This is just ugly
I don't know what crawled up inside City Manager Marty Black and died, but whatever it was, it was ugly, mean, and had a lot of pointy parts. He hasn't been able to get rid of it yet.

That's about the only explanation I can come up with for his attempts to discredit the new kids on council. Maybe not just the new kids -- veteran Councilman John Moore is apparently not one of Black's favorite people, either.

Two months ago, Black tried to push a story onto me about Sue Lang violating the city's charter. According to Black, Lang had entered into back door negotiations with Garden State Fireworks for the city's annual 4th of July celebration.

Long time readers will remember that ex-Mayor Dean Calamaras got into a bit of trouble when he renegotiated that contract up about $7,000 without the city seeing any real benefit, although his son ended up getting a lucrative one-day-a-year job with Garden State out of the deal. Calamaras took a lot of public heat for perceived nepotism, although the Florida Commission on Ethics cleared him of any wrongdoing.

Black's accusation, made verbally to me, was that Lang had tried to renegotiate some aspects of the fireworks company's contract, which at the time was still up for bid for this year's show. Black noted that Lang's actions also violated his city manager's contract with the city.

The only problem is that Black made it all up. I followed up on Black's allegation. I spoke with both Lang and Henry Jakimer, the local Garden State franchise owner, by phone in surprise back-to-back interviews. Both stated that Lang had made general inquiries about safety, specifically where it would be safest to launch the fireworks from. Lang had made the same inquiries of John Reed at the Venice Fire Department. Additionally, there were emails that backed up Lang's claim that she was only inquiring about general safety issues.

Both Lang and Jakimer stated that no monies were mentioned in their conversation with one exception: Lang had asked about the possibility of shooting off the fireworks from a floating barge. Jakimer gave her a ball-park on what the barge rental would cost, and both agreed that the city wasn't likely to spring for the additional expense.

Despite Black's allegations that this was a clear violation of the city's charter, asking such questions are well within Lang's duties and responsibilities. In fact, the charter actually mandates that council members make such inquiries by asking just such questions.

I confronted Black with the bogus allegation and point blank asked him what kind of game did he think he was running on me? I told him I'd checked with all parties involved and his accusation didn't hold. I asked him for any evidence that would back up his claim that Lang had indeed violated the city's charter. Black hemmed and hawed a bit before stating that his understanding was that she shouldn't contact a vendor, especially during the bidding process.

Black had scheduled a "counseling" session with Lang to instruct her of her duties and limitations.

Lang was livid, and rightly so. The pair did have the meeting, though neither is offering any explanation as to how Black's wastepaper basket ended up getting stuffed up his arse prior to the meeting's conclusion.

More accusations from Black
So much for that "counseling session," but the digs continued. Black dropped the charter violation allegation and quickly shifted gears. On the same day that I confronted him about his bogus accusations against Lang, he stated that he did have proof that council members John Moore, Sue Lang and Ed Martin had been violating the Sunshine Law in emails. Black pulled out a pink plastic folder and pinched out about a quarter-inch thick set of documents. Those docs, Black claimed, were emails to and/or from the trio, some from personal email accounts. According to Black, the emails all showed a knowing violation of the Sunshine Laws.

Black did not offer copies of the emails and I was too stunned to ask. Instead, he tucked the docs back into the folder, which was stuffed with other documents, and placed it out of reach on his back desk.

He smiled at me.

"Have you talked to these people?" I asked.

"They won't listen. They're grownups, they know what they should be doing," Black replied

"Ummmm.... What are you planning to do with the documents?"

"I'm not going to do anything with them."

That's when the Twilight Zone theme started playing in my head. I really didn't want to know the answer to my next question, but I had to ask: "Then why are you collecting them?"

Black smiled and shrugged, but he kept silent. I instantly felt like I had insects crawling on me.

I didn't bite on the story. I had just caught Black trying to sell me one bum lead and I was in no mood for his increasingly foul and bizarre behavior. I was genuinely creeped out for a very good reason: It felt as though Black was using me to send a blackmail message to the named council members -- 'play the game my way because I have the info that can hurt you.'

Shortly after that, the Herald-Tribune came out with their story about how Mayor Ed Martin had violated the Sunshine Laws by attending meetings that... well, it turned out that he had never actually attended any of the meetings, so the Herald-Tribune had to retract that key part of their stories.

Is this beginning to sound familiar?
Are you beginning to see a pattern here? I sure am. Political attacks from within, whether factual or not, aimed at anyone on council who isn't CQG owned, which would explain the peripheral inclusion of Moore. Moore is up for re-election this year and although he has been supported by the CQG in the past, his voting record has clearly shown that he is owned by no one. That makes him a threat to the CQG, so why not hedge bets and try to turn him into damaged goods as well?

The CQG, Citizens for Quality Government, is a PAC formed by land development attorney E.G. "Dan" Boone and other pro-development business interests. Thanks to huge campaign budgets, all seven members of council have been CQG handpicked candidates up until this past election.

This current feeding frenzy is a planned strategic power play by the CQG, that info has been confirmed by Venice Taxpayers League president Herb Levine. The CQG plan is to focus politically damaging attacks on the three new council members as that will be the only way to get two CQG-owned wins in this coming November's council elections. This should come as no surprise to anyone and it means that the fur hasn't really yet started to fly. We're only seeing the beginning of this crap.

That in turn brings up a couple of scary but relevant questions: When did the city manager stop taking orders from council and start taking orders from the CQG? Was Black ever really taking orders from council?

Call me Spicoli
I don't like blackmail, real or implied. I won't be a party to it, either as victim or as a message bearer. So I called Black's bluff. The city politic was already decidedly ugly after the past two weeks, but I've just knowingly added a whole new level of ugly with my showdown with Black in the above video.

I don't think we've seen the worst of it yet.

As a further example of Black's churlish behavior, take something that happened today when Black tried to play some high school macho psych game on me when I ran into him at city hall. It was truly a surreal testosterone moment as Black refused to say 'hi' and instead gave me a hostile look and a forced B-movie cackle, as if to say "I've got you right where I want you." Yeah, OK Marty, whatever. As long as we're playing out scenes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, does this mean I can order a pizza to be delivered to me in the audience at a council meeting?

My challenge to Black's authority in the above video, as ugly as it is (and it is really, really ugly), only served to pop a festering boil that was going to start oozing any day now. I firmly believe that not bringing all of this out into the open would cause worse consequences later on. So here we go again....

In the emails below, note the admission from Black that he thought it was "prudent" to gather evidence against council members. That's a pretty clear admission that Black was collecting the documents for purely political reasons.

Then watch the video above.

I'm not playing around anymore, either with Black or Councilman Rick Tacy. If you make an accusation, better be prepared to back it up.

So who's breaking what law, Marty?
So far, Black has refused four public records requests for the documents that he originally showed to me and described, once actually stating that he wasn't going to give me the documents. The last time I checked with my attorney (which was last week about this mess), I was told that such statements are a clear violation of Florida's Public Records laws.

The fourth request was today through City Clerk Lori Stelzer.

If I understand correctly what I was told today by city staffers, Black is now claiming that he only had one email all along, one from Sue Lang. I imagine that he is going to counter-attack and state that I got this story all wrong from the start.

I didn't.

Black said emails (plural), mentioned three names, and showed me a small stack of documents. There is no misinterpreting that.

John Patten is the editor and publisher of Venice Florida! dot com and had previously worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.