Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

UPDATE 07/13/03: At the time this story was written and published, it was unclear as to the nature of Hunt's June 25th meeting with the EPA. It was known that Hunt had met with a Federal prosecutor and an EPA criminal investigator, but it was not known if that meeting was in front of a grand jury or as part of a criminal interrogation, and nobody within the city would confirm the nature of the meeting.

Since that time, City Attorney Bob Anderson has assured Venice Florida! dot com that the meeting was a meeting and nothing more, that Hunt was not sworn in, nor was Hunt given a Miranda warning. The story below has since been revised to reflect the new information received. Venice Florida! dot com continues to maintain that Hunt is extremely likely to be a suspect in the EPA's eyes in this criminal investigation for the reasons given in this article.

Pat Horwell of the Gondo breaks the story of the year
As reported in the Venice Gondolier Sun, pollution control supervisor John Brennan has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury as part of the EPA's criminal investigation into the city's wastewater operations. Major kudos to Pat Horwell of the Gondo for getting official confirmation and for breaking what will undoubtedly turn out to be the news story of the year in our burg.

As early as last week, I had been receiving reports that Brennan had been subpoenaed and had already testified, but I was unable to get a satisfactory confirmation. Brennan had reportedly brought the subpoena to work and had given photocopies to his superiors prior to his testimony. By last Tuesday I had given up on trying to break the grand jury story. It looked like it was turning into a dead end false lead. I gave what I had to Horwell in the form of an unsubstantiated and possibly wild rumor, figuring that she would fare about as well as I had.

I figured wrong.

By deadline the same day, she was able to get the one thing I couldn't get: a confirmation from an official source that Brennan had been served with a federal grand jury subpoena.

On Wednesday morning, I was floored by the Gondo headline: Brennan subpoenaed by grand jury. A lot of other folks in this town were floored as well, although for entirely different reasons -- they had bought into City Manager George Hunt's tale that the EPA investigation was a minor matter and that the EPA was involved in scads of far more important and bigger investigations.

I've chided Horwell a few times on some of her stories and now I take it all back. She was absolutely dogged in her digging on this one, eating up the phone lines for a solid six hours until she got the one usable quote that blew the whole thing wide open. The one quote that I couldn't get.

Me jealous? Nah. Yeah. Nah. No. Maybe. No. No. Nah.

Alright, I'm a little miffed, sort of like a friendly competitor who lost in a sporting event. She left me in a pile of dust spitting out chunks of her gravel, although she wasn't mean-spirited about it. Ultimately, the truth was served, so I really have nothing to grumble about.

Here's what I have so far
Brennan has reportedly already satisfied the subpoena. According to an informed source, his subpoenaed date to appear before the grand jury was June 19. Six days later, on June 25, Hunt and City Attorney Bob Anderson met with a federal prosecutor and with the EPA's lead investigator in the case, Dan Green.

I called Anderson a day or so after the meeting. Anderson matter-of-factly said he was not at liberty to discuss the matter and stated all public information was to come from Hunt.

Fine. Not a problem. Completely understandable. Anderson was as courteous as could be under the circumstances.

Hunt was less, uh, friendly. Seemingly amazed that I would have the gall to call him, Hunt angrily stated in quick, clipped words that "the EPA has asked me not to discuss the matter, so I am forced not to say anything at this time."

"Did they give you a court order not to talk about it?"

Hunt paused, seemingly caught off guard by the question. "Uh, uh, no."

"So you are not being forced not to talk about it, then. Did they tell you what or when their next move would be?"

"I'm not going to discuss the matter," Hunt snarled back into the phone, making no pretense of hiding his anger.

"Well George, it's always nice talking with you and you have a fantastic day, OK?"

click

"George?"

Another official source in city hall later spelled out to me what Hunt was trying to peddle to city officials about his meeting with the EPA.  According to the source, Hunt stated that the meeting was very amicable and lasted for two hours, from 10:00 am until noon (although Hunt and Anderson did not return to Venice until 4:30 pm that day at the earliest). According to Hunt's account of the meeting, Hunt was told nothing about the status of the investigation, where the evidence was leading the investigators, nada. Hunt reportedly stated he was told that the investigation was a back burner issue with the EPA and that the investigation would probably be completed sometime around December of this year. Hunt went on to say that the EPA commended the city for being cooperative and that Green urged Hunt to continue to be cooperative as the city wouldn't want to find itself in an obstruction of justice situation, a seemingly strange warning to give if the city was indeed fully cooperating.

In other words, Hunt placated the powers that be with the idea that the EPA viewed all of this as a minor fracas of little importance and that the EPA had bigger and more important cases to deal with. They'd get around to us when they got around to us. Hunt made no mention of the fact that grand jury proceedings were already taking place and that at least one city employee had already testified. Oh, and after Hunt had discussed the meeting, he stated that he was not supposed to be discussing the meeting.

And that was it. In a two-hour meeting that required a drive to Tampa, all that was said by the EPA was: we can't talk about our investigation, keep cooperating like you've been doing, this is a back burner issue, and don't discuss this meeting with anyone.

Two hours. If you believe Hunt's account, then you have to infer that somebody was doing a lot of talking, and it apparently wasn't the EPA.

As far as the EPA commending the city for its cooperation, that just doesn't ring true at all. Last year the EPA had to issue a grand jury subpoena to the city for documents after being denied access to them by the wastewater department. These are documents that the EPA had every right to see with just a simple request. So to say that the city has been cooperating is a reach at best. What's more likely is that Hunt received a bit of tongue lashing as to his legal responsibilities to the federal government and a stern warning not to allow the situation to repeat itself. If that happened, then the warning about obstruction makes sense.

"Those are the headlines, and now for the rumors behind the news"
Hunt has taken some some vacation time this past week. So did a number of pollution control supervisors. So did Andrew Froman, attorney for pollution control supervisor Pat Wilson. Of late, the wastewater treatment department has become a ghost town. "It's as quiet as a graveyard lately," one wastewater employee told me. "The supervisors that are left are all keeping hidden in their offices."

What I'm hearing in the scuttlebutt, both from sources who should know and from those that should be clueless about the situation, is that Hunt is in deep doo-doo. Based in part on the nature of the information sought by and available to the EPA during their field investigation, sources are telling me that the focus of the investigation would appear to center on Hunt. From there, the investigation would appear to go up and down a level or two in the food chain, involving four or five other current and former city officials and employees, but it's Hunt's face that is most likely taped on the center of the EPA's dart board.

Why? Because it is evident that the EPA believes that a lot of nasty stuff has happened, Hunt did have firsthand knowledge of some of the goings on and he ignored the warnings and instead attempted to silence the matter. That aspect of Hunt's involvement surfaced in the city's in-house investigation last year into allegations of abuse on the part of four wastewater supervisors.

This EPA investigation is apparently not just about unreported spills. Oh it's about that, but that's just the underlying base. Hunt would normally be on the periphery if it were only a matter of unreported spills. Words like conspiracy and coercion pop up with frightening frequency in conversations about the wastewater treatment department's problems, and with good reason. Hunt's standard modus operendi in managing the city has been to cover up problems and to publicly castigate anyone who would dare to speak out about serious city problems. This retaliatory atmosphere has permeated virtually every department and division in the city with the notable exception of the fire department.

It is exactly this management style, as it related to the wastewater treatment operations, that AFSCME union representative Dennis Rodriguez discussed in an appearance before city council on August 13, 2002. Rodriguez complained of a culture of retribution and lamented the city's lack of initiative in cleaning up its own backyard, while Mayor Dean Calamaras promised that it was a new day in wastewater treatment and that "Saputo-world," as the mayor put it, was a thing of the past (MP3 audio file, includes Rodriguez' entire presentation and the mayor's response - 3:29, 2.5 MBs).

One year later and even a casual observer can see: very little, if anything, has changed.

The big recurring rumor that comes from a variety of sources is that someone in the suspect pool has rolled and spilled the beans in order to make a deal with the prosecutor. The name keeps changing, but the story remains fairly constant. The probability of this happening is exceedingly high, it is a fairly common event in any criminal investigation involving multiple suspects. With a grand jury proceeding in progress, I would be astounded to find out that somebody hadn't rolled by now. There hasn't been any substantive information to indicate exactly who has rolled, but all of us who have been watching this closely have been playing the guessing game and swapping theories. I've made my pick based on some inside information, but I'll keep the name to myself until I find out if I'm right or not.

So what, no big deal, this is only an environmental issue, right? Wrong. Yes, it is an environmental issue, but it is also a criminal one. Just as an example of what the EPA can do, take a look at the case of Fred Kirker, a water superintendent from Mt. Orab, Ohio. Kirker entered a guilty plea in federal court earlier this year. He was accused of falsifying EPA reports and of allowing illegal discharges. While he hasn't been sentenced yet, he's facing up to eight years in prison. So yeah, this is a big deal, this is all a very big deal.

Hunt's strategerie for fending off the wolves and aliens
Within the last month or so, I received a report that in a meeting with several department supervisors, Hunt stated that he wanted to know who was leaking information to the media, specifically this web site, so that they could be fired. "Maybe I should just hire Patten so I can get him to shut up," is a quote that I am told is attributable to Hunt in the same meeting.

In spite of Hunt's directives, or more probably because of them, information has continued to pour in. There's a lot more I could write if I only could get proper confirmations. That said, there is every indication that other city employees have been subpoenaed and have probably already testified. Who and when remains a mystery, due entirely to warnings from the EPA to witnesses to keep quiet.

"Hunt's gone nuts," a city official has told me. "He is absolutely paranoid. This is not the same George Hunt that I knew three years ago." The sentiment has been echoed by a number of other folks, both in and out of city employ. Strangely, pollution control supervisor John Saputo said as much in writing last year in the middle of the city's botched investigation (page 1 | page 2).

To Hunt, it all boils down to a couple of disgruntled employees being urged on by Herb Levine of the Venice Taxpayers League. Add on to the pile this writer and a couple of other area journalists and that's the entire city problem in a nutshell. If it weren't for a handful of people, this city would be in fine shape and would carry the very pristine image of paradise perfected. But at the core of all of the city's problems is Herb Levine.

As the stories have unfolded over the last two to three years, it's become plainly evident that the city's problems go much deeper than just a couple of disgruntled employees. As for Levine -- how many places can a 75-year-old man be at the same time? Levine is fairly astute and he's a darned good digger when it comes to research, but omniscient he ain't.

Meanwhile, the federal grand jury plods on in secret with no discernable time frame for its conclusion. We'll all have to wait for the EPA to announce the results. While nobody seems to know when that will happen, it probably won't be all that far away. Too many people are exhibiting way too many signs of impending doom. Hunt's sales pitch that this can be held off until after the coming November elections appears to be wildly optimistic at best.

Fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a bumpy ride.