Prelude...
For almost a year and a half, Venice Florida! dot com has been investigating the city's drinking water department, its permitting process with the DEP, and the way that the city has been dealing with workers who have been asking uncomfortable questions. This is the first in a series of stories.
-- John Patten, 12/10/07
-- jpatten@veniceflorida.com

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Stuck in the middle
I am starting this story smack in the middle. Later chapters in this saga will move backwards and forwards in time from this starting point, an admittedly ambiguous beginning to a very convoluted tale.

At issue are all new allegations of malfeasance in the city's utilities department that go back to 2002 when George Hunt was city manager and John Lane was the director of utilities. While none of these new issues were part of the city's guilty plea in federal court to criminal charges brought forward by the EPA against the city, the same themes are present: falsification of documents and intimidation of city workers in an effort to cover up those falsifications.

There are two main difference beteen this situation and the one investigated by the EPA. The first is that the EPA's case involved the city's sewage treatment plant while the issues that will be dealt with in this series of articles all deal with the city's drinking water plant. The second difference is that the cover-up and intimidation that happened during the EPA investigation all took place on the watch of Hunt and Lane. In this series of stories, as you will see, the cover-up and intimidation span the administrations of Hunt, Lane, current City Manager Marty Black, ex-utils director Chris Sharek, and even into the time of the current utils director, Len Bramble.

Old allegations? Some are. The very core of this tale certainly is an old story, albeit one that was never told and that the city did not want you to know. What is damnably curious is the stonewalling that both city hall and the DEP have done in response to inquiries. It's not necessarily the initial wrongdoing that makes this story so frustrating, it's the subsequent and ongoing cover-up, which is even more curious as it would initially appear that the bad guys that caused this mess are long gone.

It should be noted that this story is so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to cover alone. Over the course of the past year and a half, I have sought the help of both the Venice Gondolier Sun and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in trying to bring this story to light. Both papers declined. Had either become involved, the weights of their legal departments would have made the telling of this tale infinitely easier.

And so, as stated, I start in the middle of the story with a set of emails between City Manager Marty Black and myself, emails that AFSCME officials credit as having saved AFSCME President Ralph Hamann his job with the city just as he was about to get fired for being caught in some very strange gears that were part of a much bigger insidious mechanization.

From: John Patten
To: Marty Black
Date: 02/27/07, 7:15 AM

It is with a heavy heart that I write this.

I am currently almost finished with a story involving the chlorine tanks, how they were never permitted properly, how alarms were disabled and only recently reinstalled, the whole Laura Andrews fiasco, etc. I have a wealth of material, including online research paper written by Andrews and Bill Green on Venice's revolutionary new process and how that process was never built once Lane fired Andrews and TGW Engineering.

In the middle of this is what I view as Sharek's vendetta against Hamann and Hamann's staunch hard line in the stance against Sharek. Two intractable forces.

[NOTE: Laura Andrews is a civil engineer who worked for TGW. She designed a new configuration for the drinking water plant along with a new treatment process for the city. Her plans were approved for construction by the city and by the DEP. Those plans were strangely and arbitrarily abandoned when John Lane fired her for being too expensive. Instead, Cardinal Contractors designed a cheaper configuration and an entirely different process at Lane's behest. According to city officials and Ralph Hamann, Cardinal never submitted revised plans either to the city or to the DEP -- as far as the official record goes, the city built exactly what Andrews had designed. As of the date of this February 2007 email, the DEP still had never received accurate plans for what the City of Venice had actually built, and this was some five years after construction. Bill Green was the manager of the city's drinking water operations at the time -- he also was ordered out of the information loop by Lane at the time of the redesign coup. Chris Sharek was John Lane's assistant and later his replacement after Lane was sacked in the middle of the EPA investigation.]

Then there's Bill Green's allegation that Sharek stated that you wanted Hamann fired, an allegation that Green made to Sharek in front of other witnesses and that Sharek did not deny.

Now we have Hamann up for another disciplinary on another chlorine spill involving a tank and pump setup that doesn't even legally exist and that the city is just now trying to sort out the permitting process on -- your current permit application is still in pending status according to the state web site and your old permit was based on a system that was never actually built.

If your intent is to fire Hamann in order to get rid of the union arbitration problems, you are in for one hell of a battle. If that is not your intent, I apologize profusely, but things are looking pretty damned weird from out here in the cheap seats. It doesn't help that Hamann himself won't and can't talk about the issues directly because of various union grievance and arbitration rules, which means I've had to do an incredible amount of dancing with various sources to get the material that I have so far.

The last time I had to do this kind of sourcing with near-fearcrazed unnamed sources was back when you were still Deputy City Manager. Which (no offense meant, just being honest here) has made me ask myself questions involving the differences between your administration and Hunt's. The PRIDE thing aside, which so far seems merely a paper PR campaign, I'm beginning to wonder if there really are any substantive differences.

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that that is your intent -- to quell the arbitration mess. Consider that most of the arbitration problems stem from Sharek's incompetence (to put it charitably) in dealing with the workers that he supervises. With Sharek gone, roughly half of the grievances melt away.

Sure, you can get rid of the rest by canning Hamann. And you probably feel justified in doing so -- there were chlorine spills, although from what I gather about this last one, Hamann's involvement was peripheral at best (Hamann himself is remaining tight-lipped and that is frustrating as hell for me and I'm really tired of people not being able to talk because of fear of you and Sharek). Then you have a disciplinary hearing process run by Adinolfi and Sharek, two men that I have repeatedly noted to you that have falsified city records in the past (and I have the records and you know which records that I am referring to). The animal kangaroo immediately comes to mind.

This does not bode well. Top that off with several complaints of sexual harassment that are coming out of the utilities department that the city has every appearance of ignoring or punishing the accusers, and it would not be unrealistic to compare what is occurring now with the heyday of Hunt, Wilson, and Lane and some of the abuses you yourself noted in the infamous investigatory panel's findings of five or so years back.

Yes, you have a mess. A very big one. And if the EEOC gets involved (which may possibly happen or so I am hearing), it'll get uglier. From the cheap seats, the impression goes from weird to outright insane.

Firing Hamann for involvement in chlorine spills stemming from a seriously faulty and legally non-existent chlorine treatment setup is no answer. It is morally and ethically wrong, although highly expedient -- fire Hamann, Sharek goes bye-bye, Hamann probably sues, gets his job back, and the blame gets shifted to Sharek for the whole mess as now he is long-gone.

I have no wish whatsoever to go toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose with you, but dammit Marty, this is so wrong and you know that I am utterly and insanely incapable of backing off when there is a fundamental moral principal at stake or when someone is being unjustly persecuted. Firing Hamann under these circumstances is guaranteed to make things worse and uglier, not better.

If your decision is to do that, I beg of you to reconsider. I used to think very highly of you, you know that. Your longstanding support of Sharek, more than anything else, has shaken my faith in you. I have understood your very pragmatic decisions for supporting Sharek, but I have respectfully (sometimes no so respectfully) disagreed with that reasoning. But I never wrote you off as a morally corrupt lost cause. Doing this will utterly destroy any belief within me that you are trying to do the right thing.

On a pragmatic level, there is an easier way to get to where you want to go with the utilities department and OMI, a much more elegant and ethical solution that is realistic and ethical. It's staring you right in the face and I have brought it to your attention in the past.

I am so hoping and praying that I am way off-base in the fears that have led me to write this. I would like nothing more than for you to respond back to me that I am nuts, that none of this is any of your intent. My crazed and paranoid insanity shall be cause for my own celebration.

Respectfully but fearfully submitted,

-- John Patten, Venice Florida! dot com

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From: Martin Black
To: John Patten
Date: 02/27/07, 8:29 AM

John, you don't know a quarter of it.

I am required to wait and see how the hearing process proceeds before I reach any conclusion since I have not seen or heard any of the evidence or testimony and the city personnel process ensures that is the case so that I can be independent when/if it comes to me. The pending discipline has not reached my level for decision yet.

I've explained the process and constraints that I have to operate under to you previously and I believe that you understand them. I am not interested in taking the city through another OMI process like three years ago - so I get to go through it the old fashioned, but time consuming and utterly frustrating process for all concerned.

Frankly, I am more concerned that we will face approximately $5 million dollars in cuts should the Governor's tax plan go into effect and I am not happy with the prospect to have had to begin to identify positions for lay-off/elimination once the tax reform plan is adopted at the state level. For the sake of comparison, that level of funding equates to laying off the entire Fire Department. We will need to consider many drastic and rather draconian solutions from an employee perspective with the tax reform proposed in Tallahassee and because it also relies on a regressive tax that will disproportionately impact low and middle income wage earners, they will get hit twice as hard.

For the record and from my perspective, none of the discipline with Mr. Hamann has anything to do with the other grievances that are in arbitration. Per my last update from the city attorney, the city has been successful in having its position confirmed in each case to date. Recall that over a year ago the city offered to settle many of the grievances but the Union President wouldn't sign any of the settlement documents (even though many of the impacted employees were agreeable to the terms) so they were withdrawn by the city and we are now going through each grievance and the formal hearing process as required by contract. For some of those employees that means they actually get a more restrictive outcome than the city previously offered.

[NOTE: The city would lose the next two arbitrations badly and embarrassingly -- these would be settled in August of 2007 and were not the subject of any press releases. They will be discussed in a later article in this series]

I last met with the Union President and the state rep last month to review the results of the city-wide pay study, the Union President confirmed at that time that AFSCME has no interest in resolving these issues other than the hearing process (despite different comments from the state rep). I am required to honor the decision of the local AFSCME-elected leadership by state law and our contract and we have governed ourselves accordingly.

-- Martin Black, City Manager

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From: John Patten
To: Martin Black
Date: 02/27/07, 09:05 AM

You're probably right, I don't know a quarter of it.

That said, I'm not understanding your response Consider me stupid, but you are trying to answer my question but I'm not getting it.

My concern here is basic and fundamental and consistent with my prior writings and stances with the city -- concern for the little guy.

I don't necessarily agree with Hamann's hard line stance either, but I defend his right to take it and I do understand his line of thinking that led to it. I think you'll find that with Sharek gone, that line will start to blur. This is a battle of ideologies and egos, one that you could have tamed long ago by yanking Sharek's collar. That was your intent with Jacobovitz and that didn't work out so well, so I can't honestly say that you didn't try (which is also why I am giving you the benefit of the doubt despite the somewhat harsh and accusatory stance in my initial e-mail to you on this subject).

You successfully dodge the core question: how can you even attempt to discipline some for involvement in chlorine spills from equipment that was never legally permitted and that did not legally exist at the time of those spills? How can you even consider beginning that process? Forget the outcome of the process and the rules governing your distance from it while it is ongoing, the fact that the disciplinary process even began seems to be an indefensible wrong and should have been stopped in its tracks right off.

Common frickin' sense.

That is something you can comment on and was the core question that you successfully dodged.

Marty, I still like you. I don't always agree with you and you sometimes have made me so goddammed mad that I could have shredded a teddy bear, but it is still hard to paint you out as the villain that many in the city would like me to see. I don't bullshit about stuff like this either, you know I am pretty up front about where I am coming from on any given issue.

But if I hear one more fearful thing about the city going after Hamann due to this discombobulated chlorination mess, I am going to go through the literary and journalistic roof.

The process is wrong. It is indefensible that it is still ongoing and the fact that it is ongoing, with the city having full knowledge that the chlorine setup was farked from the getgo, is cause for me to say that the process itself is evil, forget about the outcome.

Stop it. You have the authority, the right and the power to do that. Stop it dead in its tracks now. It is the right thing to do and you know it.

If you have other issues with Hamann, deal with them appropriately, issue by issue.

But again, with Sharek gone, I think a lot of your issues with Hamann will go away naturally.

I hate this crap. I hate being involved in it, I hate having a conscience, I hate having to care, I hate not being able to walk away because I know that would be the wrong thing to do and that I would never forgive myself if I had the ability to help and I didn't, and I hate the fact that if people just did the honorable thing from the beginning, I wouldn't feel compelled, obsessed and driven to stick my beak in.

Get me the hell out of this mess. Do the right thing. Promise me..

-- John Patten, Venice Florida! dot com
 

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.