The question is: could any of these complaints hold merit? Because if they have no merit, the city won't have to spend a dime. The Ethics Commission will investigate the claims and if there is nothing to them, that's as far as it will go. The only reason the city would have to spend anything is if the Ethics Commission believes that there is some actual merit to the allegations.
That said, Vedder's own newspaper archives alone can bear out some of the charges.
There are four targets of Andersons ethics complaints: Wastewater Supervisor Patricia Pat Wilson, the citys computer department head Charles Steve Randall, City Manager George Hunt and Mayor Dean Calamaras.
I have not seen the actual documents that Anderson filed. I don't want to, as there are some confidentiality issues involved once I look at them. But I can safely assume what the complaints involve based on the questions that Anderson was asking of various people in the know. Because of the confidentiality aspect, I wasn't going to write anything about the complaints. However, in the interest of fairness to Anderson, I think that the issues raised by Vedder in his column need to be addressed.
The complaints against Wilson, Hunt and Randall
Wilson has been accused by Roy Stout of the Venice Taxpayers League of racking up extensive charges on her city-owned cell phone for personal long distance calls. I too went through a number of those bills and personally verified some of the costly personal calls, so I know Stout wasn't blowing smoke.
At least one memo within the city's Utilities Department warned employees not to use city cell phones for personal use, yet Wilson apparently felt it was OK to give herself an illicit perk that her own subordinates were warned could be cause for a disciplinary action.
Anderson (shown at right) has reportedly filed complaints against Hunt and Randall over the computer department scandals of the past few years. There, Randall restarted his old company, Petra Software, named after the famed Christian rock band. Randall filed documents with the city stating that a friend of his, Jim Gardner, was the contact person for the company. According to records on file with the state, Randall himself owned the company. Gardner later stated that he was neither an owner or an employee of the company.
Using this setup, Randall managed to bilk the city out of $12,000 in illegal invoices. The payments from the city were made jointly payable to both Jim Gardner and Petra Software and were deposited into Randalls account. Gardner did not endorse the checks and he stated he had never seen them or knew anything about them.
When the scam was initially uncovered in 2001, then-Chief of Police Joe Slapp, under Hunts direction, locked away key evidence in his office safe. For nearly a year, Slapp and Hunt refused to let anyone see it or even know about its existence. After pressure from myself and the VTL, Hunt finally authorized the release of the data, but not before publicly accusing me at a televised council meeting of extortion in the affair.
While Hunt publicly admitted that Randalls actions were illegal, Hunt defended Randall by stating that the city had received more than it had paid for, when in fact the city had received nothing that fell outside of Randalls job duties. Randall was also defended on the grounds that that he was a good Christian lad who coaches Little League and whose wife was fighting breast cancer.
Vedder, in his column, defends the city by stating as far as I know, the four are innocent. Apparently he doesnt read his own paper, as it was Vedder's paper that quoted Hunt admitting that Randalls actions were illegal.
While many, myself included, cried out for a formal criminal investigation, Vedders paper shrugged and moved on. No editorials calling for Randalls or Hunts resignation ever appeared in the paper. No indignation that a formal criminal investigation was not started, this in spite of the serious accusations that were being leveled at city hall and the subsequent admission of illegality by Hunt. No outcry, even, that Randall should have to pay back the $12,000 that he illegally obtained.
Andersons opponent in the council race, Good Ol Boy/CQG candidate John Simmonds, rushed to Hunts defense over the computer scandal cover-up, both in word and in print. As the PR crisis was heating up, Simmonds appeared before council praising Hunt. Shortly after that, Hunt was roasted by Tom Lyons in the Herald-Tribune for his participation in the Randall cover-up. Simmonds again came racing to Hunt's defense by writing a letter to the Herald-Trib, heaping glorias and alleluias onto Hunt while lamely trying to attack the newspaper for their heretical treatment of our city's great and beloved leader.
The complaint against Calamaras
As for the complaint against Calamaras, this involved his negotiations for the July 4th, 2002 fireworks show with Henry Jakimere, a salesman and sub-contractor for Garden State Fireworks Company. Calamaras stated his son occasionally works for Jakimere.
Council approved a $5,000 contractual bump that Calamaras had negotiated without prior council approval by voting unanimously 7 to 0. The mayor did not recuse himself from the vote in spite of the fact that his own son had a one-shot job with the fireworks provider, and that the job was paid for by the very contract that the mayor had brought before council and voted on.
Technically, the mayor didnt bring it before council, George Hunt did as part of his Managers Report, but Hunt deferred to Calamaras to discuss the details of the negotiations -- see council minutes of July 9, 2002. Calamaras stated at that council meeting that he had renegotiated the fireworks deal and the costs were increased by $5,000 to a new total cost of $25,000. According to city records, the original contract was for $17,000 and the additional payment was $8,000, not $5,000.
Some other strange details here: the first check, $17,000, was made payable to Garden State Fireworks and was sent to Jakimere's home-office in North Port. The second check, $8,000, was made jointly payable to Garden State AND Jakimere, and was addressed to 6873 Joe Jeff Street in North Port (map). That address was an empty lot at the time, owned by Jakimere.
Still more weird stuff: the original contract on file at the city was not signed by Jakimere or anyone representing Garden State Fireworks. It was an unsigned contract. Also, the contract called for proof of liability insurance to be provided to the city by the fireworks provider, either Jakimere or Garden State. Roy Stout of the VTL has stated that he had requested a copy of that proof of liability insurance and was told that the city had never received it from either Jakimere or Garden State.
The Venice Taxpayers League gave the story to the Gondolier Sun, the Herald-Tribune and Venice Florida! dot com in the days following the councils decision to approve the bump in the fireworks contract. As this was the first Fourth of July celebration after the attack on the World Trade Center, nobody, including this web site, was thrilled about raising a ruckus. As a result, nobody carried the story. I advised the VTL to drop it as it was a potential PR disaster: no matter how the story would be presented, it would probably be construed as partisan politics of an extremely unpatriotic bent, which is exactly the tact that Vedder has recently taken.
In this whole Calamaras/fireworks affair, the law may or may not have been broken. I spoke with Julie Costas, a senior attorney with the Florida Commission on Ethics. I gave Costas a hypothetical situation remarkably similar to the one being discussed here. Technically, the mayor did not vote on a matter that directly benefited himself or a relative, which is what the ethics laws actually prohibit. He voted on a matter that benefited a one-day-a-year employer of a relative.
Costas stated that in her 13 years as an ethics attorney, she had seen only one similar case. According to Costas, that case involved a law firm that was contracted by a municipality. One of the attorneys in the law firm was the daughter of a city commissioner. In that case, the ethics commission found that since the daughter did not do any work on the legal case that the city had assigned to the firm, and that she had received no additional remuneration, it was not an ethics violation.
That case does not appear to be wholly relevant in the Venice fireworks case as Calamaras son did work directly on the project that Venice had contracted for and his son did financially benefit from the contract, although I can easily see good arguments that can be made either way.
Of particular concern in the Venice fireworks case is that the mayor inserted himself into the negotiations. Council did not ask him to do this, he did it on his own. He made the agreement and then brought it before council after the fireworks show had already taken place. This may turn out to be very problematic for both the city and the mayor.
Additionally, the version that he gave to council didn't explain an $8,000 bump, only a $5,000 bump. Calamaras stated that he thought he had negotiated for more fireworks for free under some kind of discounted plan only to later discover that he had agreed to spend more of the city's money without fully understanding that he had agreed to an increased cost to the city. Calamaras further compounded the confusion by stating that the original contract was for $20,000 when the city's paperwork showed that there was an unsigned agreement on file for only $17,000.
I contacted Garden State Fireworks about the contract, and I was told that there were three different contracts on file, one for $17,000, another modified contract for $20,000 and a final contract for $25,000. This supports the mayor's statements about the bump only amounting to $5,000. Roy Stout states that he requested all records and contracts pertaining to the 2002 fireworks and was told that the only contract that the city had on file was the unsigned contract for $17,000, which is what he received. Part and parcel of the controversy is that the mayor ended up looking guiltier than necessary by the failure of the city to either keep adequate records of the transaction or to locate and provide them when asked as part of a public records request.
Even if Calamaras didn't break the law, his odd behavior in the matter certainly gave a strong appearance of impropriety, and for that alone he should have been taken to task if only in the press.
Taking it personally
Vedder accuses Anderson of filing the complaints as a political ploy to get elected. That may very well be, but it's a ploy that would have been unavailable to Anderson if city hall had made constant efforts to remain above board in all of their dealings. City hall gave Anderson the ammunition and sighted in the target themselves. Anderson merely pulled the trigger.
Anderson is one of the more interesting characters this town has produced. He's a big guy with a low, loud booming voice. He doesn't walk through a room, he barrels through it in a lumbering gate that almost makes it seem like he's never taken off his college football padding. Along the campaign trail, his public presentations have been awkward, clumsy affairs.
His campaign started out as a one-note samba: "Fix the damned pier, it's been busted up for years now." As Anderson quickly learned on the campaign trail, the pier was merely an indicator of how city hall treated a number of critical issues. The more he found out, the angrier he got. Then he stumbled onto this web site and discovered the computer department scandals. He followed for himself the unfolding events that led to Roy Stout of the VTL accusing Wilson of using city cell phones extensively and expensively for personal use. City council minutes and discussions with Herb Levine of the VTL led him to discover the circumstances surrounding the 2002 fireworks foibles.
As Anderson tells it, "If I hadn't been running for election and I had learned all of the stuff that I now know, I still would have filed the very same ethics complaints. It is incredible that these guys have gotten away with so much for so long."
Which is, of course, what anyone would say if they were running for office and had filed ethics complaints against city officials. Sounds great, makes one appear as a reformist candidate, a take-no-crap kind of guy who is out to clean up corruption in government, find cures for cancer and AIDS, and solve world hunger.
Except that, with Anderson, I get the strong feeling that he's telling the truth about that, that he is gutsy and ballsy enough (and morally indignant enough) that he really would have filed these complaints even if he hadn't been running for city council. The reason is simple: he had been ticked off for a long time just about the pier, mightily ticked off at that. Anderson took it personally, he felt the city was personally jerking him around when they neglected even basic maintenance on the pier like fixing the lighting.
"Yeah, you've got the T falling apart at the end, but look at these two lights," Anderson said to me the other night when I finally came out to visit him on his turf. He points up at one pole: "That metal panel there has been hanging by a thread for months, just ready to come crashing down on somebody's head. The bulb in this one has been burned out for weeks, you come to this part of the pier and you can barely see where you are going on a moonless night. You think the city really gives a crap about the folks who use this pier at night? 'Cause it sure doesn't seem like it. Wait'll somebody gets hurt, then all of a sudden they'll care."
Thus, the sense that the city is messing with him personally. Anderson is highly motivated to give back some grief to city hall, and if city officials take it personal, well, all the better. As to the ethics complaints: "It feels good to piss off the king," Anderson said. "I've been pissed for a couple of years now. Now I'm learning as I go along that this is pretty much how the city treats most citizen complaints: if somebody doesn't have money or power, forget it, you might as well be talking to a wall. Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable."
On the pier, he is among the night denizens of this town's saltwater subculture. All of them know him by sight and call him by name, the unofficial leader of a small village on wood. On this Saturday evening, there's roughly 30 or 40 people fishing, a conglomeration of folks from various cultures and age groups. Most look like they need a shower, Anderson included -- fishing is not pretty. Out here, Anderson becomes Quint as played by Robert Shaw in the film Jaws -- "I'll catch your shark for you," Anderson laughs, impersonating the movie character. Catch them he does, sometimes four or more in a night. "Mostly I throw them back -- I have enough shark in my freezer to last me through to next summer."
You wouldn't recognize ethics if they.....
What Anderson is quickly waking up to is something that many have been acknowledging all along: we have had failure after failure of ethics in city government. Examples are numerous -- the arrest of Levine, protected thievery, questionable affiliations by voting council members, and on and on and on. Not once has Bob Vedder raised an issue of ethics when it involved behavior by the Good Ol Boys. But let it involve a newcomer who is late to the game and who has just discovered some of the seedier history, as Anderson has, and suddenly the word unethical makes its debut appearance into Vedders vocabulary.
This is the same Bob Vedder, by the way, who wrote that the city should be congratulated for arresting Herb Levine at a council meeting last year after a name-calling spat between council, the city manager and Levine. Assistant State Attorney Kurt Hoffman (who is, coincidentally, currently running for sheriff in neighboring Charlotte County) refused to prosecute Levine after determining that Levines behavior was no different than councils and that Levines statements, however rude, fell under the classification of constitutionally protected speech.
Vedder makes his living thanks to protections afforded him by the First Amendment, yet he was one of the first to applaud when those same protections were yanked away from a fellow citizen:
"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
Vedder reports that a dog recently bit him on the buttocks while he was jogging. Maybe it was a case of ethics and he mistook it for a dog after failing to recognize it for what it really was.
