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 Herald-Trib's article on Hizzoner and the airport: High on
fumes, short on facts
Past entries in Mayor's blog, past city council videos refute H-T's allegation of a secret airport plan; airport business group,
Venice Neighborhoods Coalition, and the Venice Taxpayers League all accuse
Herald-Trib of a bum rush
-- John Patten, 04/30/008
--
jpatten@veniceflorida.com
Got a comment?
Make
it here.
WTF? H-T ODs on LSD?
There is soooooo much wrong in the
Herald-Trib's article of April 29 on the airport and possible Sunshine Law
violations that trying to describe this complicated mess
almost defies description.
One thing is clear: this appears to have the city manager's handprints
all over it. While nobody on council is willing to publicly confirm, this is quite likely the straw that breaks the camel's back. Black
is currently in Las Vegas, but he's likely to face a lynching upon his return.
I don't know how long Black can now survive as city
manager, but my best guess is somewhere in single digit weeks.
At Tuesday's transportation workshop, citizens from
across the political spectrum denounced the article. Chuck Schmieler, of Venice Airport Business Association, joined in with Herb Levine of the
Venice Taxpayers League to denounce the article as fiction -- while it is not
uncommon for loud protests to take place over any given political story, those are two
seemingly dynamically opposed groups. The fact that the two men agreed loudly
is highly significant and incredibly surreal.
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What the Herald-Trib published |
What Venice Florida! dot com has
verified |
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"When
Mayor Ed Martin traveled to Washington, D.C., last month to talk with
federal officials about Venice's airport, he carried a surprise in his
briefcase: a plan that called for discouraging jets from landing in
the city." |
Three not true statements in the opening paragraph.
First: The "plan" was hardly a secret
or a surprise --
citizens and council knew that both Mike Rafferty, an opponent of growth at
the airport, and the Venice Airport Business Association, a newly formed
group to promote growth at the airport, had been communicating and
developing suggestions and ideas to resolve conflicts. The two groups each
developed separate preliminary conceptual maps of the airport, which were
then submitted to the city March 4 and 5 in the hopes that some of their
ideas might be incorporated into later. This was discussed at
city council meetings. They were
received by city hall a week before Mayor Ed Martin's trip to Washington to
talk with the FAA.
Martin discussed some of this on his blog
(here
and
here, e.g.).
Second: The "plan" (actually
two different plans) does suggest
rolling back to a B-II (B-2) airport, but proponents state that would curtail little to no
current functionality. It would definitely not discourage jets from landing at the
airport -- nobody was suggesting that.
Third: As Chuck Schmieler pointed out, these are not plans as
such, rather they are conceptual drawings, although everyone keeps referring to
them
as plans. While this seems like a splitting of hairs here, Schmieler thought it was
important to note, so I'm mentioning it. |
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"Not
only had Martin's companions on the trip, City Manager Marty Black and
airport administrator Fred Watts, not seen the plan, few others in Venice
had, either -- even though it determines whether the city gets more than $4
million in federal grants for airport improvements." |
Few others had seen it because it wasn't
quite ready for formal prime time unveiling and because they were received
by the city on March 4 and 5.
That said, there was no attempt to hide the docs' existence
and there was every attempt to disseminate the knowledge of their existence.
That the Herald-Trib never saw them is attributable to the fact that they
never asked for them until late April, and copies were provided based on
their request.
According to John
Simmonds' statements in the videos below, the docs were available on the
table in council's shared office space prior to Martin's Washington trip of
March 12-14. As for this doc being responsible for getting federal grants,
no, not even close. It was a work in progress, the result of a collective
brainstorm session, not anything close to a finished product.
The only thing close to insidious
secrecy happened when the Herald-Trib finally got around to asking to see
the docs in late April. There was some hemming and hawing that lasted about
an hour, as Mayor Martin wasn't quite sure initially if the docs were actual
public records when first asked by the Herald-Trib. Hizzoner called the H-T
back within an hour and stated that the H-T was free to have the copies --
that was admittedly a big mistake on the part of the Mayor, but one that he
cleaned up himself and apologized for. |
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"Martin
and a small group of supporters who shared his strong opposition to growth
at the airport developed the plan in private." |
Big, big, big fiction. First off, there were two different
plans developed by two different groups of citizens that were each turned
over to the city at nearly identical points in time. The Herald-Trib seems
to have merged the two groups and the city into one big group with one big
plan. By all accounts of those involved,
Mayor Martin was not involved in the development of the documents other than
public, on-the-record discussions held in council meetings. He received a
copy and promised the citizens he would sound it off on the FAA in
Washington to see if
they liked any of the ideas. I believe that is called responding to one's
constituency, but what the hell do I know? |
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"He
characterizes it as a grass-roots effort to 'work around some problems' --
mainly the potential inclusion of several upscale houses and a city golf
course in a federally mandated safety zone.
"'It is a citizen plan,' said Martin, who won office last year after
campaigning on a slow-growth and limited airport development platform." |
OK, this part is true. |
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"But
Martin and the group may have created other problems, including possible
violations of state open government laws." |
And back into fiction again. A group of private citizens came
up with a bunch of ideas, formulated them into a document and handed that
document over to city hall. Some or all of those
ideas would, in turn, be vetted and possibly folded into formal government
plans pending public review and further general public input -- that was the
idea, anyway, as Martin discussed it in council meetings and on his blog.
Meanwhile, Jim Marble, one of the contributors to the doc,
was appointed to the Airport Advisory Board on February 22. Even if Martin
had met with Marble after the board appointment, it would not have been a
Sunshine Law violation: they are not on the same board.
Marble, Chuck
Schmieler of VABA, and Mayor Martin all deny that Martin attended any of
their meetings or knew of what they were doing other than what
the group shared with the city through public documents and speaking at city
council. The process was a bit jerky, but never closed from the public, yet the Herald-Trib made
clear allegations of illegal wrongdoings. I'd be curious to hear from the
Herald-Trib's lawyers as to what possible law was broken here and how. |
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"Martin, who spent years
as a federal education bureaucrat in Washington, is undaunted. He sent a
letter Monday urging favorable FAA consideration of the plan and asking an
agency manager in Orlando to meet with some of the 'team leaders' who helped
develop it." |
True. This was discussed openly at the March 25th city
council meeting and council voted to approve of the mayor's actions. By this
time, the docs presented by the groups had been public records for well over
a month, available for free reading at city hall or for ten cents a page to
anyone who wanted to take a copy home.
Note the tone: 'bureaucrat' is an insult word in journalism,
usually reserved for op-ed pieces, not straight news. I know: I've used the
word quite frequently as a deliberate insult.
One funny thing here is that when Black and then- Mayor Fred
Hammett went to Washington a year or two ago to try to get HUD money for a
marina (don't laugh -- it really happened), nobody had ever discussed that
in open council. It came as a total surprise to all when Paul Quinlan reported that
little item in the Herald-Trib, but there was no mention of Sunshine Law
violations from the paper at that time. In fact, despite the seemingly
inappropriate attempt at using HUD money for a luxury buildout, the Herald-Trib barely
raised an eyebrow after that. Ditto on Black and Hammett's attempt to get the National Guard to move
in to the airport. |
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"Although the mayor calls it a
private citizens' group, it is doing the work of a public body and should
operate in the open, said Adria Harper, director of First Amendment
Foundation, a Tallahassee advocacy group. "'Decisions
are going to be made, but we don't know when they are going to be made and
how,' she said. 'Citizens
are left twiddling their thumbs while this happens.'
"Florida's Sunshine Law
requires that meetings where public policy is being made be open to the
public. Two or more elected officials cannot even discuss public business in
private. Violations carry criminal penalties; at a minimum any decisions
made would be null and void, Harper said." |
Adria Harper gave a somewhat different
analysis of the situation to Venice Florida! dot com once further elements
of this story were explained.
According to Harper, such a violation would have to be sorted
out in a court and it would be unlikely that this mess would ever get to
one.
Assuming it did make it into court (if
I understand Harper's convoluted email correctly), it would all hinge on
whether Schmieler, Rafferty, etc. were considered a private group of
citizens or a government board by proxy.
This, in turn, would likely hinge on
whether they had sole input into the final plan. Which they didn't, don't,
and won't. |
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"A few council members expressed
concern about the private group running afoul of open meeting laws, but the
issue has not been discussed at a meeting." |
Not discussed at a meeting? Oh really? How
do you account for the three video clips below? Claymation from
Venice Florida! dot com's crack animation team? |
IT'S EVIDENCE OVERKILL TIME:
Three ten-minute videos
from the March 25th city council meeting -- one month before the
Herald-Tribune labeled this as a secret process
...and on and on and
on ad nauseam. Council finally votes to support a motion for the mayor to
take the ideas to Orlando, bounce the ideas off of the FAA there, then bring
back what floats and get ready to parade it before the public for input.
Did I mention that this was a public meeting?
TECH NOTE: There's a missing 5-second
hiccup in part 3 from where the 1GB VOB files on the DVD are split -- it's
seamless when you watch it as a DVD, but the
conversion to web video files creates a dropout
between the DVD file parts.
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.
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