to council and Hunt was clear: if you are dogged in slick denials, the press will doggedly chase the next squirrel that distracts them and they won't look back. The press may bark a bit: "Council needs to give more guidance to Hunt." But that's about the strongest stance for accountability that the press will take. Their bark was worse than their sniffs and they never learned how to bite.

Did council need to give more and closer guidance to Hunt? Absolutely. Council's failure to do so was a failure that has caused the vast majority of municipal problems and ultimately led to Hunt's downfall. Given tighter and more closely watched parameters, Hunt would have been forced to play within the rules. That he was allowed way too much latitude is just as much a failure of council's as it is of Hunt's.

At the same time, the newspapers needed to make Hunt and council more accountable to public scrutiny and the law. The failure of both the Venice Gondolier and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune to do so in any meaningful way over the years is equally as disappointing, if not more so, than council's failures.

Winston Churchill once stated "With great power comes great responsibility." Even in this age of cyber, print newspapers still have great power to educate and to formulate public opinion, much more power than this piddly web site that you are reading right now. Time after time, the newspapers abdicated their responsibility and spoke softly when they should have been screaming.

There are notable exceptions, and not all news reporting was badly done. Pat Horwell, ex- of the Gondo, and Earle Kimel of the Herald-Trib are two of the finest writers I've had the pleasure to know, both are true diggers and reporters. Bob Mudge, editor of the Gondo, is a man that I've grown a tremendous amount of respect for.

But organizationally, both the Herald-Trib and the Gondo seemed horribly ill-equipped to handle material that would have any meaningful effect on impacting our local government into becoming more accountable for its actions.

Bob Vedder, publisher of the Gondo, was very content with the status quo and seemed to take any questioning of it on the same personal level as Hunt did. To be fair, Vedder spouted off a few times about how he felt the VGA had received too-sweet a deal from the city. But it was only after Hunt dissed Councilman John Moore by storming out of a meeting that Vedder started to take a seriously critical look at Hunt.

The Herald-Trib, until very recently with the staff additions of Janel Stephens and Larry Evans, seemed content to fill the local section with mostly touchy-feely stories and features, rarely sticking its neck out to chastise anyone at city hall in any meaningful and consistent way.

The press' abysmal failure to make government accountable in turn led to council's failure to make Hunt accountable. The checks and balances of a democratic society were all in place, but in the end, none of it did any good. While Hunt now unwillingly shoulders much of the blame, and not unjustifiably, the plain fact is that there are many others who should be sharing the blame for his failures.

This whole situation never needed to happen. It shouldn't have happened. But happen it did.

Spin, spin, spin (Go with God, but go)
Everyone is playing for spin right now. Nobody wants to be the bad guy, the one who told Hunt to get out of town. The papers are positing that Hunt didn't need to go. Spin, spin, spin. Council is backpedaling like mad, trying to pretend that they didn't want Hunt to leave. Spin, spin, spin. Hunt even had his priest appear before council -- he came to praise Hunt, not to bury him. Spin, spin, spin.

Without gloating, as the destruction of another human being is nothing to gloat about, the plain fact is that I did want Hunt to leave and I have been strongly vocal about it for more than a year.

I took a highly unpopular stance, but one that I felt was the only right thing to do. While I am not proud of the ruination that has now befallen Hunt, I am proud of the fact that I stuck to my principles when most others would not say publicly what they strongly felt and stated privately.

The Gondolier's sendoff was politically correct: "Goodbye George, and thank you."

My sendoff is somewhat different: "Go with God, but you gotta go."