State ethics board rejects plea offer from city's former computer department head
Steve Randall offered to pay $4,700 in fines, ethics board says that's not good enough
-- John Patten, 12/10/05, REVISED 12/12/05
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Steve Randall, the city's former computer department director, had his plea agreement rejected by the Florida Commission on Ethics last week. According to a commission press release dated December 7, Randall's attorney, R. William Rutter, offered a plea deal that would have allowed Randall to pay a civil fine of $4,700.

On December 2, the commission rejected the plea offer.

According to the press release, Randall's proposed stipulation as submitted by his attorney made the admission that "...Randall had a prohibited conflict of interest by purchasing services for the City from a computer business he owned and by having a contractual relationship with the business while it was doing business with the City. It also found that Randall misused his position to contract with his own personal business to provide services to the City that were available through other companies."

In rejecting the proposed stipulated sanctions from Randall's attorney, the commission stated it wanted either a renegotiation or a public hearing. Randall could face up to a maximum of a $10,000 civil fine, an order of restitution for $12,140 and public censure and reprimand. The commission does not have the authority to impose any criminal sanctions.

Randall was before the board on a complaint filed by Gary A. Anderson in 2003. The complaint was a summary of articles that had appeared here on Venice Florida! dot com. The articles had chronicled how Randall had secretly billed the city for $12,140 worth of work from a company that Randall owned. Included in the billings: Randall charged the city for a total of $4,700 for an amateurish web site and for web hosting that was never provided. The false billings took place in 2000 and 2001.

Then-police chief Joe Slapp and then-city manager George Hunt originally took credit for discovering the billings, however the public story presented by Hunt and Slapp was not quite the entire story. Meanwhile, the web site created by Randall was burned onto a compact disc and hidden away in Slapp's safe.

What in fact had actually happened (as originally chronicled on this site in December of 2002) was that Venice Taxpayers League board members Roy Stout and Herb Levine had acquired a number of computer department invoices as part of their investigation into the purchase of computers from a company run by Mike Stewart. According to Stout and Levine, the city bought over a hundred computers at an inflated price of $1,100 per computer, not including monitors. While Stout and Levine have accused the city of knowingly and willingly being gouged at $1,100 per tower, Hunt and Mayor Dean Calamaras have continually defended the purchase.*

Included in the material that Stout and Levine had originally acquired in 2001 during their investigation of the computer purchases were the bogus invoices from Randall's company, Petra Software.

While Slapp had made the discovery of the same invoices several months before, Slapp and Hunt only went public after it became known that Stout and Levine also possessed copies of the same invoices. The city failed to mention the existence of the web site and Randall was given a ten-day suspension based on Hunt's assessment that the city had gotten more than what it paid for, a statement that later turned out to be false as all of the services billed for were services that fell under Randall's existing job duties.  No public mention was ever made about the web site until Venice Florida! dot com discovered its existence and demanded a copy under the Freedom of Information Act.

Both Slapp and Hunt initially refused to release the web site to the public, but pressure from Venice Florida! dot com and the Venice Taxpayers League finally forced the public release of the disc at a fiery city council meeting on June 25, 2002 (story). At that same city council meeting, Hunt publicly accused Venice Florida! dot com's John Patten of attempted extortion in the matter. In a long-winded rant aimed at this web site and the VTL, Hunt angrily referred to the allegations against Randall as "bogus accusations, witch hunts, unproven assertions and endless debate."

This, in turn, led to a series of articles about the Randall, Petra Software and the city's computer department on Venice Florida! dot com while both the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Venice Gondolier ignored the story. The papers picked up on some of the surrounding fireworks, like Hunt's rants, but neither paper could seemingly come to the grips with the heart of the story: that Randall had, ultimately, provided nothing of value that the city wasn't already paying for through his salary and that Randall had violated conflict of interest statutes by billing the city from his own company.

Finally, in 2003, Gary A. Anderson filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Ethics. Much of Anderson's material was taken directly from this web site.

Randall resigned from his job with the city earlier this year after the commission found probable cause of wrongdoing.

* Mike Stewart is still providing computer services to the city -- in October, council approved a contract renewal with Stewart's current company, DKE Commerce, to provide computer consulting at a contracted rate of $2,500 per month. City Manager Marty Black defended the contract renewal after objections were raised about the no-bid process that has led to Stewart's contracts.

 

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.