Covering pensacola politics, news, and culture from a progressive point of view

Jeff Atwater, the incoming president of the State Senate, has rounded out his staff.  They’re expensive.

I railed against Atwater’s selection of wealthy friend Budd Kniep as his chief of staff in a viewpoint published in the Independent News earlier this year.  Kniep, who has no prior experience working in this or any other legislature, will make $150,000 to manage Atwater’s office.

He’s also hired Craig Varn and Paul Whitfield as “policy advisors” at a salary of $110,000/year.

Keep in mind that Senator Atwater himself makes just $42,072; but he, of course, doesn’t need the money either.  He’s a millionaire.

What a racket.

In case you didn’t hear, Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were earlier this month indicted by a South Texas grand jury on charges relating to abuses at privately-run federal prisons.  Mr. Cheney has around $85 million invested in Vanguard, which in turn invests in several of the companies running these prisons.  The district attorney feels that due to this investment, Vice President Cheney is complicit in abuses perpetrated at the prisons.

Gonzales is accused of using his position as attorney general to block an investigation into the prisons.

Now, based on what I know of the case from media reports (I haven’t read the indictment), the case against Vice President Cheney appears pretty lousy.  Mr. Cheney is guilty of violating many laws of this nation, of truly greivous assaults on our Constitution, and there is no one whom would enjoy seeing him prosecuted more than I;  but this case appears to be a stunt.

We simply cannot hold people accountable for the actions of companies in which they are invested but not directly involved.  If I invest in a meat supplier, and there’s an outbreak of diseased meat, and someone dies, should there relatives be able to hold me, an investor, responsible?  I think not.

Mr. Cheney appears to be at most guilty of making lousy investments.

As for Mr. Gonzales, blocking investigations seems to have been the hallmark of his tenure as Attorney General.  As such I consider it wholly possible that he blocked the investigation mentioned in the indictment.  It is doubtful, though, that this prosecutor can do anything with the indictment.  His inclusion of Mr. Cheney and other parties in the indictment, as well as comments he has made publicly, make it hard to treat this action as anything other than a stunt.

Continuing our series of articles looking forward to races in 2010, we take a look at the race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Mel Martinez.

The Republicans

Mel Martinez

Republican incumbent Mel Martinez is not incredibly popular, with only a 42% approval rating among Floridians, according to a recent Quinnipac poll.  In fact, Martinez is considered so vulnerable that I’ve heard some folks speculate he may decide not to run for reelection, clearing the way for other Republicans such as former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio.  Furthermore, if Martinez does decide to run for reelection, he’ll have to hit the fundraising trail hard, because between serving as RNC chair for two years and touring the country campaigning for John McCain, he’s neglected his war chest, and only has about $1.3 million on hand.

The Democrats

Alex Sink

There are feew Florida Democrats with more statewide name recognition than Sink, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer.  Sink will likely run either for the Senate seat or challenge Charlie Crist for Florida’s governorship.  While Sink probably has a better shot at the Senate seat, currently held by unpopular Republican Mel Martinez, she has made moves in recent months to draw contrasts between herself and Crist.  Back in August, Sink told the St. Petersburg Times, “I will assess the landscape after the first of the year, and make a decision then.”

Allen Boyd

Boyd, a Blue Dog Democrat congressman, has represented Florida’s 2nd congressional district, which includes most of the central and eastern Panhandle, since 1997.  Like Sink, he’s considering both the Senate seat and the governorship.  While he doesn’t have a lot of statewide name recognition, his position as a conservative Democrat fits Florida’s divided electorate.  Furthermore, his time in Washington would give him a heads-up in fundraising ability were he to run for Senate.

Robert Wexler

Wexler, who will soon enter his seventh term representing South Florida’s 19th district in Congress, is a self-described “fire-breathing liberal”.  He is incredibly popular in his district, garnering between 65-72% of the vote in his four contested elections; in three of his elections, no one has even bothered to challenge him.  While I personally am a big fan, I think Wexler is simply too far left to win statewide office.  While he’d do well in the urban areas of central and south Florida, and the Democratic areas on Florida’s southeast coast, he’d have trouble in north and northwest Florida.

Ron Klein

Klein represents South Florida’s 22nd congressional district and is perhaps best known for defeating 13-term Republican incumbent Clay Shaw for the seat in 2006.  Klein has spent the last two years fundraising, and with $2.1 million in the bank, there are those that wonder if he’s gearing up for a Senate run.

Dan Gelber

Gelber most recently served as minority leader in the Florida House before being elected to the Florida Senate earlier this month.

Larry B. Johnson has handily defeated 7-year Councilman Marty Donovan to take the District 4 seat on the Pensacola City Council.

With all precincts reporting, Johnson holds 61% of the vote to Donovan’s 39%, a margin of more than 450 votes.

In the other race of the evening, three-term councilman Ronald Townsend prevailed over challenger Jacci Shumaker, winning with 64% of the vote to Shumaker’s 36 percent.

2008-2010 Pensacola City Council

• District 1: P. C. Wu
• District 2: Sam Hall
• District 3: Maren DeWeese
• District 4: Larry B. Johnson
• District 5: John Jerralds
• District 6: Jewel Cannada-Wynn
• District 7: Ronald Townsend
• District 8 (AL): Diane Mack
• District 9 (AL): Megan Benson Pratt
• Mayor of Pensacola: Mike Wiggins

As many of you know, the greyhound track is looking to add poker rooms to its operations.  The issue will soon go before the County Commission, and to be quite honest, its chances of being approved are slim to none.  It was voted down 4-1 by the commission in February 2007, and keep in mind 4 of the 5 commissioners that were there for that voter are still there.

That said — why?

I don’t feel particularly strongly about the issue one way or another, but here’s the way I look at it.  We can toss the argument over the pros and cons of legalised gambling for another day.  That argument is irrelevant. While gambling is not legal in our county or state, it is pretty easily accessible, so it might as well be.  The folks that want to gamble do so — they just take a day trip to Biloxi or Atmore and spend their money there instead of here.  They stimulate those economies instead of ours.  They generate tax revenue for those municipalities, instead of ours.

So why not keep that money here?

These folks are going to gamble either way.  Let’s allow them to do it here, and allow their money to go into the local economy and into local government.  It’ll also create a few jobs, and I’m positive that the moral fiber of our community won’t deteriorate any faster.

To those of you in City districts four and seven, go the polls today and choose who gets to represent you on the Pensacola City Council.

We recommend Larry B. Johnson in District 4 and Jacci Shumaker in District 7 — most of all because they’re not on Council right now, although they both have solid resumes aside from that.

Let’s retire a couple more incumbents.

GET OUT AND VOTE!

Jim Cronley spoke against the MacQueen airport deal at Council last Thursday, and threw in a little showmanship:

A transcript:

I’ve got a short statement about the lease, but before that I’ve got a confession to make.  Last Tuesday, I got a phone call from somebody that I knew, that said there is more than one lease [Cronley means to say appraisal].  I picked up the phone and called two people.  I called Mark O’Brien, and I said, “Mark, I’m not going to be able to get a straight story about these appraisals.  Could you call and see if you can find out if there’s more than one appraisal?”  And he said, “I sure will.”  I then picked up the phone and called a very prominent attorney, that if I got a call from him, I’d be shaking in my boots, and I said, “Would you threaten to get a Freedom of Information filed, however you do that, to see if you can get this other appraisal?”  All of the sudden, the appraisals appeared, with those two phone calls.  So if you — and this is not a personal attack — if you decide to investigate this, and you want me to talk to you about any of this, with whoever you have investigate this, I’d be happy to talk to them.

With that, uh, Mr. MacQueen has made — this is concerning the lease —Mr. MacQueen has made an offer based on a six million, no, based on a six and a half million, no, based on seven million.  It appears to me in light of Appraisalgate that the offer changing three times means that this property may now be open to bidders.  I have a good faith binder check in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars ($250,000);  I will offer you almost twice what your staff originally told you was fair market.  I’ll agree to the same terms and conditions of this lease, but I’ll value the property at ten million dollars.  And I’m prepared to put this check up. after this meeting, if you all decide to do it, I’ll get with your attorney, and it’ll be at risk.  Thank you.

Good stuff.  I especially enjoyed him dropping the phrase “Appraisalgate”, as coined by our friend Rick Outzen, and the holding up of a $250K check.  Mr. Cronley said he would offer “almost twice what your [City] staff originally told you was fair market”… I’m going to assume by “your staff”, Cronley meant “three independent well-reputed state-certified appraisers.”

Frank Miller’s prepared statement to the City Council, apologising for the airport appraisal mishap:

A transcript:

Mr. Mayor and members of the City Council,

The airport undertakes appraisals for the leasing, purchase, or disposal of property with a varying range of guidelines.  For airside appraisals, we commission one appraiser with the expertise in airside regulations and restrictions;  for federally and state assisted land acquisitions we use the federal guidelines for one appraisal and one review appraisal.  For non-federal and non-state land purchase projects, and for general land leasing projects, the airport typically uses a single appraisal system.  When the need for an appraisal for the subject property was requested of staff, they were undertaking an approach for the appraisal of a new rental car service facility site that used two simultaneous, independent appraisals, with an independent third review appraisal.  When they received my request, they included the separate property appraisal in this process.

When staff received the appraisals they were filed in anticipation of the future lease negotiations.  I do know that at some point, for an indeterminate amount of time, the review appraisal was misfiled in the rental car appraisal file.  Since Mr. Brantley also provided the review appraisal for the rental car sites, I can only speculate that this was the factor in its being misfiled.  I do not have any knowledge of whether the second appraisal was misfiled.

I typically ask clerical staff to provide me with items from the airport’s central files, or to copy and forward items as needed.  When negotiations were commencing with Innisfree Development, I would have used standard practice, and requested a copy of the appraisal be copied and sent to Innisfree.  In reflecting on this, I realise that clerical staff would not have been aware of multiple appraisals, and most likely provided the top document from the files, which I speculate was Mr. Asmar’s appraisal.  The staff who commissioned the appraisals, and who knew of the multiple appraisals, were not involved in the lease negotiations, and were unaware of my request for the appraisal to be sent to Innisfree.

I can only think that I did not recall the new appraisal process and entered into good faith negotiations with Innisfree based on the appraisal given to me.  In hindsight, I clearly recognise I would have been prudent to ask for the entire file.  Mr. Mayor, members ofthe City Council, I apologise to you, and to Mr. MacQueen, for adding controversy to what should have been a straightforward lease approval process.

Following up on the previous post, here’s the video of Pensacola City Councilman Sam Hall questioning Frank Miller about the misplaced appraisals at last Thursday’s Council meeting:

Transcript of the good part (starts around 1:10 into the video):

Hall: Regardless of what staff thought they understood about rental car agreements, hotel agreements, if an appraisal comes in, and just gets filed, regardless of what file it goes in, I mean it could go into the ABC file, is anybody actually looking at this and paying attention to it, or is a foregone conclusion that you’re going to go with that one appraisal?

Miller: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Hall, it would depend, as I said, on what type of an appraisal process we were following for the particular type of property that was being leased or—

Hall: Regardless of what kind of process we’re following, if an appraisal comes in, like this, and it’s just filed away, that’s unconscionable.  [pause]  What’s your response?

Mayor Fogg: I don’t think he needs to respond, Mr. Hall.  This issue that is on the floor now, the motion and the second that is on the floor, has to do with the recommended lease agreement—

Hall: The issue on the floor, sir [Fogg talking over Hall] — The issue on the floor, sir, is the credibility of this Council, of this City government.

Mayor Fogg: Are you accusing the airport director of some sort of impropriety?

Hall: Well, I said earlier today that it’s either deceit or gross negligence.  If he didn’t know what his staff was doing of this magnitude, it’s gross negligence, yes.

Update: I want to clarify that while the below post offers my thoughts on Frank Miller and the comments Councilman Hall has made, it should be noted that Councilman Hall did not single out Miller, and indeed advocates the dismissal of any member of City staff, whether Miller, his subordinates, or superiors, whom was grossly negligent or deceitful regarding the airport affair.

At this past Thursday’s meeting of the Pensacola City Council, Councilman Sam Hall referred to mistakes made Airport director Frank Miller regarding the recent Airport land deal “gross negligence”.  Prior to the meeting, Hall had called for the resignations or terminations of those involved.  Friday, Hall stated that he stood by his statements and that he still believes that “resignations or terminations are in order.”

Are the circumstances by which the latter appraisals came to light suspect?  Yep.  Did Frank Miller and Airport staff screw up?  You bet.  Should Frank Miller have been more involved in the process?  Most definitely.

Should Frank Miller lose his job?  I don’t think so.

One terribly handled situation does not cancel out a career of excellence.  Miller is a twenty-year employee of the City and has done an excellent job with the airport.  Anyone who doubts the excellence of our airport should try flying out of Mobile sometime.

As there is no evidence at the moment that Miller is guilty of anything other than oversight, for which he has apologised.  That being the case, calls for his head are premature.

In the first of a series of articles looking forward to races in 2010, we take a look at how the race for Governor of Florida is shaping up.

The Republicans

Current governor Charlie Crist is popular, and barring some major scandal or unforeseen event, will be running for reelection.  A Quinnipac poll released last week puts Crist’s approval rating at an impressive 68 percent.

The Democrats

Alex Sink

At the moment, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink seems to be the best Democratic hope to unseat Crist.  Sink will likely run either for the governorship or for one of Florida’s U.S. Senate seats; while Sink probably has a better shot at the Senate seat, currently held by unpopular Republican Mel Martinez, she has made moves in recent months to draw contrasts between herself and Crist.  Back in August, Sink told the St. Petersburg Times, “I will assess the landscape after the first of the year, and make a decision then.”

There’s a website up at DraftAlex.com encouraging her to run for Governor.

Allen Boyd

Boyd, a Blue Dog Democrat congressman, has represented Florida’s 2nd congressional district, which includes most of the central and eastern Panhandle, since 1997.  Like Sink, he’s considering both the governorship and the Senate seat.  While he doesn’t have a lot of statewide name recognition, his position as a conservative Democrat fits Florida’s divided electorate.  Furthermore, his time in Washington would give him a heads-up in fundraising ability were he to run for Senate.

Karen Thurman, the Chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, is probably wishing she felt a little more secure in her bid for reelection as state party chair on December 20.

The FDP spent around $9 million this year on State House and Senate races, and for the money got a net gain of zero State Senate seats and a single State House seat.  The 2010 election is the last chance for Democrats to make gains in the Florida Legislature prior to redistricting that will come about as a result of the 2010 census.

While U.S. Senator Bill Nelson has endorsed Thurman, she has not been able to secure the same from Alex Sink, the state’s Democratic Chief Financial Officer and likely candidate for either governor or U.S. Senate in 2010.  Last week, Sink told the St. Petersburg Times, “I haven’t taken a position yet.  I’ve had several calls from other people who are interested in exploring running, so I owe it to them to talk to all of the possible candidates.”

Possible challengers to Thurman include Mike Moskowitz, state committeeman for Broward County, and Miami-Dade County chairman Bret Berlin.