"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
or, more commonly,
"The lady protests too much, methinks."
 -- Queen Gertrude, Hamlet; III, ii

Schlock and straw
George Hunt's column in the July 16th edition of the Gondolier Sun was a shock and awe job that failed to do either.

Hunt railed about a seemingly outrageous brouhaha over a miniscule 300-gallon spill. As I stated in front of council several weeks ago when Utilities Director John Lane made the same pitch, this is a straw man argument: the issue isn't the 300 gallons and it never was. If it was just about a lousy 300-gallon spill, I never would have written a piece about it, and I doubt the Gondolier Sun would have, either.

The issue was and is about what happened after the 300-gallon spill. The issue is about an unsecured valve handle that should not have been left unsecured. The issue is about how the city never bothered to rope the area off to keep children from playing in an area where they are known to wade and go fishing. The issue is about the explanation from Lane that those kids aren't supposed to be allowed in the creek at that location anyway, and that those aren't city kids, they live a couple of blocks away across the city/county boundary line. The issue is that since there is no legal requirement to put up a warning sign in a spill of a mere 300 gallons, the city felt there was no ethical requirement either, despite measured elevated bacteria counts in the water that lasted for several days.

Beyond that, the issue is about how the city couldn't give a straight answer about a lousy 300-gallon spill. In fact, a few straight answers right off the bat would have made the whole episode a non-story. It was the city's duck-and-weave job that turned the incident into a story.

Meanwhile, back at the Reality Ranch
The original Gondo article of 05/31/03 and the accompanying front page photo that Hunt complains about is directly on point. In the article, Lane is quoted as stating that the offending valve had been removed and would be replaced at a later date. Removed. Past tense. In the accompanying photo, which had been taken after Lane's quote, the offending valve was clearly visible -- it can be seen pointing downwards in the lower right hand corner of the pic.

At the time of the spill, there was an unsecured valve handle on the leaky valve, a DEP no-no according to folks I talked to in the county and at the DEP. Neighbors complained about it and the city shrugged its collective shoulders. I started asking questions about it, and within minutes a work crew was dispatched to secure it, in this case by removing the handle itself. When I subsequently asked John Lane how many other unsecured valve handles were attached to the city's pipes, he stated he hadn't a clue, that he had never given a thought about it.

Lane initially stated to me on 05/29/03 that he believed there was a failure in the valve that caused the spill. After some prodding, he acknowledged the possibility that the valve could have been tampered with. He finally stated that he didn't really know what had caused the spill, and that the cause would be investigated.

Lane was interviewed by the Gondolier on the next day. According to the paper, he stated definitively that a rupture had caused the spill.

Shortly before the spill, neighbors had seen area children at the location climbing around on the pipes. By the time the spill was first noticed, the children had disappeared, leading residents and myself to wonder if the children had caused the leak.

---------

NOTE: George Hunt's article originally appeared in the print edition of the Venice Gondolier Sun on July 16, 2003, a copyrighted periodical. While we could not secure permission from the Gondolier to reprint the article, it falls under the domain of public record, as Hunt distributed the article on city time and represented himself as the city manager.

I still remain skeptical, but it truly doesn't matter what caused the leak. What matters is the way a select few city officials give inaccurate and sometimes deliberately deceptive answers to straight and simple questions. That and the possibility of barefoot non-city kids knee-deep in sewage contaminated water.

Again, that is the issue, Mr. Hunt: that is the issue and it has been from the get go. The big deal about a little spill was never about the spill. Nice try in diversionary tactics, but that flag isn't getting any salutes.

If ya can't dazzle 'em with brilliance...
Now comes Hunt to Lane's defense with a paranoiac rant: Oh, it's the Taxpayers League in a secret conspiracy with the Gondolier.

I have news for you, George: the Venice Taxpayers League ain't exactly thrilled with the Gondo. They feel that the paper has been too soft on you and on council due to CQG/GOB ties. They think the paper should have called for your resignation several years back. I don't buy the CQG/GOB tie-in, as the Gondo has been pretty aggressive in allowing all points of view to surface, but I do wonder what it would finally take for the Gondo to make the statement that it's time to give you the boot.

Continuing with his conspiracy theory, Hunt rants about the Gondolier's Taxpayers League "secret sources" in a subsequent story that the paper published about an EPA grand jury subpoena. Two of the Federal grand jury subpoenas are in the public record and a third has been verified and clearly sourced by the Gondo. The Gondolier clearly identified their source as Brennan's attorney, Brett McIntosh, in the second paragraph when they broke the story about wastewater employee John Brennan receiving a Fed grand jury subpoena.

After somehow missing seeing McIntosh's name in the initial story and referring to him instead as an unnamed Taxpayers League "secret source," Hunt incredibly and unbelievably denies that a Federal grand jury is looking into Venice's wastewater department: "...as of July 9, there was no grand jury impaneled in Tampa."

Huh???

Take a number
The Gondolier complains that the city has stopped communicating with them due to stories that did not meet with the Hunt seal of approval.

To the Gondo, I say: Take a number. OurTown50.com, WWSB-TV News40 and Venice Florida! dot com have all received the same treatment for showing Hunt in an unfavorable light, with News40 being told that one of their reporters, Silke Rible, was no longer welcome at city hall. That makes you number 4.

As to the 800,000 gallon spill at the county's Jacaranda wastewater plant, the Gondo addresses the issue. I won't. It's another straw man. Absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Eh, what the heck. A bad metaphor is hard to resist. As long as Hunt wants to compare the city and the county: when was the last time the county was the subject of an EPA grand jury investigation? If the county broke both its legs with just one spill, as Hunt posits, Venice is in a body cast and neck halo.

Of some interest in all of this is Hunt's curious use of language. For starters, there's Hunt's use of the word "editorial." Not a column. Not an article. Hunt claimed he wrote an "editorial," as in "my editorial," and then stated that the newspaper's delayed publication of it was prima facie evidence of the vast illicit VTL/Gondo conspiracy against him.

The Gondo didn't comment on the usage of the word "editorial," but I'll guarantee that they didn't miss the implication. Editors, publishers and owners of publications write editorials. Some publications employ the use of the oxymoron "guest editorial," but the Gondo isn't one of them.

What was really odd, though, was Hunt's mangled and misspelled Shakespearean barbarism that, in reality, stated the exact opposite of what he was trying to say. Hunt missed the real meaning of the irony of the famed quote. It was the guilty party, the murderous Queen Gertrude, who uttered the comment on oddly excessive unsolicited denials, thus confirming her own guilt in Hamlet's eyes of the murder of his father. Queen Gertrude utters the famed phrase while watching a play in which another murderous Queen is proclaiming her love and innocence to her intended homicide victim. Although somewhat obscured by overuse, the true meaning of that phrase for the speaker is, "I suspect you are guilty, I know I am guilty."

"Oh shame, where is thy blush?"
-- Hamlet, Hamlet; III, iv