Venice on the web
A semi-regular column

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
On August 22, 2003, then-City Manager George Hunt [photo at right] committed a rare and gracious act. Utilities supervisor Warren "Skip" Petitt was before Hunt on a disciplinary action. Petitt was accused of falsifying city records in a disciplinary hearing that Hunt was presiding over. It was a serious allegation, and Utilities Director John Lane had pulled no punches in putting together a convincing case. On August 22, Hunt dismissed the charges with little to no explanation as to why.

In defending himself, Petitt had maintained that he was framed. It was an odd allegation against Petitt, as Petitt had reportedly made the same allegations about his superiors in the Utilities Department in the past. Petitt's allegations were turned in to the EPA about a year and a half earlier, as were similar allegations made by fellow utils supervisor Troy Evans. In fact, the pair of them had caused an all-out panic in the department, as the EPA subsequently launched a massive criminal investigation into unlawful spills, falsified records, coercion, extortion and a host of other crimes, one of two separate criminal investigations by the EPA that are both still ongoing (the second investigation was launched earlier this year when this web site discovered asbestos that was being stored in the open air behind the city's drinking water treatment plant).

If the allegations against Petitt stuck, as Lane hoped they would, it would help to discredit Petitt's allegations made to the EPA. Or at least that was the plan.

So why would Hunt arbitrarily and summarily dismiss the charge against Petitt?

The story behind the dismissal reveals Hunt as being every bit as Machiavellian as this site has painted him out to be for several years and shows a city government at its most evil and duplicitous.

A little background
In the month prior to Hunt's decision to dismiss the case against Petitt, Hunt had held a meeting with all department heads in the city. The city was out of control, Hunt reportedly stated. Employees were leaking information to authorities and to the media, information that was embarrassing to Hunt, Lane and council. Information that would upset the public and that could potentially topple the Good Ol' Boy regime.

A lot of that info was showing up on this web site, and readership was growing. Hunt wanted the leaks stopped and his only tool was terror. Lane and Hunt were even investigating the possibility of trying to shut this web site down through legal means, but City Attorney Bob Anderson's response to the suggestion was to tell the pair to get a life [PDF document, 2 pages].

Hunt informed the department heads that they were to regain control of their employees at all costs. He wanted disciplinary actions and lots of them, a parade of employees. Hunt himself would preside over the hearings.

One by one, nervous employees were ushered into Hunt's office. The story was the same: "Tell me what I want to know and I can make this all go away." What Hunt wanted to know was dirt. Dirt on a select few that had really climbed under his skin. Four people, to be exact. He wanted dirt on Troy Evans and Skip Petitt and he wanted it badly. James Campbell was also suspected of being an EPA informer, so his name was also on Hunt's short list.

And there was one other name Hunt wanted dirt on, only this person was different. This person wasn't a city employee, so Hunt couldn't hold his job over his head, but Hunt wanted him just as badly. That fourth and final name on Hunt's short death-wish list was mine -- John Patten. Hunt wanted me perhaps worst of all, as I was viewed as an inciter to the rest of the lawless brigands who had lain siege to the Good Ol' Boy network. "Maybe I should have given Patten a job just to shut him up," Hunt was quoted as saying at the aforementioned department head meeting.

Or maybe Hunt had placed Evans on the top of his hit parade. It was known that Evans was an EPA informer and Hunt strongly suspected that Evans was feeding information to me. If he could get Evans, Hunt probably reasoned, he'd get two birds with one stone. But Petitt was the first to deal with, and this strongly fabricated disciplinary case caused Petitt to seek legal counsel in the form of labor attorney Tommy Meyer.

A tough bit of bad luck
In going after Petitt, one of the prized four targets of his own personal vendetta, Hunt did something peculiar in its stupidity, perhaps based on his own recent experience in being questioned by the EPA in Tampa. Instead of grabbing Petitt and squashing him while he had him, Hunt decided to try to see if Petitt would roll. Maybe Petitt could give Evans' head or even mine. And so, with Tommy Meyer and then-Assistant City Manager Jane O'Connor in the room, Hunt made his pitch -- give me somebody else's head, somebody's head that I want even worse than yours, and you can keep yours. Evans' name was mentioned. Meyer and Petitt conferred and then agreed to see what they could do.

Hunt made an ill-conceived and tragic mistake that day, and he did it because he lacked two key pieces of information.

The first thing that Hunt didn't know was that Evans had been lawyered up for quite some time.

The second thing that Hunt didn't know was who Evans had lawyered up with.

Tommy Meyer.

The same Tommy Meyer who represented Skip Petitt.

Tough bit of bad luck, that.

The invitations are sent
Meyer subsequently met with both Evans and Petitt. Evans agreed to allow Petitt to sell him out. The two friends would publicly have some sort of staged falling out. Petitt, Evans and Meyer then went through Evans' papers looking for something mildly damaging -- nothing that would give Hunt too much ammunition, but enough to satisfy his lust for dirt. I still don't know what it was that the trio came up with as Hunt apparently never used it for its intended purpose, but it evidently fit the bill.

One other party was invited to the party. The FBI.  Since Hunt had made it a tunnel-visioned priority to go after three individuals who all happened, by sheer coincidence, to be EPA informants, Meyer felt that maybe this all fell under obstruction of justice or witness tampering or whistleblowing laws -- something along those lines. The FBI agreed with Meyer's line of thinking. They saw a potential hit show. They wanted to tape a pilot episode.

And so, in mid-August of 2003, armed with some really cool and subversive-looking federal recording equipment, Meyer and Petitt met once again with George Hunt and Jane O'Connor behind closed doors. A discussion ensued. Papers changed hands. Hands were shook. Smiles. Lots of smiles. It was a shiny, happy moment for all. Meyer and Petitt were assured that there would be no more trouble for them, that the disciplinary action against Petitt was now officially dismissed.

Baited. Hooked. Netted and snatched.

Hunt never saw it coming, in spite of the fact that that he baited the hook himself with his own quid pro quo offer.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition
Hunt also was making noises that I was about to get some long deserved come-uppance. I never did find out what Hunt had planned for me other than trying to talk the city attorney into somehow shutting this web site down (and maybe that's all Hunt had planned). By this point in time, I viewed Hunt as a terrorist with a job title and I had completely lost faith in city council's ability to control or direct his actions.

I was able to cut Hunt off at the knees by exposing his new employee relations tactics publicly. In a piece that was posted to the web on September 9, 2003, I compared Hunt's tactics to Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch while I informed city employees how to tell Hunt to shove it up his arse. Included in the piece was info on how to contact the EPA and the union along with instructions about how to report any wrongdoing that Hunt might be involved in. The piece worked amazingly well in its intended outcome: Hunt immediately divorced himself from any further disciplinary hearings with the notable exception of Troy Evans.

Hilariously, Hunt reportedly started making a whole new set of noises, this time about religious persecution. I received information to the effect that Hunt was trying to make a public case that his face photoshopped into the famed Monty Python sketch [above, taken from original story] was an anti-Catholic statement on my part, that I was making a statement equivalent to a racist dig.

I don't know about anyone else who knew that story, but I was laughing about it for weeks. If my Irish-Catholic mother had still been alive, I wouldn't have been able to keep her from going down to city hall and boxing Hunt's ears, and that thought alone had me in hysterics.

Evans gets the heat... again
Hunt's evil gaze was soon to fall on Evans. This would not be the first time that Hunt would target the wastewater employee. Back in 2002, Evans had gone around to various members of council in an attempt to warn the city of the legal problems they were heading into with the EPA. Evans had meetings with Hunt, Mayor Dean Calamaras, Councilman David Farley and Councilwoman Martha Hanneman. Councilman Jim Myers refused to return Evans' calls.

Calamaras, Hunt and Farley all reportedly gave Evans a very, very hard time -- the message Evans received was "Shut up and learn your place." Of all of council, only Hanneman took the allegations seriously and she was seriously shocked. Hanneman immediately contacted the EPA to make sure that the federal agency really was aware of the allegations. She was routed over to EPA criminal investigator Dan Green, who, according to Hanneman, informed her that he was well aware of the allegations and that there was an active criminal investigation in progress. Green reportedly instructed Hanneman to not discuss the details of the investigation with anyone.*

It was rumored, and is still unconfirmed, that Evans had shopped the facts around to council under orders from the EPA as a way to test the various public officials and to see how high the criminal involvement went. If Evans was indeed acting under the supervision of the EPA at the time, only Hanneman passed the test with Myers taking a lucky bye. Calamaras, Farley and Hunt all failed miserably, and all three gleefully participated in a public high-temperature roasting of Evans at the city council meeting of August 27, 2002, the excuse being that Evans had supposedly violated the chain of command.

Sanity is such a subjective thingamabob
But now, in late 2003, Hunt was gearing up for a new attack on Evans, the most vicious to date. Evans had already been promoted to supervisory status quite some time before, this apparently done to remove him from union protection. Hunt mistakenly thought that Evans had no attorney, so he viewed Evans as naked and vulnerable.

It would later prove to be, possibly quite literally, a near-fatal mistake.

The subsequent attack on Evans was brutal, but Hunt apparently didn't use any of the material that Meyer and Petitt provided. Instead, Hunt and O'Connor went after Evans for a June 6, 2003, letter that Evans had written in protest over being blamed verbally for something that he claimed he didn't do. Evans wanted the letter to be placed in his personnel file. Hunt and O'Connor took the stance that such a request was outrageous insubordination of the highest order and that such a request (again) violated the chain of command. Hunt went so far as to write that Evans might be a little wacky in the head for wanting to work for the city when it was clear that Evans was unhappy about so many of the city's actions. O'Connor stepped up and issued a memo that ordered Evans to undergo psychological counseling.

"I strongly urge you to use the EAP [psych evaluation] sessions to examine why you wish to continue working in an environment you feel is so troublesome to your image of how it should work... Based on your attitude and opinion of the City of Venice and its Administration, you should certainly consider seeking employment with an organization that shares your interpretation of values and your view of the world."
-- George Hunt, letter to Troy Evans, 08/24/03

And then Hunt and O'Connor got blasted with one single shot that simultaneously hit them both right between the eyes: a letter from Evans' lawyer accusing the city of violating the federal whistleblower laws, signed by none other than Tommy Meyer himself.

Panic hit city hall like a tidal wave. One signature at the bottom of a letter, that of Meyer, informed Hunt and O'Connor that they had been duped big time. O'Connor hid the letter from the public and the media, citing some insurance nonsense that darned near started a Freedom of Information Act battle from the media. Some of the information, with heavily redacted edits, was finally and begrudgingly released, but it was a moot point. Meyer's letter was leaked in total to the media, including the city's redacted information about Evans' ordered sanity tune-up.

The media frenzy rose and then died, things subsequently quieted down. Hunt and O'Connor still were unaware that they had been recorded as featured soloists in a federal recording session. Evans served out a suspension without pay, although he took a pass on visiting the municipal headshrinker. Meyer's letter floated to the background of the collective consciousness.

Hunt thought he had gotten away with it. Or maybe the significance of it all never really ever hit him.

At least not yet, anyway.

"The newspapers will figure it all out... and we'll all be in trouble"
In late December, 2003, just before New Year's, I was following a story lead about how the city was hooking up four or five houses that were just outside of city limits with city drinking water. The residents all lived next to the Eastside Wastewater Treatment Plant and they had been complaining for several years that their wells were tainted. I had just been out at the job site and had observed city employees laying pipe underneath a county road. The county hadn't been informed (that's a no-no) and would later throw a major fit about that.

The story would prove to be bigger and more time intensive then I could handle, so I subsequently turned over my info to Janel Stephens at the Herald-Trib. My story about the water hookups was never written, as Stephens turned in a fine job.

Anyway, I had just run into Gary Anderson at city hall. Anderson had, just a month and a half earlier, lost to John Simmonds in a bid for a seat on city council. I explained to Anderson what I had discovered about the water hookups and Anderson decided to tag along to Hunt's office for the fun of it. We went to Hunt's office and stood in the empty foyer.

Hunt's secretary, Lori Siegman, was gone when we arrived, and Hunt's door was wide open. Hunt could be heard talking in his office with councilman Jim Myers. Myers was angry at Hunt, apparently over the water hookups: "You can't have those men out there in broad daylight, the newspapers will figure it out and then they'll get it all wrong and blow it out of proportion and we'll all be in trouble."

Anderson and I looked at each other in amazement. What were the odds of accidentally overhearing that particular sentence?

Siegman arrived and in her usual hostile manner asked us what Anderson and I were doing. I told her we had come to see George. She went in to Hunt's office and informed him that we were waiting.

Hunt came out almost immediately and I started asking him about the water hookups. Hunt shifted straight into auto-deception mode without even pausing: "Those are all homes that have been annexed into the city."

"No they aren't, I was just out there," I replied.

"Well some of them are," Hunt stated.

"Wanna try that again?"

"Well, we're going to be annexing them soon. John Lane has all the details, you need to talk to him."

I could hear something getting banged around in Hunt's office -- it was now Jim Myers chance to overhear a conversation he wasn't involved in, and I assumed that the banging was some kind of sign of displeasure. Siegman exited and went down the hall.

"What the hell was that?"
Having received my expected and standard municipal falsehood from Hunt, I switched topics and asked him about a rumor I had heard: "Did you get another letter from Tommy Meyer, this one about a whistleblower claim on behalf of Skip Petitt?"

Hunt looked sincerely puzzled. I couldn't tell if it was an act. Maybe the rumor was wrong, maybe Meyer hadn't sent a letter on behalf of Petitt. "No, why? Petitt got what he wanted, he was fully restored and the write-up was tossed." Hunt was fishing -- he wanted to know how much I knew. "Why, does Skip want something else now?"

I still didn't know for sure if Meyer had indeed sent such a letter, it was only a rumor, so I decided to run a bluff just to see what Hunt's reaction would be: "Yeah, right. Well, you and I both know the real story on that one, George, and we both know it ain't over."

You'd have thought I had shot him. In an instant epiphany, Hunt suddenly understood the painful ramification of Evans and Petitt sharing the same attorney. Worse, he knew that I knew the story.

Hunt grabbed his chest and staggered backwards, almost falling. He landed, still standing, against the door jam, where he rolled almost drunkenly in a pivot that sent him spinning back into his office and suddenly out of our sight. The terror on his face, just before pivoting around the doorway, was unmistakable.

I know that the above sounds melodramatic and exaggerated. It's not, it's exactly what happened. It was flat out bizarre.

Myers immediately called out to Hunt, asked him what was wrong and then told him to sit down. Anderson and I, now alone in Hunt's foyer, looked at each other in astonishment. "What the hell was that?" Anderson asked.

"I dunno. I guess the interview is over."

We both figured that whatever had just happened, Myers could handle it (besides, I never believed that Hunt stopped carrying his gun), so we left. In the days that followed, Hunt took some unexpected time off. I heard rumors that he was seeing a heart man for angina or some related health issue.

Within a few weeks, Hunt would submit his resignation. The primary reason Hunt gave for his resignation was health issues. I didn't doubt it for a second.

*Update 07/30/04: Venice Florida! dot com received a correction request e-mail from Martha Hanneman on 07/29/04. In that e-mail, Hanneman wrote, "I did not contact the EPA first, as I remember, grant you it was two years ago. Dan Green contacted me first. Also, he told me that I could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice if I spoke to anyone about the investigation."

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.