Milo vs. Venice, and the judge with a low tolerance for lunacy
For a judge to make a ruling like the one Judge Robert Bennett handed down to the City of Venice, there had to have been one hell of a bad legal decision made by the city -- they had to convict the baby in a case of baby rape for a judge to do that
-- John Patten, 03/21/08
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
What the hell have we done to ourselves? And what the hell are we becoming?

We decided as a town that short-term rentals were the root of all of our property values evils. They must die. By any means possible. Which is the means we ended up using: any means possible.

There was a time when we might have stood a chance at reasonably regulating the practice. That time is gone, thanks to our own incestuous, bull-headed, I-don't-care-how-we-get-there attitude.

Hey, we're Venice. We do things different. Not differently. Different.

I don't know how many times I wrote that we were headed down a bad road in this short-term rental battle, that this was not the way to go. For that, I was constantly hammered on the message board of this site. The posts that accused me of selling out to real estate interests were deleted immediately -- this was never about what I believed was right or wrong about a business model in Venice, this was always about due process. I came to believe that I was surrounded by insane people trying to do a good/bad thing (depending on your point of view) in an insane way.

And I was right all along, which came as no surprise to me.

Judge Robert Bennett's ruling (PDF - 8 pages, or you can read a fairly accurate summary in this Gondo article) did not surprise me. There was never a doubt in my mind that what Venice was attempting to do would end in total flaming failure. The method used to hand down his ruling and the sudden viciousness of making that ruling without even hearing oral arguments -- now that surprised the hell out of me.

Planning commission is evil... or maybe just sane
The city's planning commission was reviled last year for voting 7-0 in favor of Steve Milo and his short-term residential rental biz, VacationRentalPros, this after the city's planning department made the bold decision to take him on and slam him out of town without the benefit of legal counsel (now there's a winning strategy -- to not hire an attorney when you can actually afford one). In the hearing before the planning commission, Richard Rumrell, attorney for Milo, had convinced the commission's only attorney, Jerry Towery, that the city had never explicitly prohibited the practice of using residential houses as resort rentals, a practice common in many Florida resort towns.

After listening to the arguments, Towery, in turn, convinced the rest of the planning commission that, like it or not, the law is the law and that there was no reasonable legal way that the commission could ignore Rumrell's arguments. The commission believed Towery and lock-stepped with him in giving a thumb down to arguments put together by the fine legal team of Planning Director Tom Slaughter, City Manager Marty Black, and then-Mayor Fred Hammett.

Towery was absolutely right to do so, and he became the last sane attorney affiliated with the city's side of the argument to be involved in this mess. After that, the insanity began regaining momentum, taking on a life of its own, surviving a tumultuous election that upended a government.

When the pre-election city council appealed the planning commission's decision, making itself the appellant and the appellate court simultaneously, all legal logic flew out the window. The post-election reconstituted council never blinked, this after a big election win based on the campaign platform that the previous council was nuttier than Jimmy Carter's farmland.

But when it came to the time of decision in the December quasi-judicial hearing before council, I had to wonder what the hell we had wrought in that last election. Having good motives isn't enough -- the subsequent actions based on those motives have to be done in a legal manner, and that was something that this new council hadn't quite grasped.

See no logic, hear no logic, speak no logic
Even Councilman John Moore, a former judge and normally a mind of considerable connected neurological activity, didn't quite seem to be able to grasp that concept. Moore pasted Rumrell in his summary after listening to attorneys for both sides at the December hearing. If you compare the opinions item by item as expressed by Moore in his verbal summary (VIDEO - YouTube) with the later written opinion of Judge Bennett, you will note that the two men took exactly opposite views on almost every detail.

City Attorney Bob Anderson, who had ring-mastered this entire circus, sat silently and watched through the qausi-judicial hearing in December, having abandoned representing the City of Venice. Instead, he had taken on the role of a reluctant and myopic home plate umpire.

Of the two private attorneys hired by citizens to join in with the city against Milo, Greg Roberts and Jon Preiksat, only Preiksat voiced caution. He warned council that their process lacked due and that it would cost his client and the city dearly in the end should council continue in their perilous path. Being of sound mind, he was, of course, roundly ignored. It turns out that he wasn't sound at all: only an insane and suicidal man would walk into an insane mob to tell them that they are insane.

The weirdest thing of all was that Preiksat, in opposing short-term rentals, was posing the same arguments about due process as Rumrell, his opponent, while the judge/juror combo squad that city council had become refused to even acknowledge that due process issues had been raised by either side.

Nothing major, just a few little things: like not actually swearing in witnesses before allowing them to testify, not allowing attorneys to call and examine or cross-examine witnesses, etc. Preiksat and Rumrell raised an unholy ruckus about untidy little inequities of that kind. Sticklers. Go figure.

Anyone could come up and testify voluntarily, but only if they weren't called by any attorney to testify.

Bruce Lebedun, president of Golden Beach Association, along with association member Jim Leis, testified that council should vote against the rentals (VIDEO - YouTube). Likewise, Taxpayers League prez Herb Levine voiced his objection to the practice. Citizen after citizen lined up to speak into the record, almost all urging council to take Richard Rumrell out into the parking lot and shoot him.

I testified under no oath that I objected to being able to testify under no oath. I then stated that under no oath testimony, I was free to say anything I wanted to without fear of reprisal for perjury, but that I might be lying.

Had council listened to Rumrell, had council listened to Preiksat, had council listened to anything logical instead of political, they would never have faced this week's embarrassing judicial pimp-slap from the hand of Judge Robert Bennett.

Miller asked, "Who's Clarence Darrow?"

That Rumrell lost at city council's command performance was predictable. The council chamber was standing room only and the obligatory mob had brought along the obligatory mentality of mob that blinds logic.

7-0 was the council vote to throw logic and the law out of the window. Completely predictable and, as it turned out, completely dumb, unnecessarily expensive, and legally suicidal.

Dude: that judge just crapped down your throat
It would take several months for a circuit court judge to review the arguments and uphold the planning commission's ruling. When Judge Bennett finally reviewed the written documents, he blew a judicial nut, and he hadn't even heard oral arguments yet. He granted Certiorari (giving himself jurisdiction as a court of appeals in the case), tried the case, "quashed" the city council decision, upheld the planning commission decision, and withdrew Certiorari -- all in one tight and tidy eight-page document.

Granted, I'm a legal layman, but I didn't even know it was possible to do all of that in one document, let alone in eight double-spaced pages. I'll bet I can find some lawyers who also didn't know that it was possible to do that.

That Judge Bennett didn't want to personally hear from city council members or their appointed attorneys is painfully obvious. In a vicious ruling that ripped off the head of the council collective and crapped down its throat, Bennett said one thing loud and clear: You crazy bastards can stay the hell out of my courtroom on this one, thank you very much -- now go away!

Any attorney will tell you -- for a judge to do all of that in one document in an appeal at the circuit court level, you have to have made one hell of a bad legal decision. You had to have convicted the baby in a case of baby rape for a judge to do that.

Aw crap, now we're gonna have to do it the right way
And so now council will have to do what a few sane people (LIKE ME) had said all along: if you want to outlaw short-term rentals, draft the proper ordinances to do it and do it the right way.

It may be too late, though. Even if city council and city staff had started that process a year ago, Milo's properties (and anyone else's that had already obtained the required resort/hotelier licenses from the state) would be grandfathered in. That will still be the case. Local rental agencies are already aware of this. At least one that I spoke with two days ago is considering advising all of its property owners to apply for the license, even if the property owners don't plan on using them, just so the city can't take that rental option away. The word is already out in the real estate and home rental biz: as long as you have the required paperwork before the city passes an ordinance (which will take at least a couple of months, more likely almost a year), you're untouchable for as long as you own the property.

Thus, the very beast that city hall and Golden Beach were trying to destroy has now been unleashed upon them. Even Steve Milo is not too happy about that. In a phone interview yesterday, Milo should have been elated at his victory. Instead, he sounded melancholy, as though he had punched out a good friend that, admittedly, deserved a good clocking. His legal fees, which he estimates at several hundred thousand dollars, will be the next battle he has with the city. He will win that too, all in a sad final victory in a bitter civil war within Venice when one was never necessary. It's all a fight that Milo wishes had never been started, an unnecessary expense for everyone except the lawyers involved, who made a bundle.

Better stock up on sore throat medicine and antibiotics, because...
Oh, and, uhhh... one other thing. Bennett isn't done yet. He ordered the city to issue written arguments in the case of Sorrento Ranches versus The City of Venice. That's the lawsuit filed by homeowners living near the proposed Bella Citta condominium development out in what has become known as North Venice. Attorney Dan Lobeck's 40-page complaint in that case has an inordinate number of arguments that are nearly identical to those posed by Rumrell in the short-term rental case.

Note to council: don't stitch your head back on very securely, cuz I have a feeling that it's gonna get ripped off again for another judicial throat crapping.

In legal predictions, I'm 5-0
I told the city way back when that they were going to get creamed by the EPA. It took several years, but the city ended up pleading guilty in Federal court to numerous felonies. I stood with the Taxpayers League and told the city that they were in for an ugly end in the FAA diversion of revenue investigation. I warned the city about employee harassment in the Troy Evans case -- the city made an out of court settlement with three employees after it became painfully obvious that they were going to get boot-stomped in court. I took AFSCME president Ralph Hammann's side when the city tried to falsely accuse him of causing chlorine spills at the city's dilapidated water treatment facility -- Hammann won handily in arbitration. And I warned the city that Milo and Rumrell would prevail in this latest fiasco.

Every single time I made one of these predictions and issued a stop-the-madness plea, I was criticized and reviled. Those predictions. the stances that I took, and the subsequent public criticism that I endured afterwards, are probably the most significant factors in how many of the people in the public and the press came to label my rhetoric as unnecessarily inflammatory. In other words, in the parts of town where I have earned a bad name, this is how I earned it. A funny thing about human nature: people don't like to be told that they are stupidly about to chop their own arm off. They have a tendency to blame the dismemberment on the very person who tried to warn them not to do it.

Still, I'm 5-0 so far in municipal legal predictions. Forgive me for feeling so cocky. Forgive me also for my vanity in thinking that I'm one of the few sane people left within city limits. Because I'm not. Aside from the planning commission as a whole, I can think of two other sane people involved in this mess, and only two.

Jerry Towery and Jon Preiksat, wherever you are: I salute you for being men of logic and honor. The two of you will, of course, be suitably punished and reviled, both for speaking the truth and for being proven right.

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.