DAYTONA BEACH -- Why wait until our year-end Top 100 stories to find out what No. 1 is?
Let's get right to it: 2013 will go down in Volusia County as the "Year of the Rat."
This was the definitive year for corruption of the public officials in Volusia county and municipal governments.
So where do we start?
How about this email from Southeast Volusia Advertising Authority board member Eugene Sheldon, just appointed last month, who asks: "Who is the rat?" His question early Tuesday to his colleagues, not only is a violation of Florida's Government in the Sunshine, but shows the arrogance of a person in a position of public trust ballsy enough to question who fed Headline Surfer® the embarrassing details about SVAA Director Carl Watson stuffing his face on the public dime his very first day on the job.
Then tough-talking County Chair Jason Davis called Headline Surfer®, looking for the opportunity to shine Wednesday morning, asking Headline Surfer® to tell Sheldon and his friends that the county chair is the rat, though truth be told, he's far removed from the 24/7 internet newspaper's deep throat. Watson would choke on one of his Jalapeno burgers if only knew how close the source is to him -- closer than hearing the apartment dweller on the other side of the wall getting it on with a scream in between the sheets.
Regardless of the source, Watson himself acknowledged in an e-mail in part to his protector, County Councilwoman Deborah Denys bright and early Monday morning: "It has come to my attention that Henry Frederick mentioned my namer in an email to Dave Byron concerning some lunches that were paid for using the SVAA credit card. That is a correct statement."
Well, thank you Mr. Watson for finally coming clean in a public record. Though it should be noted you only did so after the auditor caught you, and even then, you appealed to the assigned deputy county attorney, Doug Griffin, who reiterated to you that you failed to follow the policies and procedures outlined for you when you were hired. Never mind that you had your first free lunch your very first day on the job.
You didn't have the guts to call me back and tell me any of this from Friday afternoon on, even when I merely several feet from your office and your (acting job) of being on the phone, instead going to the friendly public relations reporters of the News-Journal after giving his sorry excuses to County Councilwoman Deb Denys who then provided cover for him in a story in the News-Journal, 10 hours after a basic rewrite of what we reported, With her defensive spin, of course.
Denys beat around the bush in a telephone interview with me Saturday night, excusing Watson's lax judgment to transitioning from the private to public sector.
Headline Surfer® wasn't buying her alibis for Watson, considering his extensive prior experience.
Denys said she considered the free lunch credit card charges a “settled matter” and a “transitional mistake” by Watson after moving from the private to public sector, even as he wracked up hundreds of dollars in meals for himself, his associates and 22 bicyclists passing through the city.
Then came this nauseating one-liner from Denys the News-Journal was all too eager to bite on in its press-release driven mentality that I had to keep from hurling over when she belted it into the phone like a giant burp: “What this actually proves is the internal policies and procedures from the county and the auditing process of the ad authority works."
But she's really saying is this: "My adopted homeboy stuffed his face. So what? The auditors caught it and besides, he didn't know better."
This is the same Denys who had Watson's predecessor Tim Hamby, hauled into a private office at the County Administration building just weeks to give him a tongue lashing because he didn't follow one of her meddling directives which was never revealed. Never mind that Hamby was turning the ad authority around from the scandal that befell it under the short reign of Nicole Carni, fired after less than six months on the job amid a slew of county accusations that supposedly has the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigating, in and of itself a running joke in county government for two-plus years now.
So Hamby said adios.
Not to be outdone, SVAA chairman Tom Clapsaddle told the News-Journal that before he accepted a free meal from Watson, his very first day as the chairman the second time Wilson was booted, he, too, wasn't aware it was against county policy to stuff his face on the public dime.
Clapsaddle offered this feel-good quote the News-Journal saw fit to print at the very bottom of its story: “You're going to have people in positions making mistakes. It's a matter of making the mistake and learning from it. They made restitution for it, and nobody got hurt.”
As for whether he bothered to actually read the policies and procedures, Clapsaddle conceded to Headline Surfer®, "I'm not sure what that has to do with it."
And now you can see why he's chairman of the board.
Denys, so eager to distance the scandal of Watson and Company from the media spotlight, she immediately threw Hentz under the bus in her terse phone call to Headline Surfer® in what I am now calling the "Saturday Night Massacre."
Even in waiting to report this aspect of the story after the News-Journal reported a press-release style story from the HAA Board that Hentz was resigning effective the end of February but working in the meantime from home, no mention was made in the print paper of Hentz' jet-setting.
Denys described what she was providing to Headline Surfer® in favor of letting Watson slide was as she putt it, "a real bone to chew on" that would make everyone look at Watson's decision-making as trivial, adding "really Henry, Carl Watson's mistakes with the credit card aren't that big of a deal compared to Hentz going to Europe."
So trivial, in fact, that even Chairman Davis later in the day Wednesday said that although he planned on asking for Watson to resign today and to point out the transgressions of the SVAA board members as well as the fact that Sheldon is retired and therefore doesn't qualify for the seat he inherited, "there are bigger fish to fry."
Bigger fish to fry as in Jeff Hentz, the flashy executive with the designer haircut and the pearly-whites -- like Mayor Barringer so coiffed, their underwear makes scratching noises against the inner thighs when they walk, their pant seams bending perfectly above the knees with each step.
So now it's feeding frenzy time on Hentz and the Halifax Area Advertising Authority by the opportunists we call elected officials. Last time, it was attorney Jon Kaney getting an empty checkbook to lance the boil that is the Waverly park bench investigation.
After all, how do you compare several hundred dollars in free lunches to a $25,000 trip to Europe by Hentz with stops in England, France, Germany and Italy, no less?
Many of us are lucky to take a trip from Daytona to Orlando or from Orlando to the beach.
What happens later today on the dais in the Frank T. Bruno County Council Chambers in DeLand will determine where I go publicly as an advocate for the citizens of Volusia County who are tired of the corruption.
Then there's the whole other corruption story out of New Smyrna Beach with Mayor Adam Barringer and City Manager Pamela Brangaccio proclaiming victory after the Florida Commission on Ethics ruled in their favor in a series of complaints filed a year ago by citizen-watchdog Bob Tolley, over two incidents:
1. The mayor hosted a private party for then-retiring Commissioner Jim Hathaway and nearly four dozen guests with a city credit card used to pay up-front costs with the blessings of the city manager;
2. Barringer called a city police officer a "prick" when he wasn't allowed to cut through a closed side street to park his Barringer Construction pick-up truck before the 2012 NSB Christmas Parade.
The Ethics Commission met in secret giving Barringer and Brangaccio the benefit of the last word at a "secret" hearing Friday in Tallahassee, which Tolley boycotted when informed he wouldn't be allowed to speak or offer rebuttal.
Of course, secrecy extended far beyond the "Friday the 13th" meeting. The entire proceedings were done in "secret" with the outcome not unexpected and the dynamic duo hiding behind a press release with prepared statements on its website before the ethics commission even released its own self-serving press release Wednesday afternoon.
Florida prides itself as "Government in the Sunshine," yet the ethics commission operates in secret.
And why not?
The mechanism is in place to protect the state's elite players who lobby the Legislature to close as many open permissions as possible to true transparency.
And who does the City of New Smyrna Beach has as its mouthpiece? None other than City Attorney Frank Gummey, the $250,000-plus annual salaried legal eagle, who three years ago advised Barringer it was OK to piggyback on a $20,000 CRA grant sought by CRA board member Chad Schilsky for his That's Amore restaurant with Barringer Construction as a contractor. Even as Barringer appointed Schilsky with that very plan in mind.
And so long as the mayor and CRA board member Schilsky abstained from their respective agency votes, heck we could all look the other way. Then came consulting CRA attorney Mark Hall, the hero in this mini-drama who wrote a letter to the city stating not only was the Schilsky deal improper, it was "against the law."
So Schilsky was summoned to City Hall to sign a document he conceded he didn't even write, saying he would not accept the letter. This led to the disintegration of the CRA and Barringer and the city commissioners now directly voting for the continuation of $2 million in CRA grants to their bar owner friends, including $60,000 in improvements for Traders Pub, owned by the mayor's boyhood pal, Dave Fernandez.
That a 32-year-old woman partied on Flagler Avenue during last May's Cinco de Mayo and met her maker on the South Causeway Bridge hours later when she flew head first through the windshield before her rolling SUV landed directly on top of her crumpled body, didn't register with Barringer or his new-found friend, County Councilwoman Deborah Denys. She was busy lobbying behind the scenes earlier this year for tighter restrictions on CRAs going way.
In fact, it was Denys with the second most famous quote this year, "We got to the yes!" That, of course, was when County Manager Jim Dinneen announced at the end of a 14-hour day that the votes weren't there to even put it on the dais, which was music to Barringer's ears as head of the Volusia Council of Governments, which was lobbying behind the scenes.
And it was Denys, who turned her back on Southeast Volusia Advertising Director Palmer Wilson, whom Sheldon replaced on the dais last month. Denys saw to it that Wilson was removed as chairman of the SVAA an unprecedented second time, even though he, along with Hamby had cleaned up the mess left behind by Carni and company.
And get this: Sheldon wasn't supposed to be the original appointment of Joyce Cusack, the at-large council member whose turn it was to make the appointment in a rotation voted by the council that has never been backed by an ordinance (which means all the appointments this year are illegal). But that, too, apparently, isn't important enough to bring up today in the Frank T. Bruno County Council chambers.
Her original pick was supposed to be an African-American business owner from Oak Hill. Instead, Cusack tabbed Sheldon, a member of the all-white, all-male Anglers Club of New Smyrna Beach, of which Mayor Barringer also is a member.
Cusack, also African-American, told Headline Surfer she had no idea Sheldon was a member of the Anglers who enjoy a century-long sweetheart deal that hearkens back to the Jim Crow era with the city of New Smyrna Beach for prime waterfront acreage that includes a clubhouse and 43 large boat slips.
And Cusack's appointment came just after the Ku Klux Klan dropped recruitment flyers in the black Westside Community of New Smyrna Beach.
So here's the irony of Cusack, who is black, bypassing a black business owner in Oak Hill, a former black slave colony, in favor of a white guy who belongs to an all-white club (not withstanding no women members).
And this is the replacement for Wilson?
But there won't be any visiting of this issue today. Either before or after the esteemed county council members feast on Hentz, I'll bet anything they'll fall all over themselves, yucking it up about the "X-Factor" and Daytona Beach's Alex and Sierra.
Just like they did when DeLand was in the finals as the "Other Best Downtown in the Orlando Sentinel's self-serving bracket-buster marketing campaign, another way to squeeze more money from the ad authorities, complete with shameless video plug from Sentinel columnist Beth Kassab.
Before that it was the George Clooney movie shoot in New Smyrna Beach, though nobody ever saw Clooney, who apparently snuck in and out of Canal Street during an overnight shoot while Denys drooled for weeks.
That's what your elected County Council members fill their Facebook pages with when they're not promoting themselves and each other at some chicken dinner event.