tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53385098880385531802024-02-07T11:09:28.328-08:00Florida Bar Ethics Complaint Against Gonzaleztwinkobiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865056039680988073noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338509888038553180.post-87411584154272361572008-02-24T18:25:00.000-08:002009-01-04T12:42:04.158-08:00Addendum to Complaint for Ethics Violation Against Tom Gonzalez<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGCeaZAy5dMbeEDbT1o9v-MDHC9yMMhhBOo6BAipSwANPiDtLB0SJvuOLYSNCMz6OnLlX5DvMCPZ3WCiyQxprhBFjM-XvoRQz1VE3-8SS2YASlTOf44eUpf43XX683xMH6XkSuQuTkdWz/s1600-h/ladyjustice.gif"></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGCeaZAy5dMbeEDbT1o9v-MDHC9yMMhhBOo6BAipSwANPiDtLB0SJvuOLYSNCMz6OnLlX5DvMCPZ3WCiyQxprhBFjM-XvoRQz1VE3-8SS2YASlTOf44eUpf43XX683xMH6XkSuQuTkdWz/s1600-h/ladyjustice.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGCeaZAy5dMbeEDbT1o9v-MDHC9yMMhhBOo6BAipSwANPiDtLB0SJvuOLYSNCMz6OnLlX5DvMCPZ3WCiyQxprhBFjM-XvoRQz1VE3-8SS2YASlTOf44eUpf43XX683xMH6XkSuQuTkdWz/s400/ladyjustice.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170741364373356338" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><span style=""> </span>Heidi E. Brewer, Bar Counsel<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">The Florida Bar</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg" alt="" /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:street><st1:address><span dir="ltr">651 East Jefferson Street</span></st1:address></st1:street></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:place><st1:city><span dir="ltr">Tallahassee</span></st1:city><span dir="ltr">, </span><st1:state><span dir="ltr">FL</span></st1:state><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:postalcode><span dir="ltr">32399-2300</span></st1:postalcode></st1:place></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:date month="2" day="24" year="2008"><span dir="ltr">February 24, 2008</span></st1:date></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Dear Ms. Brewer:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Please add the following information as addendum to my ethics charge against lawyer for the school board of </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:place><st1:placename><span dir="ltr">Hillsborough</span></st1:placename><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:placetype><span dir="ltr">County</span></st1:placetype></st1:place></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">, Thomas Gonzalez.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">At the April 19<sup>th</sup> board meeting, I was last citizen to go to the mike to speak.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">I complained that Principal Marc Hutek at <st1:place><st1:placename>Armwood</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>High School</st1:placetype></st1:place> had retaliated against history teacher Bruce Burnham for coming to the school board and addressing a complaint to the board because Superintendent Elia had imposed an extra class with no pay on teachers to solve her budget problem.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">Mr. Hutek had, at Ms. Elia’s behest or on his own, stripped 23-year-teacher Burnham of his honors history classes and awarded them to first- and second-year teachers.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">This incident shows why teachers are so afraid of retaliation by the administration and its myrmidons in the schools if they speak up about anything that concerns the status of teachers.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">Ms. Elia uses a school-wide network of cohorts and collaborators and the Professional Standards apparatus to keep the school family in abject fear of losing its jobs on some trumped-up charge or of being retaliated against in some way as Bruce was.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Chair Jennifer Falliero is angry with me because I exposed her engaging in adultery on school property by stalking former public-affairs head Marc Hart in his office putatively for mentoring until the previous superintendent told Ms. Falliero to leave Hart alone.<span style=""> </span>She didn’t.<span style=""> </span>She eventually succeeded in initiating an affair with Marc Hart.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">This Falliero-initiated affair caused <span style=""></span> breakup of the Hart family, the couple's <span style=""> </span>divorce, and, he told me when he asked to come to my home to recount to <span style=""> </span>me his version of <span style=""> </span>what had happened, that his two children were suffering.<span style=""> </span>His son has school problems. When he had before the family turmoil been a high-achieving student, his grades post divorce have gone done. Hart's daughter experienced exacerbation of medical problems since Falliero broke up her parents' marriage. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">After the board knew of this adulterous affair initiated on school grounds, it voted Ms. Falliero chair of the board, deeming the affair and her breakup of a family and causing the father’s firing not sufficient immorality to deny her board chairship.<span style=""><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">The board thinks Ms. Falliero’s heading a board supposed to protect the children of the area is ok.<span style=""> </span>I don’t.<span style=""> </span>And I will say so whenever the situation calls for its repetition.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">The superintendent with perhaps the board and board attorney in accord decided to fire Mr. Hart to protect Ms. Falliero’s and the superintendent’s and school administration’s reputations and—I infer—to protect Ms. Falliero’s board status since she is a secure yes vote for most of what the administrations wants to do.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><span style=""> </span>Mr. Dan </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:city><st1:place><span dir="ltr">Valdez</span></st1:place></st1:city></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">, personnel director, called Hart into his office, said Mr. Hart, and told him to resign or that “things could get ugly,” Hart resigned.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Ms. Falliero is angry with me for exposing her adultery, so she, I believe, uses her board chair position to gavel me out of order for reasons she manufactures on the spot.<span style=""> </span>She has no regard for mine and other citizens’ First Amendment rights. <span style=""> </span>Nor does the board. It does not intervene with a "point of order" to speak out against Ms. Falliero's dictatorial behavior. I have not seen Falliero gavel any other voter down.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><span style=""> </span>On 19<sup>th</sup>, she gaveled me down, called me “out of order,” and expelled me from the board room. I have never been able to determine why.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><span style=""> </span>Apparently, Ms. Kipley thought I exceeded the time limits by finishing my sentence.<span style=""> </span>Then I read in the paper that I violated Ms. Falliero’s ad hoc proscription of using a name.<span style=""> </span>There appeared to me the collusion of the Chief of Security, Mr. Friedberg.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Friedberg not only escorted me from the board room but ordered me to leave the property and would not show me in writing that he had the right to do that.<span style=""> </span>He repeatedly threatened me with going to jail. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">I filed a Professional Standards charge against Mr. Fredrick and in a lightening-fast turnaround, the next day I received via email the appended ruling by Ms. Kipley.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"> Ms. Kipley’s home-ec degree is typical of the academics-manqué crony hiring of the administration.<span style=""> </span>She is not educated sufficiently nor does she have the personality and wisdom for this job.<span style=""> </span>Her function is to act obtuse enforcer for Ms. Elia to punish anybody who defies the system, not unlike that of Lucco Brazzi in The Godfather, who handles the cases of those who should sleep with the fishes.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">The procedure that the public-affairs office afterwards sent me says that in case a citizen disrupted the meeting, he or she was to be escorted from the room.<span style=""> </span>It says nothing about a citizen’s being escorted from the building or off the property.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Friedberg apparently manufactured that extra flourish by himself.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Nor did Ms. Falliero’s Baedeker of things a voter could not speak about at the board mike contain naming names. I don’t recall it.<span style=""> </span>And if she did add this forbidden item to the list of things a citizen couldn’t say, it abridges the First Amendment. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">None of the other board members said a word of demur about Ms. Faliero’s violation of the First- Amendment rights of a citizen.<span style=""> They apparently lack the courage or the concern to do so. </span>Nor did Mr. Gonzalez intervene to protect the First Amendment.<span style=""> </span>Nor did he say anything about the First Amendment when he assisted Professional Standards Kipley’s white wash of Falliero’s and Frederick’s setup of me, finding that the complaint against me was valid.<span style=""> </span>See below for Ms. Kipley’s finding. So eager were they to trump me that she delivered it the day after I filed it.<span style=""> </span>This differs from her usual prolonged decision making to make the culprit sweat.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">I judge the worst defection of Mr. Gonzalez in my observing him for over a year is that I have never heard him intervene to protect the First Amendment rights of citizens, whose rights the board routinely violates.<span style=""> </span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">So this travesty of the board’s idiosyncratic rules for <span style=""> </span>citizen speakers—all of whom the board shows every sign of not wanting to see in any event—is presided over by an officer of the court who knows that the First Amendment trumps board rules to curtail free speech but remains mute on the subject.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJp1VEzSvqjR16miOCzVTX6CNn8w5c1uad32a_4qDuJpJdJY1Avm3oy4oRDkN5MHZvsDlsCtCDBm3gv_z4JHUvkdxnQ_0CiQT6wAkkySVNxYgDdkyaZUqyVlxSxdEA3fFIhukLBjVEaSMq/s1600-h/tribarticle.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJp1VEzSvqjR16miOCzVTX6CNn8w5c1uad32a_4qDuJpJdJY1Avm3oy4oRDkN5MHZvsDlsCtCDBm3gv_z4JHUvkdxnQ_0CiQT6wAkkySVNxYgDdkyaZUqyVlxSxdEA3fFIhukLBjVEaSMq/s400/tribarticle.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170742773122629442" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">I have never heard Mr. Gonzalez intervene to protect the First Amendment, but I have heard him intervene when there was some question about no-bid contracts. Mr. Gonzalez has indeed intervened to sanction no-bid contracts and even to extol them.<span style=""> </span>I believe that this no-bid intervention from Mr. Gonzalez was because he himself enjoys a no-bid contract for his board tenure that is now fifteen years old.<span style=""><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><span style=""> </span>The previous superintendent Dr. Earl Lennard gave it to Mr. Gonzalez and his firm apparently with a handshake after the job got no advertising so that other area lawyers could apply. No advertising for high-level jobs makes the equal-opportunity profession that the board stamps everywhere an empty promise.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"> <span style=""> </span>I cannot be sure since Mr. Gonzalez refuses to send me the public information on finances that the Florida Public-records law endorses, but I believe the Thompson, Sizemore & Gonzalez firm has captured at least ten million taxpayer dollars in its no-bid lockdown of the job in the last fourteen years. I have asked specifically for his firm's loot for prosecuting--and perhaps recommending--the case of Doug Erwin; but he won't send the data to me in defiance of the Florida public-records law. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Following is the charge I filed with the Professional Standards office; Ms. Kipley’s one-day turnaround of the charge as invalid follows.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" >General Manager of Professional Standards<br /><span class="yshortcuts">813-273-7511</span></span></p><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /><o:p></o:p> </span><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><!--[endif]--></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" >+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">To: Linda Kipley, Director of Professional Standards of Schools, <st1:place><st1:city>Hillsborough County</st1:city>, <st1:state>Florida</st1:state></st1:place><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">C: All Members of the School Board and School Board Attorney Gonzalez<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">From: Lee Drury De Cesare<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Please consider this a formal charge against David Friedborg, head of security in ROSSAC.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Subject: Abridgement of a my First Amendment rights by chair Falliero of the Hillsborough County School Board to retaliate for my having previously revealed that Chair Faliero engaged in an adulterous relationship begun and advanced on the job in ROSSAC with Marc Hart, whom the administration subsequently fired to protect Faliero, I believe, as a sure yes vote for the administration on the board.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hart told me in a visit to my home at Madeira Beach which he requested that Faliera initiated the affair because she claimed she needed Hart’s “‘mentoring” and visited Hart’s office so persistently that she became, said Hart, almost a fixture there.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Apparent previous collusion existed between Chair Faliero and Security Manager David Friedberg to engage in ambushing me</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;">. </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">The</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">tape of the meeting will show that the last speaker to the board was I</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;">. </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Chair Faliero did not inform me as the regulation above requires that I</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">might be “found guilty of a second degree misdemeanor” after I exceeded</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">her 3-minute time minute by several words</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;">.</span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Nor</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">did Mr. Friedberg have to be summoned from outside the board room but</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">stood stationed waiting at the head of the aisle leading from the</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">microphone as if by a preplanned arrangement with Ms. Falliero to</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">interrupt me</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;">.</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">As I looked up and back in puzzlement when stopped by Mr. Friedberg, I observed Friedborg’s and Falliero’s exchanging knowing looks with each other as if signaling some action to begin. Ms. Faliero’s look was filled with barely suppressed glee.</span><span dir="rtl" lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">A threatening looking individual, bald and tall like the Jolly Green Giant, Friedborg startled me when I reached the end of the aisle by ordering me to leave the board room. I did. In the foyer, he barked at me that I should leave the public premises or would be arrested.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">When I asked Friedberg what offense I had committed when he loomed over me in my exit from the aisle, he said that the chair said I was out of order, and that meant I must leave the building or suffer arrest for trespassing. He said nothing about my having committed a second-degree misdemeanor.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">When I asked for a statement that described the offense and its punishment, Friedberg said he did not have to provide me with one and continued to demand whether I wanted to go to jail.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Friedborg’s manner throughout the interview was overbearing, rude, and threatening. He seemed consciously to use his unusual height to tower over me in a threatening manner to intimidate me. Mr. Friedberg told me that I owed him unquestioning respect since he has served in the armed forces for 23 years.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">I intend to check out that claim of 23 years of service to the country. Some have claimed to have won the Congressional Medal of Honor when they haven’t even left the town they live in.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">I called Mr. Friedberg a bully and left the building.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">I file charges against schools employee Mr. Friedborg, who, I believe aided and abetted Ms. Faliero’s malicious use of her chairship to retaliate against this citizen who exposed her adultery initiated on school property after Mr. Hart came to my home and confirmed it. He gave me part of the deposition that outlined the adultery as connected with the school.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The board may believe that Ms. Falliero’s behavior is fine for a board member and give her the chairship. I don’t. She broke up a marriage and caused pain to the two children of the shattered family while the administration fired Mr. Hart on the trumped-up charge of alcoholism while she herself escaped Scott free.<span style=""> </span>She now uses that freedom to distort the conduct of her board chairship by retaliating against a citizen who exposed her home-wrecking adultery with the apparent collusion of a school-security employee paid by tax funds to protect the people and property of ROSSAC, not to sneak around abetting the spite of an adulterous board member.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;">I ask that Professional Standards determine if Faliero and Friedborg met or spoke or exchanged emails beforehand to coordinate their ambush on me because Faliero wanted to retaliate for my exposing her school-site adultery.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;">I also ask that Professional Standards determine whether others such as the board members and board attorney knew about or colluded in this retaliatory action of Faliero abetted by school employee Friedborg and whether Friedborg-Falliero had a personal instead of a professional relationship when the ensemble conducted retaliation against me on school property at the February 19<sup>th</sup> board meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><span style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><!--[endif]--></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Lee Drury De Cesare</span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;">15316 </span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">Gulf Boulevard</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"> 802</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:place><st1:city><span dir="ltr">Madeira Beach</span></st1:city><span dir="ltr">, </span><st1:state><span dir="ltr">FL</span></st1:state><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:postalcode><span dir="ltr">33708</span></st1:postalcode></st1:place></span><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;">tdecesar@tampabay.rr.co</span><span lang="AR-SA" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="text-transform: uppercase;font-size:130%;" >727-398-4142<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">From:</span><span style="font-size:130%;"> Linda Kipley [mailto:<span class="yshortcuts">Linda.Kipley@sdhc.k12.fl.us</span>]<br /><span style="">Sent:</span> Friday, February 22, 2008 1:21 PM<br /><span style="">To:</span> lee de cesare<br /><span style="">Cc:</span> Jennifer Faliero; Candy Olson; Doretha Edgecomb; April Griffin; Susan Valdes; Jack Lamb; Carol Kurdell; MaryEllen Elia; Dan Valdez; David Friedberg; .<span class="yshortcuts">gonzalez@tsg-law.com</span><br /><span style="">Subject:</span> Re: Charge for violation of professional standards<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-weight: bold;"> <span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" >Dear Ms. DeCesare:<br /><br />I am in receipt of your email dated </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><st1:date month="2" day="21" year="2008"><span style="color:black;">February 21, 2008</span></st1:date></span><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" > regarding charges for violation of professional standards. Upon reviewing your concerns with Thomas M. Gonzalez, School Board Attorney, it has been determined that the Office of Professional Standards does not have jurisdiction to investigate the action of the School Board, an individual Board member, or the Board's attorney.<br /><br />Your complaint regarding Chief Friedberg informing you that you were to leave the School Board's premises or you would be arrested for trespassing, did not violate any School Board policy. In your complaint, you admitted to having violated the three-minute rule regarding the limits on public speakers, and as a result, Chief Friedberg acted appropriately when he asked you to leave the premises.<br /><br />Based on the review of your complaints outlined in your email, there is no matter stated which can be investigated by the Office of Professional Standards.<br /><br />Linda A. Kipley<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><br />General Manager of Professional Standards<br /><span class="yshortcuts">813-273-7511<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><script type="text/javascript" defer="defer"> var YAHOO = {'Shortcuts' : {}}; YAHOO.Shortcuts.hasSensitiveText = false; YAHOO.Shortcuts.sensitivityType = []; YAHOO.Shortcuts.doUlt = false; YAHOO.Shortcuts.location = "us"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_id = 0; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_type = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_title = "public information"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_publish_date = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_author = "lee_decesare@yahoo.com"; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_url = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.document_tags = ""; YAHOO.Shortcuts.annotationSet = { }; </script><span style="font-size:130%;">Ms. Cobbe: Please add to the Hutek and Frederick files the data on how to appeal a decision that the Professional Standards office makes and with which one disagrees. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">I know there is one because Ms. Elia told me and Bart at <st1:place><st1:placename>Tiger</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Bay</st1:placetype></st1:place> when she spoke there that there was an appeal process after the time had already lapsed for Bart to appeal. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-size:130%;">Ms. Elia seemed pleased at that circumstance.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">Thank you.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size:130%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:130%;">lee drury de cesare</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGCeaZAy5dMbeEDbT1o9v-MDHC9yMMhhBOo6BAipSwANPiDtLB0SJvuOLYSNCMz6OnLlX5DvMCPZ3WCiyQxprhBFjM-XvoRQz1VE3-8SS2YASlTOf44eUpf43XX683xMH6XkSuQuTkdWz/s1600-h/ladyjustice.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGCeaZAy5dMbeEDbT1o9v-MDHC9yMMhhBOo6BAipSwANPiDtLB0SJvuOLYSNCMz6OnLlX5DvMCPZ3WCiyQxprhBFjM-XvoRQz1VE3-8SS2YASlTOf44eUpf43XX683xMH6XkSuQuTkdWz/s400/ladyjustice.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170741364373356338" border="0" /></a></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: center; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:130%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: center; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span dir="ltr" style="text-transform: uppercase;font-size:130%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p>twinkobiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865056039680988073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338509888038553180.post-38956423367214236672008-02-23T06:18:00.000-08:002008-02-23T19:19:55.535-08:00Florida Bar Ethics Complaint Against HC Board Attorney Gonzalez<a style="font-weight: bold;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNy6R1uEu92CJhpRCE2bzPYg60WW-arXI9MLgy81Eid6Tx-jkqY5rb_lsEAhQe42MpWYgbtV06NfUyB6T9WnHQ51rdqigLmDs-LOmqRyeCmzxjHcb21nCkFCI9U2MWUZbzfnJqnYESuFl/s1600-h/Leemiddle.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNy6R1uEu92CJhpRCE2bzPYg60WW-arXI9MLgy81Eid6Tx-jkqY5rb_lsEAhQe42MpWYgbtV06NfUyB6T9WnHQ51rdqigLmDs-LOmqRyeCmzxjHcb21nCkFCI9U2MWUZbzfnJqnYESuFl/s400/Leemiddle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170297385014034194" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:180%;">Press Release</span><br /><br /><br />For Immediate Release<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Contact: De Cesare 727-398-4142</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">15316 Gulf Boulevard 802</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Madeira Beach, FL 33708</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE FLORIDA BAR</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">651 EAST JEFFERSON STREET</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">JOHN F. HARKNESS, JR. TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA 32399-2300 (850) 561-5600</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR WWW.FLABAR.ORG</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">February 19, 2008</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">141<><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">15316 Gulf Boulevard 802</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Madeira Beach, FL 33708’</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">- Thomas Martin Gonzalez; RFA No. 08-1 1290</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">- </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">- Dear Mr. De Cesare:</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">- </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Your inquiry concerning the conduct of the above member of the Bar has been analyzed and has been determined to be a matter which warrants further investigation. The Supreme Court of Florida has adopted rules that require the allegations be signed and under oath. In order to comply with this rule you must sign the oath below and return it to us by February 28, 2008 before we can proceed with an investigation.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Under penalty of perjury, I declare that the facts contained in the inquiry submitted to The Florida Bar concerning Mr. Gonzalez are true, correct and complete.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2 4 2/ ,/</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1vi Lee Drury De Cesare Date “F</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">If you do not complete and return the oath form to us, we may be unable to proceed with the investigation. A copy of the rule imposing this obligation (3-7.3(c)) may be found on the Bar’s web site at www.floridabar.org.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also, if you have documents that you feel support your allegations, please provide copies of them when you return the oath.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">k0i-z</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thank you for your cooperation.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sincerely,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">/</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Heidi E. Brewer, Bar Counsel</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Attorney Consumer Assistance Program !)EJ</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">rvtc_</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">DENISE M. SCHLEGEL</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">* Commission DD 643864 Expires Februaiy 25,2011</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">•s Ionded Thni Troy Fain Insurance 800-385-7019</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >Copy of complaint text to the Florida Bar Ethics commission:<br /><br /></span></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">John T. Berry<br />The Florida Bar<br />650 Apalachee Parkway<br />Tallahassee, FL 32399-2300<br />Phone: (850) 561-5600; out-of-state (800) 874-0005; In-State (800) 342-8060<br />Fax: (850) 561-5665<b style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" ><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" >December 27, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Dear Mr. Berry:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Please consider this a citizen’s formal complaint to the Florida Bar Ethics Commission against the firm of </span></b><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Thompson, Sizemore & <span style="">Gonzalez, </span>One <span style="">Tampa</span> City Center 201 N. Franklin Street Suite 1600 P.O. Box 639 <span style="">Tampa</span>, <span style="">FL</span> 33602. Phone:, (813) 273-0050<span style="">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Partner Tom Gonzalez acts attorney for the </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">School</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;"> System.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I have tried for over a month to get public information from Mr. Gonzalez about his firm’s relationship with the </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">School</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;"> Board. He declines even to acknowledge that he received the requests. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Significant among my unanswered questions to Mr. Gonzalez for public information concerns how he got the job of </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> school-board attorney in 1992, fifteen years ago.<span style=""> </span>I believe it was a no-bid contract from Dr. Earl Lennard, past superintendent. One infers that the supine board rubberstamped the contract.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>The board has never since opened this lawyering job up for bids from other law firms in the area.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Mr. Gonzalez took unfair advantage of the school board’s and superintendent’s awarding him a no-bid contract (see Deesan below) even though he knew that the school board’s stamping <span style=""> </span>on everything not nailed down “We are an equal-employment-opportunity employer”<span style=""> </span>is canard and even though his law firm’s ad says it is an expert in Equal Employment Opportunity law. <span style=""> </span>The board and administration lie about practicing equal opportunity in employment and defy anybody to do anything about its violating the equal-opportunity laws. Mr. Gonzalez’s unctuous complicity in evading the equal-employment-opportunity laws in which his law firm claims to be expert and his taking a no-bid job from the school superintendent do not speak well for his ethics. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Mr. Gonzalez accepted this plum position in a manner that also goes athwart the equal-opportunity riders on the schools’ federal contracts. So Mr. Gonzalez’s complicity in snapping up a no-bid job also imperils school and student welfare.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Mr. Gonzalez understood that now-retired Dr. Earl Lennard, who gave him this job without advertising it, ranks one of the least astute men in a county known for its glut of profoundly mediocre men in high places. <span style=""> </span>I submit that Mr. Gonzalez exploited the simplicity of one of the area’s many ninnies who insinuate themselves into bureaucratic jobs, award themselves bloated salaries, and make a mess of public business in these forlorn badlands of democracy. In so doing, Mr. Gonzalez thumbed his nose at fair competition with his brother and sister lawyers, disdained equal-employment-opportunity laws in which he professes to be expert, ignored the equal-opportunity riders on school federal funds, and took advantage of a community nincompoop’s lack of sophistication.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I discovered by attending school-board meetings that Mr. Gonzalez holds forth on how the no-bid paradigm ranks best method because, he affirms, some inchoate process allows the school board—none of which smash into the upper reaches of the Stanford Binet—to assume mystical powers of divination that make inevitable its choosing the best candidate be it a non-advertised job or a no-bid contract. Board divination reveals the latter to be the best no-bid crony who gets <span style=""> </span>a taxpayer-subsidized funds transfer with the board attorney’s blessing. Money is no object in these no-bid tax-paid windfalls I heard Mr. Gonzalez assert with blithe certitude.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Writing contracts for school projects, says Mr. Gonzalez, is too complex for school administrators whose bloated salaries exceed a hundred thousand dollars a year with the superintendent’s in the $300,000 range, making her one of the most extravagantly paid superintendents in the nation. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The lack of logic in Mr. Gonzalez’s gauzy rationale for supporting the no-bid process could have emerged from a Ouija board with equal cogency. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Mr. Gonzalez’s receiving a no-bid contract himself means his advice regarding no-bid contracts has not been disinterested for fifteen years; it has been interested. And interested also is his urging the board that money should not be a consideration in its arbitrary awarding of these no-bid contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I believe Mr. Gonzalez’s benefiting from the no-bid addiction of the school board makes his advocating the no-bid ritual as board attorney unethical. Isn’t the word “recuse” for a lawyer’s excusing him- or herself from situations that render personal benefit?<span style=""> </span>If so, I contend that Mr. Gonzalez should have recused himself from the get-go of his own no-bid contract.<span style=""> </span>He should have sat mum on the podium when the no-bid subject arose for the whole fifteen years of his no-bid incumbency.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The most recent no-bid outrage that Mr. Gonzalez approved saw a $148,000 contract go to a newly retired school administrator who had worked with the superintendent and who, <i style="">La Gaceta</i> newspaper discovered, didn’t have a business phone with a live person answering it and didn’t return voice-mail. <span style=""> </span>Testing his availability, I myself called up this former administrator’s home and got a Minnie-Pearl recording that said, “It’s another beautiful day.<span style=""> </span>Let’s live it for the lord!” <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Chief Facilities Officer Ms. Cathy Valdez was administration mouthpiece at the board meeting to approve this Elia no-bid buddy scam. Ms. Valdez claimed the no-phone guy was paradigm of state-wide reverence for his business acumen. She offered no evidence to support this assertion. It turned out that this was the paragon’s first job in his post-administration start-up. The no-bid scam passed with Edgecomb, Kurdell, Olson, Falliero, and Lamb supporting it.<span style=""> </span>Only </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Griffin</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size:11;"> and Valdes opposed the tax rip-off. Olson and Kurdell castigated </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Griffin</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size:11;"> for asking that the item be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion.<span style=""> </span>These two no-bid advocates said </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Griffin</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size:11;"> was disloyal to the staff for questioning its infallibility.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Ms. Valdez is typical of the buddy and sycophant appointees that featherbed the administration. Ms. Valdez holds a degree in early childhood, a mismatch for Chief Facilities Officer that did not prevent Ms. Elia’s giving her the position sans advertising.<span style=""> </span>The job needs a business degree for which the board should advertise widely. I never heard that Mr. Gonzalez reminded the board of the need to advertise </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Valdez</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size:11;">’s job to accord with its ubiquitous stamp of “we are an equal-opportunity employer.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I argued once to Dr. Lamb that the system of allowing employees to, as he put it, “work themselves up through the ranks” made as much sense as letting a grounds keeper at the Mayo Clinic work up to become chief brain surgeon or allowing cafeteria workers in a county school system to work up to be <span style=""> </span>teachers. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Advertising reaches candidates with both credentials and experience in the field. The administration system of promoting unqualified candidates who are often sycophants from within to the highest of administrative positions resulted in the recent meltdown of the transportation system with a former bus driver as its head. If Tom Gonzalez’s firm is expert in the equal-opportunity laws, I wonder why he does not forewarn the board that it fails to advertise jobs opens it to equal-employment-opportunity law challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Ms. Valdes is out of her depth and age group in the grown-up world of business.<span style=""> </span>That’s the reason she needed the $148,000 no bid, no-phone consultant to do the job that she and her staff should have done themselves. That the no-phone consultant may require a consultant himself is all part of this school board’s Kafkaesque bid protocol. Ms. Valdes gets a sky-high salary courtesy of unwary taxpayers and board lack of concern for frittering tax money away on incompetent, under-credentialed, inexperienced administrators whom the board supplements with no-phone, no-bid former administrator consultants. This choreograph receives the Thompson etc. board attorney’s legal sanction.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Such is the story of school-board-no-bid largesse from the pockets of taxpayers malgre eux.<span style=""> </span>The bids can and do go to retired administrator buddies of the superintendent with a start-up business at which nobody answers the phone. The no-bid lottery can produce protégés as was the recent case of a senior administrator’s hiring her pet to a health-work sinecure that the administrator herself invented, did not advertise, and turned out to be redundant since there was <span style=""> </span>already a superfluity in that area. <span style=""> </span>When knowledge of the job’s invention surfaced, the board attorney could discover no way to revoke the contract, so the protégé went on the payroll.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Nobody--board, superintendent, or attorney—recommended the firing of the renegade administrator. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">These are specimens of the no-bid muddle fostered by the board and justified with legal gloss by Mr. Gonzalez of the flossy law firm of Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez, itself pulling down a hefty clump of tax money in its no-bid run of fifteen years during <span style=""> </span>which Tom Gonzalez’s has reprised <span style=""> </span>role not unlike that of consigliore Tom in <i style="">The</i> <i style="">Godfather.</i> These manic no-bid and bizarre employment schemes evoke <span style=""> </span>Sartre <i style="">Huit-Clos</i> choreograph<i style="">.<o:p></o:p></i></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Such is not the worst damage that Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez via Gonzalez facilitates for the rip-offs of taxpaying citizens.<span style=""> </span>The firm’s attorneys also treat the First Amendment with cavalier neglect and cooperate with the Constitution-scoffer board and early-childhood administrators to deprive citizens of their First-Amendment rights. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez advertises itself as a firm that protects the employer’s rights. Gonzalez is putative board attorney, but in a larger context he is attorney that represents the interests of his citizen employers who elected the board and who pay his salary. <span style=""> </span>He never seems to remember that fact.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">During citizens’ input time, the board suffers citizens to approach the mike on the periphery of the hallowed precincts of board sacred semi-circle in an atmosphere reminiscent of the wretch Radames’s begging for his life from the icy priests who sentenced him to dungeon death in<i style=""> Aida.</i><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Dr. Lamb models imperious chair with sneer on his face and finger on the buzzer to silence the intruder mid-clause at the end of a niggard three minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">So intent are the board and administration on reducing the role of teachers and students to that of mere economic field hands that provide the tax money in the board and administration’s appropriation of the schools for their aggrandizement and lust for power that they decline to accord these two groups a slot on the board agenda.<span style=""> </span>Doing so would augment teachers and students’ legitimacy that board and administration want to gut; it would also cut into the time the board’s members require to laud each other for the gimcrack awards and honorariums the parasitic world of bureaucrat administrators devises in a non-stop rollout of incestuous accolades.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Ms. Elia alone has received in the last trimester at least six Superintendent of the Year, the Decade, or the Century citations even though she can’t write past junior-high level and wouldn’t know where to put a comma if her life depended on it. She presents evidence that the smart go into teaching while the dumb go into administration because that’s where the money is.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">So hostile is the Honorable Lamb to citizen input that he once implied that I was a wetback who swam from </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Madeira</span></b></st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Beach</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> to </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> just to annoy him with my question about his using the board secretary and official stationery to write Mayor Iorio to give his condo association a break on its water bill. Had his girth allowed agility, I hazard he would have leapt <span style=""> </span>his royal desk to clobber me with his gavel.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Chair Lamb also rebuked teachers’ clapping for their colleagues when they protested at a board meeting <span style=""> </span>Ms. Elia’s loading another class on them with no pay to solve her budget problems. Chair Lamb said the teachers’ applause was “uncivil” and violated <i style="">Robert’s Rules.</i> Le Gonzalez offered no demur. The tax-paid counselor declined to defend the Constitutional right to clap. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">While money is no object in the no-bid process to give buddies and sycophants contracts and to invent relatives and protégés jobs, money ranked primary reason that Ms. Elia loaded an extra class without pay onto teachers. She needed a sacrificial population from which to extract the dollars needed for the reduced-classroom-size mandate. Teachers are default patsies for such administrative fiats. The board always rubberstamps the administration no matter how extreme its proposal. <span style=""> </span>Board candidates piously praise teachers on the stump but rip them off on the board podium.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Most recent example of Constitution bashing was my case of having the Thompson etc. representative allow Board Chair Jennifer Falliero gavel me down when I tried to ask questions about her adulterous affair (see deposition snippet below) conducted on school precincts with a school administrator and during which she missed school events to pursue him to Arizona. The board and administration covered up La Faliera’s conduct not because they objected to the conduct but because the stench of its disclosure would cause public doubts about <span style=""> </span>board-and-administration handling of unseemly behavior on school property. If the public knew that such behavior got tolerance from the board and administration, some heads would have rolled.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">I suspect Mr. Gonzalez knew about La Falliera’s conduct. Every hall, office, and mop closet battened off it. Teachers at distant schools knew about it. An insider of fifteen years gets told the seamy secrets of the outfit to which he provides legal advice. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">A good part of Ms. Elia’s administrative activities have to do with sanitizing her public image by keeping the public ignorant of what goes on behind the Wizard-of-Oz screen that walls off untoward administrative conduct. The Public Affairs office works with zeal under threat of Elia wrath to spin the school news so that it comes out deodorized and she looks good. The head of the public-affairs office gets a hundred thousand tax dollars a year to make the superintendent look like the Cato the Elder in the superintendent racket. This spun version of the superintendent is not only for local but also for state consumption.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Marc Hart, the administrator with whom Ms. Faliero had the affair that she instigated by haunting his office to the point where Dr. Lennard told her to stay away from Mr. Hart, is the source of my information on this school-locale affair.<span style=""> </span>He asked to come to my home in </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;">Madeira</span></b></st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">Beach</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;"> and recounted the circumstances of the affair.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">This shattered man is now divorced, can’t get a job, and worries about the damage—tardily, to be sure—that the situation inflicts on his children. Ms. Faliero used <span style=""> </span>board glamour as allure in this tawdry La-Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci exploit on school property. <span style=""> </span>By no stretch of the imagination could one say this conduct served the interest of the public education that School Board Falliero is supposed to protect and improve as a board member. Ms. Falliero tells teachers that they are held to a higher standard.<span style=""> </span>Would that she applied this advice to herself.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The administration tardily forced Mr. Hart to resign ostensibly for drunkenness, for which it would ordinarily put him on report for review. Instead, <span style=""> </span>the administration used the drunkenness issue to force Hart to resign “for personal reasons” via interview in Chief Human Resources Dan Valdez’s office. This coerced resignation did not stop the administration cover-up for Falliero, however; nor did it did stop board members from voting her in as chair. La Elia’s girlfriends and unfailing cheerleaders Kurdell and Olson must have known about this unlovely situation yet raised no objections to the election of Ms. Faliero as board chair. I find hard believing other board members were ignorant of Ms. Faliero’s conduct, yet they counted the dignity of the board on which they serve so low as to appoint Ms. Faliero chair.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Nor did the board and administration punish the principal who reputedly engaged in a companion adultery with Jennifer Falliero’s pre-divorce middle-school coach spouse. If report of this principal-coach activity be true, that affair will have gone on in the midst of the children and be worse than the ROSSAC-based activities of Faliero and Hart.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Chair Falliera purports to be ardent Christian and is member of a family-values Republican Women’s Club.<span style=""> </span>She opposes sex education for students. She rallied her homophobic advocates to force schools’ reporting students’ membership in gay clubs to parents with inferred sicko hope that the parents would make these kids’ lives a living hell even if they did not kick them out of their homes.<span style=""> </span>Thank God the intervention of the ACLU and the opposition of a cross-section of students defeated this Faliero project. She went on when she became board chair to support censorship by pronouncing a middle-school library book “disgusting” when a parent objected because it described an attempted rape. Currently one reads in the </span></b><i style=""><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Tribune</span></i><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> that Board Chair Faliero toys with introducing evolution into the science curriculum.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">What an ornament to the <span style=""> </span>school board Ms. Falliero is with the hypocrisy that characterizes the gulf between her public and private life.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">I told Mr. Hart to forget La Faliero, rebuild his life, and attend to the welfare of his children. I said she is selfish, exploitive, and manipulative.<span style=""> </span>I think La Faliero is the kind of woman about whom one hears honky-tonk songs on the juke box sung by faux cowboy singers with tremulous baritones in dives the habitués of which live on the periphery of society. She’s the type of woman who makes difficult the efforts of women to succeed in the business world on the strength of their professional performance, not their sexual exploits. I have worked in the Women’s Movement for forty years and deplore Ms. Faliero’s behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">One Mr. Scott Timberg, legal varlet of Thompson etc, sat in for Mr. Gonzalez at the December 11<sup>th. </sup>board meeting.<span style=""> </span>Master Timberg has the face of a Ken doll and manners for which my Southern mother would say he was raised in a barn. I don’t think his board deportment passed muster even in the rough-edged protocols to which lawyers believe themselves entitled.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">During the meeting when Chair Faliero was gaveling me down, Le Timberg examined the tip of his pen or exchanged snickers behind his hand with Superintendent Elia, who my <span style=""> </span>mother would also say was also raised in a barn.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Timberg paid no attention to legal business and the Constitution’s shredding on the dais by Chair Falliero. Paying attention to business was what his firm got a no-bid contract to do, not for being a twit who gossips on the job when not pondering the metaphysics of his pen.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">When Chair Jennifer suspected that I was about to ask her how her adulterous conduct on school property with a school administrator--an inferior to her in rank who could have filed against the board under Title VII and who I wish had--comported with her duty to voters to supervise children’s education and be a role model for them, she gaveled me down and rebuked me for “slander.” I doubt Mr. Gonzalez had pointed out to the board and administration the peril of a Title VII case that Ms. Faliero’s conduct invited any more than he mentioned that the board was liable for not allowing a citizen at the mike First-amendment rights.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">To Ms. Faliero’s accusation that I slandered her, I say the truth is its own defense. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Besides, people have a First-Amendment right to slander.<span style=""> </span>They may get sued, but that does not obviate their right to say what they believe to be true.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Board members took an oath to uphold the Constitution but don’t know and don’t care what that means. None intervened to appeal from the decision of the chair when Ms. Faliero gaveled me down--if any of them had the slightest grasp of Roberts Rules--and urge the Constitutional right of a citizen to be heard before elected officials.<span style=""> </span>The representative of Thompson etc. sat mute with his Ken-doll physiognomy in vapid repose during the gaveling, letting this unconstitutional choreograph unfold undeterred by any legal input he gets paid to provide.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Mr. Willie Monroe, the courtly sergeant at arms, even crept up behind me in a move suggesting that I would suffer bodily eviction from a public forum in which the board attorney was complicit in undermining the First Amendment.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The right to approach members of the government for redress is not qualified.<span style=""> </span>It is absolute.<span style=""> </span>Lawyers should know that.<span style=""> </span>Master Greg of Thompson should as a member of the bar.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">A lawyer is an officer of the court.<span style=""> </span>That is equivalent to being a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.<span style=""> </span>As the Arthurian knights owed their primary allegiance to the ideals of chivalry, so do officers of the court owe their primary fealty to the rules of law.<span style=""> </span>Crooked clients and potted-plant board members come second.<span style=""> </span>Officers of the court must crawl on their bellies over glass shards to defend the Constitution.<span style=""> </span>They must live pure, right wrong, serve the Constitution, else why born?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">I am disappointed in Tom Gonzalez.<span style=""> </span>He and I are both undergraduates in literature. The rascal reads Virgil— at least he claims he reads Virgil but probably reads Cliff Notes and then says he reads Virgil. But beyond intellectual foppery is the grubby meanness of one of his actions with which I am familiar and condemn.<span style=""> </span>The behavior of Mr. Gonzalez embedded in the following recital must violate a lawyer’s ethical code. An ethical person in any profession would not treat a dog the way that the administration abetted by Mr. Gonzalez treated a young library technician named Bart Birdsall.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Superintendent Elia and Ms. Linda Kipley cooked up a firing case against Bart Birdsall.<span style=""> </span>La Kipley was formerly home-ec teacher but climbed the sycophant ladder to the position of head of Professional Standards, for which she makes $130, 000 a year and rising while beginning teachers with academically respected degrees make $34,000.<span style=""> </span>It goes without saying that the job the administration ceded Ms. Kipley got no advertising. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Birdsall’s sin? He’s gay, and when then County Commissioner (now state senator, alas) Ronda Storms passed the ordinance making illegal mounting a USF student’s gay-themed class-project display in the county library, the just-appointed Elia wanted to do her buddy county administrator Pat Bean a favor, to spread her newly acquired power wings, and to show bigots indigenous to the county’s political fens and bogs that she didn’t tolerate gays.<span style=""> </span>So she enlisted her home-ec henchperson, Ms. Kipley, to manufacture a case against Birdsall for misusing school mails for political purposes.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">The pair had the school computer staff do a fishing expedition on Birdsall’s computer records. The only minnow it caught was his posting notice of the gay speak-out against the Storms ordinance on the media-specialist community board, such postings being the purpose for which it exists.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">The case dwindled because it was without basis but ended only after Ms. Kipley had summoned Birdsall to her office for a minds-game terror session which she must have learned to cook up along with Béarnaise sauce in her home-ec credentialing. Keeping teachers and staff in a state of abject terror defines the purpose of the Professional Standards office: it is the administration’s Grand Guignol to keep teachers and staff scared witless that they will lose their jobs if they say anything negative about the administration.<span style=""> </span>Sadly, this threat works.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">I complained to Tom Gonzalez about Birdsall’s shoddy treatment, and he met with Birdsall at Just Eats in Birdsall’s </span></b><st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">South Tampa</span></b></st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> neighborhood to discuss the situation.<span style=""> </span>If Mr. Gallagher had been serious about the purpose of the meeting, he would have invited Birdsall to his office and not conducted his interview in Just Eats. Birdsall had gone into therapy to overcome the trauma of the Elia and Kipley savaging, but all he wanted was a letter of apology from La Kipley saying the charge was a mistake.<span style=""> </span>I believe he wanted his dignity restored.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Mr. Gonzalez promised he could get an apology letter from Ms. Kipley with ease.<span style=""> </span>That has been over a year ago. Mr. Gonzalez has told me to my face when I inquired that that the letter would appear momentarily. He also promised me that he would author a pamphlet for teachers caught in the Abu-Ghraib-Professional-Standards gauntlet so that they would know what measures they could take to defend themselves from the administration’s dirty tricks.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Tom has fulfilled neither promise. He lied.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">This behavior is not wicked.<span style=""> </span>Real evil takes brains and outré Gothic sweep of imagination that Tom does not possess. His modest aptitude is for acts of petty perfidy that make life a chore for those in his line of vision. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Colluding with <span style=""> </span>betrayals such as Birdsall’s has netted Tom and his flossy firm in the past year alone half a million dollars of tax money.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">God knows how much Thompson and the guys earned the year Senior Partner Gonzalez supervised <span style=""> </span>the legal crucifixion of Doug Erwin. I may be able to discover that he recommended the prosecution and appealing the appeal had he sent me the Erwin information I requested. Mr. Gallagher hasn’t sent me the requested Erwin information of course.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">I consider the Erwin case to be closest Mr. Gallagher has come to real evil conduct.<span style=""> </span>But my guess is that Tom’s court-room éclat lacked the glamour of evil and featured instead the tedium of a bureaucratic court-room grinding down of another human being. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Mr. Erwin was long-time school-employed whistleblower who reported waste in the building department, Ms. Elia’s former bailiwick.<span style=""> </span>The administration and board with today three members of the Erwin sadists still incumbent—Lamb, Kurdell, and Olson—punished Erwin for his disclosure instead of giving him a medal.<span style=""> </span>Gonzalez-led law suit and appeal saw Erwin win both, thank God.<span style=""> </span>The abused man even got a small settlement, not, however, close to what Thompson et al raked in, one infers, for the court scarifying of the school employer who reported waste and then whom the administration, the board, and Thompson etc. dogged from his job<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">The spectacle of this case is the objective correlative of the dangers of crossing the administration.<span style=""> </span>It had the planned side effect, however, of augmenting teacher and staff fear of administrative vindictiveness and making them even less willing to speak up despite Erwin’s eventual win.<span style=""> </span>Tom Gonzalez’s firm was the board-administration instrument of this unlovely use of legal power.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">We canvass here petty legal talents rewarded by bloated no-bid windfalls about which taxpayers have no clue. Tom excels at providing legal support for those small, ignoble cruelties that are administration-and-board retaliation argot. <span style=""> </span>He is more Uriah Heep than Pol Pot. And the no-bid school-board work pays the rent.<span style=""> </span>The Gonzalez compensation information slips by on the consent agenda with no board member’s having sufficient care for taxpayer money, the curiosity, or the guts to ask that it come off the consent agenda for public review. </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Griffin</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">, who asked for the no-bid windfall to the no-phone former administrator to be pulled for review, now suffers harrying from both the administration and other board members, all of whom resent her except Valdes. <span style=""> </span>La Falliero has told her to resign her job if she can’t get with the program laid out by Ms. Elia.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Le Tom embodies small-bore wrongs of broken promises such as those cited to a school media specialist and this citizen. He knows and assists but pretends not to see that his employers--the board and administration--engage in endless incursions against comity that undermine the social contract and make difficult the life of the rest of the school family—especially the teachers who with their students are the heart of the school system.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">The irony is that Thompson, Sizemore, and Tom get paid bloated compensation from a 15-year-old no-bid contract with tax money from the very citizens whose ideals about the purpose of education the firm assists the administration to betray. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">The </span></b><st1:place><st1:placetype><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placename><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;">Commission</span></b></st1:placename></st1:place><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"> recently awarded Mr. Erwin its medal for courage.<span style=""> </span>No school officials attended; nor did any of Mr. Gonzalez’s firm as far as I can determine.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed;" align="right"><b><span dir="ltr" style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I ask that the Florida Bar’s Ethics Commission rebuke the firm of Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez for its shoddy conducting of public business via a 15-year-running-no-bid contract. I ask that the Ethics Commission tell the firm’s minions they must not defy lawyerly fairness to other members of the legal profession and allow these instead to compete by open bid for the school-board lawyer sinecure—not at some future time but this instant. I believe that Tom must tell his employers—the board and Ms. Elia—that the time has come after his fifteen-year no-bid run to put the lawyer contract out for a competitive bid so that other area firms will have a chance for the heretofore no-bid job Thompson et al have hogged for fifteen years.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The Ethics Commission as well should instruct Thompson etc. that its employees must obey the public-records law of Florida; should not participate in violating Title VII’s provisions for equal- employment opportunity; <span style=""> </span>must abjure colluding in covering up bad behavior on the part of clients such as an elected board member’s catalyzing and engaging in adultery on school property; and<span style=""> </span>must not suffer the administration to fire the board culprit administrator’s adultery partner with a manufactured charge to finesse the situation so as to avoid negative publicity for the board and superintendent while ignoring similar lapses on school property such as the coach-principal incident. The public has a right to know how elected officials, administrators, and the school lawyer comport themselves on the job. Their acts of betrayal to the public trust must not get the protection of cover-up. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I ask as well that the Ethics Commission advise Thompson etc. that it is not to send callow specimens of legal talent to board meetings who don’t know or don’t care enough about the Constitution as to remain mute when the Thompson factotum witnesses his board clients’ abrogating a citizen’s First-Amendment rights. A lawyer’s duty is to the law first, misguided clients second. Besides, as a member of the public that pays his fee, I and other petitioners at the board podium are his clients.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">People are terrified to object to anything lawyers do no matter how outrageous and athwart humankind’s beliefs in honorable conduct. <span style=""> </span>They fear lawyers will sue them and put them in the pokey. It’s no wonder many lawyers become bullies so that Shakespeare says we should kill them. <span style=""> </span>Lawyers learn that people fear that they will end up in </span></b><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Alcatraz</span></b></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;"> or even </span></b><st1:street><st1:address><b><span style="font-size:11;">Crumlin Road</span></b></st1:address></st1:street><b><span style="font-size:11;"> Goal in a rendition protocol of Abu Ghraib redux if they defy a member of the legal priesthood who has passed the bar, his or her score having been ever so marginal.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Goodness knows I send this missive to this </span></b><st1:state><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Florida</span></b></st1:place></st1:state><b><span style="font-size:11;"> Ethics Commission in fear and trembling of retaliation from the Pantagruel minions of Thompson, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">But I gird up my aged loins to defy unethical lawyers who screw taxpayers in their positions as legal advisors to public bodies and who give legal gloss to crooked, obtuse, and ethically deficient elected officials such as those who blundered their way onto the </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">School</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;"> Board. I am convinced that the Constitution and my antique Navajo fetish necklace that I secured on a recent trip to New Mexico with two of my grandchildren—twins--will protect me against the Forces of Darkness, legal or civilian. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I also rely as well on this Florida Bar’s Ethics Commission’s gallantry, which will prompt its members to drape me in its protective carapace of civility as a granny of ten.<span style=""> </span>Any society that doesn’t treat well its grandmothers who rat out misbehaving lawyers is on the skids.<span style=""> </span>Armageddon looms. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I see many Web pages of ethics committees for the national bar. Ethics lucubrations appear an addiction with the national legal community.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I shall write the bar president and at least one of these groups of ethics quidnuncs to report on this experience.<span style=""> </span>Its minions are dying to know what treatment provincial-citizen complaints get in our legal badlands from the state-bar ethics commission.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">I have no doubt that one of these societies will host a reception for all involved in this ordeal with requisite dull speakers, watered-down punch, and wretched food.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Very respectfully yours, <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Lee Drury de Cesare <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:street><st1:address><b><span style="font-size:11;">15316 Gulf Boulevard</span></b></st1:address></st1:street><b><span style="font-size:11;"> 802<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:place><st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;">Madeira</span></b></st1:placename><b><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b><span style="font-size:11;">Beach</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">, Fl 33708<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">727-398-4142<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;">tampabaygrammargrinch.blogspot.com<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:218.25pt;"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.jpg" title="LEEHEADreducedcopy"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.jpg" shapes="_x0000_i1025" height="276" width="291" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:11;"><span style=""> </span>c: Thompson, Sizemore, Gonzalez<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size:11;"><span style=""> </span>Hillsborough County Bar Association<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size:11;"><span style=""> </span>Various Bar Associations, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size:11;"><span style=""> </span></span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">Tampa</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b><span style="font-size:11;"> ACLU<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b><span style="font-size:11;"><span style=""> </span>Mike Deeson<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:11;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b><span style="font-size:11;">The Online Version<br />of the<br />Redress of Grievances<br /></span></b><b><span style="font-size:11;">Presented to the Three Branches of </span></b><st1:country-region><st1:place><b><span style="font-size:11;">United States</span></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b><span style="font-size:11;"> Government</span></b><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p style=""><b><span style="font-size:11;">FOR PUBLIC RELEASE - </span></b><st1:date month="10" day="13" year="1998"><b><span style="font-size:11;">Tuesday, October 13, 1998</span></b></st1:date><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b><span style="font-size:11;">The following legal brief has been served upon the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches of the United States government, in accordance with the provisions of the United States Constitution, First Amendment "absolute" right, to petition the government for a redress of grievances.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/9526/redress.html">http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/9526/redress.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><a href="http://www.tampabays10.com/inside/team/member.aspx?storyid=27618"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1026" type="#_x0000_t75" alt="" style="'width:37.5pt;height:45pt'" button="t"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image002.jpg" href="http://www.tampabays10.com/images/talent/deeson2.jpg"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.jpg" shapes="_x0000_i1026" border="0" height="60" width="50" /><!--[endif]--></span></a>By: <a href="http://www.tampabays10.com/inside/team/member.aspx?storyid=27618">Mike Deeson</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">………………………………………………………………………<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">But the taxpayers pay plenty. In the past two years the city of </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tampa</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> has spent $3,193,189.59 on outside legal fees.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">David Smith, </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tampa</span></b></st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">City</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> Attorney: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“Wow that surprises me, because my budget for outside council is about $300,000 for outside council that must be outside council that is paid for same other location in the city”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Over the past year, </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">County</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> has spent more than a half a million dollars on outside attorneys in addition to the $9 million for in house lawyers.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Dr Earl Lennard, </span></b><st1:place><st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Former</span></b></st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Hillsborough</span></b></st1:placename><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> </span></b><st1:placetype><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">School</span></b></st1:placetype></st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> Supt.: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“At this time the recommendation is that Mr. Gonzales be appointed to board attorney.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Gonzales was appointed the school board attorney in 2004 without allowing others to apply for the job.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><st1:city><st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Clinton</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> Paris, Attorney: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“It is egregious for this board to carte blanche just hand off this position.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Since 2004 Gonzalez, who is a part time school board employee, his firm have [sic] been paid $910,593.78 by the taxpayers for representing the school board. Even he agrees his appointment could have been handled better.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">When Gonzales was asked shouldn't they have opened up the process to let other people apply? He said,<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tom Gonzalez, Attorney: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“I thought they should have, yep.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Meantime since 2003, Gonzalez who has a reputation as one of the best Labor attorneys in the state also billed the city of </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tampa</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> $492.853.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">We asked Gonzales if an agency like the city of </span></b><st1:city><st1:place><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tampa</span></b></st1:place></st1:city><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"> which has so much labor law would be better off having a specialist.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tom Gonzalez, attorney: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“I don't know when you say they have a lot, they have it in spurts.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">But Gonzales says it could save taxpayers money.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Tom Gonzalez, attorney: <o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">“If you look at in a vacuum and do numbers to numbers, the numbers work out.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">But Gonzalez says he is not convinced one specialty lawyer could do the same amount of work his firm does.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p> <p style=""><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">Excerpt from Hart v. Hart deposition </span></b><st1:date month="8" day="7" year="2007"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;">August 7, 2007</span></b></st1:date><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shape id="_x0000_i1027" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:6in;height:594pt'"> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image003.png" title="hart2"> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Owner/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image004.gif" shapes="_x0000_i1027" border="0" height="792" width="576" /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b style=""><span style="font-size:11;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>twinkobiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865056039680988073noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5338509888038553180.post-44422305278010268142008-02-23T05:32:00.000-08:002008-03-25T12:30:19.772-07:00<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:1138.5pt;" ole=""> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:oleobject type="Embed" progid="Photoshop.Image.5" shapeid="_x0000_i1025" drawaspect="Content" objectid="_1265261739"> <o:wordfieldcodes>\s</o:WordFieldCodes> </o:OLEObject> </xml><![endif]--></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype id="_x0000_t75" coordsize="21600,21600" spt="75" preferrelative="t" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" filled="f" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:formulas> <v:path extrusionok="f" gradientshapeok="t" connecttype="rect"> <o:lock ext="edit" aspectratio="t"> </v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_i1025" type="#_x0000_t75" style="'width:1138.5pt;" ole=""> <v:imagedata src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\Owner\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_image001.png" title=""> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:oleobject type="Embed" progid="Photoshop.Image.5" shapeid="_x0000_i1025" drawaspect="Content" objectid="_1265261923"> <o:wordfieldcodes>\s</o:WordFieldCodes> </o:OLEObject> </xml><![endif]--></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;">John T. Berry<br />The Florida Bar<br />650 Apalachee Parkway<br />Tallahassee, FL 32399-2300<br />Phone: (850) 561-5600; out-of-state (800) 874-0005; In-State (800) 342-8060<br />Fax: (850) 561-5665</span><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >December 27, 2007<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;" align="center"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dear Mr. Berry:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Please consider this a citizen’s formal complaint to the Florida Bar Ethics Commission against the firm of Thompson, Sizemore & <span style="">Gonzalez, </span>One <span style="">Tampa</span> City Center 201 N. Franklin Street Suite 1600 P.O. Box 639 <span style="">Tampa</span>, <span style="">FL</span> 33602. Phone:, (813) 273-0050<span style="">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Partner Tom Gonzalez acts attorney for the <st1:place><st1:placename>Hillsborough</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>County</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype>School</st1:placetype></st1:place> System.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have tried for over a month to get public information from Mr. Gonzalez about his firm’s relationship with the <st1:place><st1:placename>Hillsborough</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>County</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype>School</st1:placetype></st1:place> Board. He declines even to acknowledge that he received the requests. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Significant among my unanswered questions to Mr. Gonzalez for public information concerns how he got the job of </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span dir="ltr">Hillsborough</span></st1:placename><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:placetype><span dir="ltr">County</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span dir="ltr"> school-board attorney in 1992, fifteen years ago.<span style=""> </span>I believe it was a no-bid contract from Dr. Earl Lennard, past superintendent. One infers that the supine board rubberstamped the contract.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>The board has never since opened this lawyering job up for bids from other law firms in the area.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Gonzalez took unfair advantage of the school board’s and superintendent’s awarding him a no-bid contract (see Deesan below) even though he knew that the school board’s stamping <span style=""> </span>on everything not nailed down “We are an equal-employment-opportunity employer”<span style=""> </span>is canard and even though his law firm’s ad says it is an expert in Equal Employment Opportunity law. <span style=""> </span>The board and administration lie about practicing equal opportunity in employment and defy anybody to do anything about its violating the equal-opportunity laws. Mr. Gonzalez’s unctuous complicity in evading the equal-employment-opportunity laws in which his law firm claims to be expert and his taking a no-bid job from the school superintendent do not speak well for his ethics. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Gonzalez accepted this plum position in a manner that also goes athwart the equal-opportunity riders on the schools’ federal contracts. So Mr. Gonzalez’s complicity in snapping up a no-bid job also imperils school and student welfare.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Gonzalez understood that now-retired Dr. Earl Lennard, who gave him this job without advertising it, ranks one of the least astute men in a county known for its glut of profoundly mediocre men in high places. <span style=""> </span>I submit that Mr. Gonzalez exploited the simplicity of one of the area’s many ninnies who insinuate themselves into bureaucratic jobs, award themselves bloated salaries, and make a mess of public business in these forlorn badlands of democracy. In so doing, Mr. Gonzalez thumbed his nose at fair competition with his brother and sister lawyers, disdained equal-employment-opportunity laws in which he professes to be expert, ignored the equal-opportunity riders on school federal funds, and took advantage of a community nincompoop’s lack of sophistication.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I discovered by attending school-board meetings that Mr. Gonzalez holds forth on how the no-bid paradigm ranks best method because, he affirms, some inchoate process allows the school board—none of which smash into the upper reaches of the Stanford Binet—to assume mystical powers of divination that make inevitable its choosing the best candidate be it a non-advertised job or a no-bid contract. Board divination reveals the latter to be the best no-bid crony who gets <span style=""> </span>a taxpayer-subsidized funds transfer with the board attorney’s blessing. Money is no object in these no-bid tax-paid windfalls I heard Mr. Gonzalez assert with blithe certitude.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Writing contracts for school projects, says Mr. Gonzalez, is too complex for school administrators whose bloated salaries exceed a hundred thousand dollars a year with the superintendent’s in the $300,000 range, making her one of the most extravagantly paid superintendents in the nation. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The lack of logic in Mr. Gonzalez’s gauzy rationale for supporting the no-bid process could have emerged from a Ouija board with equal cogency. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Mr. Gonzalez’s receiving a no-bid contract himself means his advice regarding no-bid contracts has not been disinterested for fifteen years; it has been interested. And interested also is his urging the board that money should not be a consideration in its arbitrary awarding of these no-bid contracts.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I believe Mr. Gonzalez’s benefiting from the no-bid addiction of the school board makes his advocating the no-bid ritual as board attorney unethical. Isn’t the word “recuse” for a lawyer’s excusing him- or herself from situations that render personal benefit?<span style=""> </span>If so, I contend that Mr. Gonzalez should have recused himself from the get-go of his own no-bid contract.<span style=""> </span>He should have sat mum on the podium when the no-bid subject arose for the whole fifteen years of his no-bid incumbency.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The most recent no-bid outrage that Mr. Gonzalez approved saw a $148,000 contract go to a newly retired school administrator who had worked with the superintendent and who, <i style="">La Gaceta</i> newspaper discovered, didn’t have a business phone with a live person answering it and didn’t return voice-mail. <span style=""> </span>Testing his availability, I myself called up this former administrator’s home and got a Minnie-Pearl recording that said, “It’s another beautiful day.<span style=""> </span>Let’s live it for the lord!” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Chief Facilities Officer Ms. Cathy Valdez was administration mouthpiece at the board meeting to approve this Elia no-bid buddy scam. Ms. Valdez claimed the no-phone guy was paradigm of state-wide reverence for his business acumen. She offered no evidence to support this assertion. It turned out that this was the paragon’s first job in his post-administration start-up. The no-bid scam passed with Edgecomb, Kurdell, Olson, Falliero, and Lamb supporting it.<span style=""> </span>Only <st1:city><st1:place>Griffin</st1:place></st1:city> and Valdes opposed the tax rip-off. Olson and Kurdell castigated <st1:city><st1:place>Griffin</st1:place></st1:city> for asking that the item be pulled from the consent agenda for discussion.<span style=""> </span>These two no-bid advocates said <st1:city><st1:place>Griffin</st1:place></st1:city> was disloyal to the staff for questioning its infallibility.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ms. Valdez is typical of the buddy and sycophant appointees that featherbed the administration. Ms. Valdez holds a degree in early childhood, a mismatch for Chief Facilities Officer that did not prevent Ms. Elia’s giving her the position sans advertising.<span style=""> </span>The job needs a business degree for which the board should advertise widely. I never heard that Mr. Gonzalez reminded the board of the need to advertise <st1:city><st1:place>Valdez</st1:place></st1:city>’s job to accord with its ubiquitous stamp of “we are an equal-opportunity employer.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I argued once to Dr. Lamb that the system of allowing employees to, as he put it, “work themselves up through the ranks” made as much sense as letting a grounds keeper at the Mayo Clinic work up to become chief brain surgeon or allowing cafeteria workers in a county school system to work up to be <span style=""> </span>teachers. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Advertising reaches candidates with both credentials and experience in the field. The administration system of promoting unqualified candidates who are often sycophants from within to the highest of administrative positions resulted in the recent meltdown of the transportation system with a former bus driver as its head. If Tom Gonzalez’s firm is expert in the equal-opportunity laws, I wonder why he does not forewarn the board that it fails to advertise jobs opens it to equal-employment-opportunity law challenges.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ms. Valdes is out of her depth and age group in the grown-up world of business.<span style=""> </span>That’s the reason she needed the $148,000 no bid, no-phone consultant to do the job that she and her staff should have done themselves. That the no-phone consultant may require a consultant himself is all part of this school board’s Kafkaesque bid protocol. Ms. Valdes gets a sky-high salary courtesy of unwary taxpayers and board lack of concern for frittering tax money away on incompetent, under-credentialed, inexperienced administrators whom the board supplements with no-phone, no-bid former administrator consultants. This choreograph receives the Thompson etc. board attorney’s legal sanction.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Such is the story of school-board-no-bid largesse from the pockets of taxpayers malgre eux.<span style=""> </span>The bids can and do go to retired administrator buddies of the superintendent with a start-up business at which nobody answers the phone. The no-bid lottery can produce protégés as was the recent case of a senior administrator’s hiring her pet to a health-work sinecure that the administrator herself invented, did not advertise, and turned out to be redundant since there was <span style=""> </span>already a superfluity in that area. <span style=""> </span>When knowledge of the job’s invention surfaced, the board attorney could discover no way to revoke the contract, so the protégé went on the payroll.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Nobody--board, superintendent, or attorney—recommended the firing of the renegade administrator. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">These are specimens of the no-bid muddle fostered by the board and justified with legal gloss by Mr. Gonzalez of the flossy law firm of Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez, itself pulling down a hefty clump of tax money in its no-bid run of fifteen years during <span style=""> </span>which Tom Gonzalez’s has reprised <span style=""> </span>role not unlike that of consigliore Tom in <i style="">The</i> <i style="">Godfather.</i> These manic no-bid and bizarre employment schemes evoke <span style=""> </span>Sartre <i style="">Huit-Clos</i> choreograph<i style="">.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Such is not the worst damage that Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez via Gonzalez facilitates for the rip-offs of taxpaying citizens.<span style=""> </span>The firm’s attorneys also treat the First Amendment with cavalier neglect and cooperate with the Constitution-scoffer board and early-childhood administrators to deprive citizens of their First-Amendment rights. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez advertises itself as a firm that protects the employer’s rights. Gonzalez is putative board attorney, but in a larger context he is attorney that represents the interests of his citizen employers who elected the board and who pay his salary. <span style=""> </span>He never seems to remember that fact.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">During citizens’ input time, the board suffers citizens to approach the mike on the periphery of the hallowed precincts of board sacred semi-circle in an atmosphere reminiscent of the wretch Radames’s begging for his life from the icy priests who sentenced him to dungeon death in<i style=""> Aida.</i><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Dr. Lamb models imperious chair with sneer on his face and finger on the buzzer to silence the intruder mid-clause at the end of a niggard three minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">So intent are the board and administration on reducing the role of teachers and students to that of mere economic field hands that provide the tax money in the board and administration’s appropriation of the schools for their aggrandizement and lust for power that they decline to accord these two groups a slot on the board agenda.<span style=""> </span>Doing so would augment teachers and students’ legitimacy that board and administration want to gut; it would also cut into the time the board’s members require to laud each other for the gimcrack awards and honorariums the parasitic world of bureaucrat administrators devises in a non-stop rollout of incestuous accolades.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Ms. Elia alone has received in the last trimester at least six Superintendent of the Year, the Decade, or the Century citations even though she can’t write past junior-high level and wouldn’t know where to put a comma if her life depended on it. She presents evidence that the smart go into teaching while the dumb go into administration because that’s where the money is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">So hostile is the Honorable Lamb to citizen input that he once implied that I was a wetback who swam from </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span dir="ltr">Madeira</span></st1:placename><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:placetype><span dir="ltr">Beach</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span dir="ltr"> to </span><st1:place><st1:placename><span dir="ltr">Hillsborough</span></st1:placename><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:placetype><span dir="ltr">County</span></st1:placetype></st1:place><span dir="ltr"> just to annoy him with my question about his using the board secretary and official stationery to write Mayor Iorio to give his condo association a break on its water bill. Had his girth allowed agility, I hazard he would have leapt <span style=""> </span>his royal desk to clobber me with his gavel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Chair Lamb also rebuked teachers’ clapping for their colleagues when they protested at a board meeting <span style=""> </span>Ms. Elia’s loading another class on them with no pay to solve her budget problems. Chair Lamb said the teachers’ applause was “uncivil” and violated <i style="">Robert’s Rules.</i> Le Gonzalez offered no demur. The tax-paid counselor declined to defend the Constitutional right to clap. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">While money is no object in the no-bid process to give buddies and sycophants contracts and to invent relatives and protégés jobs, money ranked primary reason that Ms. Elia loaded an extra class without pay onto teachers. She needed a sacrificial population from which to extract the dollars needed for the reduced-classroom-size mandate. Teachers are default patsies for such administrative fiats. The board always rubberstamps the administration no matter how extreme its proposal. <span style=""> </span>Board candidates piously praise teachers on the stump but rip them off on the board podium.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Most recent example of Constitution bashing was my case of having the Thompson etc. representative allow Board Chair Jennifer Falliero gavel me down when I tried to ask questions about her adulterous affair (see deposition snippet below) conducted on school precincts with a school administrator and during which she missed school events to pursue him to Arizona. The board and administration covered up La Faliera’s conduct not because they objected to the conduct but because the stench of its disclosure would cause public doubts about <span style=""> </span>board-and-administration handling of unseemly behavior on school property. If the public knew that such behavior got tolerance from the board and administration, some heads would have rolled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">I suspect Mr. Gonzalez knew about La Falliera’s conduct. Every hall, office, and mop closet battened off it. Teachers at distant schools knew about it. An insider of fifteen years gets told the seamy secrets of the outfit to which he provides legal advice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">A good part of Ms. Elia’s administrative activities have to do with sanitizing her public image by keeping the public ignorant of what goes on behind the Wizard-of-Oz screen that walls off untoward administrative conduct. The Public Affairs office works with zeal under threat of Elia wrath to spin the school news so that it comes out deodorized and she looks good. The head of the public-affairs office gets a hundred thousand tax dollars a year to make the superintendent look like the Cato the Elder in the superintendent racket. This spun version of the superintendent is not only for local but also for state consumption.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Marc Hart, the administrator with whom Ms. Faliero had the affair that she instigated by haunting his office to the point where Dr. Lennard told her to stay away from Mr. Hart, is the source of my information on this school-locale affair.<span style=""> </span>He asked to come to my home in <st1:place><st1:placename>Madeira</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Beach</st1:placetype></st1:place> and recounted the circumstances of the affair.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">This shattered man is now divorced, can’t get a job, and worries about the damage—tardily, to be sure—that the situation inflicts on his children. Ms. Faliero used <span style=""> </span>board glamour as allure in this tawdry La-Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci exploit on school property. <span style=""> </span>By no stretch of the imagination could one say this conduct served the interest of the public education that School Board Falliero is supposed to protect and improve as a board member. Ms. Falliero tells teachers that they are held to a higher standard.<span style=""> </span>Would that she applied this advice to herself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The administration tardily forced Mr. Hart to resign ostensibly for drunkenness, for which it would ordinarily put him on report for review. Instead, <span style=""> </span>the administration used the drunkenness issue to force Hart to resign “for personal reasons” via interview in Chief Human Resources Dan Valdez’s office. This coerced resignation did not stop the administration cover-up for Falliero, however; nor did it did stop board members from voting her in as chair. La Elia’s girlfriends and unfailing cheerleaders Kurdell and Olson must have known about this unlovely situation yet raised no objections to the election of Ms. Faliero as board chair. I find hard believing other board members were ignorant of Ms. Faliero’s conduct, yet they counted the dignity of the board on which they serve so low as to appoint Ms. Faliero chair.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Nor did the board and administration punish the principal who reputedly engaged in a companion adultery with Jennifer Falliero’s pre-divorce middle-school coach spouse. If report of this principal-coach activity be true, that affair will have gone on in the midst of the children and be worse than the ROSSAC-based activities of Faliero and Hart.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Chair Falliera purports to be ardent Christian and is member of a family-values Republican Women’s Club.<span style=""> </span>She opposes sex education for students. She rallied her homophobic advocates to force schools’ reporting students’ membership in gay clubs to parents with inferred sicko hope that the parents would make these kids’ lives a living hell even if they did not kick them out of their homes.<span style=""> </span>Thank God the intervention of the ACLU and the opposition of a cross-section of students defeated this Faliero project. She went on when she became board chair to support censorship by pronouncing a middle-school library book “disgusting” when a parent objected because it described an attempted rape. Currently one reads in the </span><i style=""><span dir="ltr">Tribune</span></i><span dir="ltr"> that Board Chair Faliero toys with introducing evolution into the science curriculum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">What an ornament to the <span style=""> </span>school board Ms. Falliero is with the hypocrisy that characterizes the gulf between her public and private life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">I told Mr. Hart to forget La Faliero, rebuild his life, and attend to the welfare of his children. I said she is selfish, exploitive, and manipulative.<span style=""> </span>I think La Faliero is the kind of woman about whom one hears honky-tonk songs on the juke box sung by faux cowboy singers with tremulous baritones in dives the habitués of which live on the periphery of society. She’s the type of woman who makes difficult the efforts of women to succeed in the business world on the strength of their professional performance, not their sexual exploits. I have worked in the Women’s Movement for forty years and deplore Ms. Faliero’s behavior.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">One Mr. Scott Timberg, legal varlet of Thompson etc, sat in for Mr. Gonzalez at the December 11<sup>th. </sup>board meeting.<span style=""> </span>Master Timberg has the face of a Ken doll and manners for which my Southern mother would say he was raised in a barn. I don’t think his board deportment passed muster even in the rough-edged protocols to which lawyers believe themselves entitled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">During the meeting when Chair Faliero was gaveling me down, Le Timberg examined the tip of his pen or exchanged snickers behind his hand with Superintendent Elia, who my <span style=""> </span>mother would also say was also raised in a barn.<span style=""> </span>Mr. Timberg paid no attention to legal business and the Constitution’s shredding on the dais by Chair Falliero. Paying attention to business was what his firm got a no-bid contract to do, not for being a twit who gossips on the job when not pondering the metaphysics of his pen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">When Chair Jennifer suspected that I was about to ask her how her adulterous conduct on school property with a school administrator--an inferior to her in rank who could have filed against the board under Title VII and who I wish had--comported with her duty to voters to supervise children’s education and be a role model for them, she gaveled me down and rebuked me for “slander.” I doubt Mr. Gonzalez had pointed out to the board and administration the peril of a Title VII case that Ms. Faliero’s conduct invited any more than he mentioned that the board was liable for not allowing a citizen at the mike First-amendment rights.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">To Ms. Faliero’s accusation that I slandered her, I say the truth is its own defense. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Besides, people have a First-Amendment right to slander.<span style=""> </span>They may get sued, but that does not obviate their right to say what they believe to be true.<span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Board members took an oath to uphold the Constitution but don’t know and don’t care what that means. None intervened to appeal from the decision of the chair when Ms. Faliero gaveled me down--if any of them had the slightest grasp of Roberts Rules--and urge the Constitutional right of a citizen to be heard before elected officials.<span style=""> </span>The representative of Thompson etc. sat mute with his Ken-doll physiognomy in vapid repose during the gaveling, letting this unconstitutional choreograph unfold undeterred by any legal input he gets paid to provide.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Mr. Willie Monroe, the courtly sergeant at arms, even crept up behind me in a move suggesting that I would suffer bodily eviction from a public forum in which the board attorney was complicit in undermining the First Amendment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The right to approach members of the government for redress is not qualified.<span style=""> </span>It is absolute.<span style=""> </span>Lawyers should know that.<span style=""> </span>Master Greg of Thompson should as a member of the bar.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">A lawyer is an officer of the court.<span style=""> </span>That is equivalent to being a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.<span style=""> </span>As the Arthurian knights owed their primary allegiance to the ideals of chivalry, so do officers of the court owe their primary fealty to the rules of law.<span style=""> </span>Crooked clients and potted-plant board members come second.<span style=""> </span>Officers of the court must crawl on their bellies over glass shards to defend the Constitution.<span style=""> </span>They must live pure, right wrong, serve the Constitution, else why born?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">I am disappointed in Tom Gonzalez.<span style=""> </span>He and I are both undergraduates in literature. The rascal reads Virgil— at least he claims he reads Virgil but probably reads Cliff Notes and then says he reads Virgil. But beyond intellectual foppery is the grubby meanness of one of his actions with which I am familiar and condemn.<span style=""> </span>The behavior of Mr. Gonzalez embedded in the following recital must violate a lawyer’s ethical code. An ethical person in any profession would not treat a dog the way that the administration abetted by Mr. Gonzalez treated a young library technician named Bart Birdsall.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Superintendent Elia and Ms. Linda Kipley cooked up a firing case against Bart Birdsall.<span style=""> </span>La Kipley was formerly home-ec teacher but climbed the sycophant ladder to the position of head of Professional Standards, for which she makes $130, 000 a year and rising while beginning teachers with academically respected degrees make $34,000.<span style=""> </span>It goes without saying that the job the administration ceded Ms. Kipley got no advertising. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Birdsall’s sin? He’s gay, and when then County Commissioner (now state senator, alas) Ronda Storms passed the ordinance making illegal mounting a USF student’s gay-themed class-project display in the county library, the just-appointed Elia wanted to do her buddy county administrator Pat Bean a favor, to spread her newly acquired power wings, and to show bigots indigenous to the county’s political fens and bogs that she didn’t tolerate gays.<span style=""> </span>So she enlisted her home-ec henchperson, Ms. Kipley, to manufacture a case against Birdsall for misusing school mails for political purposes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">The pair had the school computer staff do a fishing expedition on Birdsall’s computer records. The only minnow it caught was his posting notice of the gay speak-out against the Storms ordinance on the media-specialist community board, such postings being the purpose for which it exists.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">The case dwindled because it was without basis but ended only after Ms. Kipley had summoned Birdsall to her office for a minds-game terror session which she must have learned to cook up along with Béarnaise sauce in her home-ec credentialing. Keeping teachers and staff in a state of abject terror defines the purpose of the Professional Standards office: it is the administration’s Grand Guignol to keep teachers and staff scared witless that they will lose their jobs if they say anything negative about the administration.<span style=""> </span>Sadly, this threat works.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">I complained to Tom Gonzalez about Birdsall’s shoddy treatment, and he met with Birdsall at Just Eats in Birdsall’s </span><st1:place><span dir="ltr">South Tampa</span></st1:place><span dir="ltr"> neighborhood to discuss the situation.<span style=""> </span>If Mr. Gallagher had been serious about the purpose of the meeting, he would have invited Birdsall to his office and not conducted his interview in Just Eats. Birdsall had gone into therapy to overcome the trauma of the Elia and Kipley savaging, but all he wanted was a letter of apology from La Kipley saying the charge was a mistake.<span style=""> </span>I believe he wanted his dignity restored.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Mr. Gonzalez promised he could get an apology letter from Ms. Kipley with ease.<span style=""> </span>That has been over a year ago. Mr. Gonzalez has told me to my face when I inquired that that the letter would appear momentarily. He also promised me that he would author a pamphlet for teachers caught in the Abu-Ghraib-Professional-Standards gauntlet so that they would know what measures they could take to defend themselves from the administration’s dirty tricks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Tom has fulfilled neither promise. He lied.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">This behavior is not wicked.<span style=""> </span>Real evil takes brains and outré Gothic sweep of imagination that Tom does not possess. His modest aptitude is for acts of petty perfidy that make life a chore for those in his line of vision. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Colluding with <span style=""> </span>betrayals such as Birdsall’s has netted Tom and his flossy firm in the past year alone half a million dollars of tax money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">God knows how much Thompson and the guys earned the year Senior Partner Gonzalez supervised <span style=""> </span>the legal crucifixion of Doug Erwin. I may be able to discover that he recommended the prosecution and appealing the appeal had he sent me the Erwin information I requested. Mr. Gallagher hasn’t sent me the requested Erwin information of course.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">I consider the Erwin case to be closest Mr. Gallagher has come to real evil conduct.<span style=""> </span>But my guess is that Tom’s court-room éclat lacked the glamour of evil and featured instead the tedium of a bureaucratic court-room grinding down of another human being. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Mr. Erwin was long-time school-employed whistleblower who reported waste in the building department, Ms. Elia’s former bailiwick.<span style=""> </span>The administration and board with today three members of the Erwin sadists still incumbent—Lamb, Kurdell, and Olson—punished Erwin for his disclosure instead of giving him a medal.<span style=""> </span>Gonzalez-led law suit and appeal saw Erwin win both, thank God.<span style=""> </span>The abused man even got a small settlement, not, however, close to what Thompson et al raked in, one infers, for the court scarifying of the school employer who reported waste and then whom the administration, the board, and Thompson etc. dogged from his job<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">The spectacle of this case is the objective correlative of the dangers of crossing the administration.<span style=""> </span>It had the planned side effect, however, of augmenting teacher and staff fear of administrative vindictiveness and making them even less willing to speak up despite Erwin’s eventual win.<span style=""> </span>Tom Gonzalez’s firm was the board-administration instrument of this unlovely use of legal power.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">We canvass here petty legal talents rewarded by bloated no-bid windfalls about which taxpayers have no clue. Tom excels at providing legal support for those small, ignoble cruelties that are administration-and-board retaliation argot. <span style=""> </span>He is more Uriah Heep than Pol Pot. And the no-bid school-board work pays the rent.<span style=""> </span>The Gonzalez compensation information slips by on the consent agenda with no board member’s having sufficient care for taxpayer money, the curiosity, or the guts to ask that it come off the consent agenda for public review. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span dir="ltr">Griffin</span></st1:place></st1:city><span dir="ltr">, who asked for the no-bid windfall to the no-phone former administrator to be pulled for review, now suffers harrying from both the administration and other board members, all of whom resent her except Valdes. <span style=""> </span>La Falliero has told her to resign her job if she can’t get with the program laid out by Ms. Elia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">Le Tom embodies small-bore wrongs of broken promises such as those cited to a school media specialist and this citizen. He knows and assists but pretends not to see that his employers--the board and administration--engage in endless incursions against comity that undermine the social contract and make difficult the life of the rest of the school family—especially the teachers who with their students are the heart of the school system.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">The irony is that Thompson, Sizemore, and Tom get paid bloated compensation from a 15-year-old no-bid contract with tax money from the very citizens whose ideals about the purpose of education the firm assists the administration to betray. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr">The </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span dir="ltr">County</span></st1:placetype><span dir="ltr"> </span><st1:placename><span dir="ltr">Commission</span></st1:placename></st1:place><span dir="ltr"> recently awarded Mr. Erwin its medal for courage.<span style=""> </span>No school officials attended; nor did any of Mr. Gonzalez’s firm as far as I can determine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" dir="rtl" style="text-align: left; direction: rtl; unicode-bidi: embed; font-weight: bold;" align="right"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span dir="ltr"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I ask that the Florida Bar’s Ethics Commission rebuke the firm of Thompson, Sizemore, and Gonzalez for its shoddy conducting of public business via a 15-year-running-no-bid contract. I ask that the Ethics Commission tell the firm’s minions they must not defy lawyerly fairness to other members of the legal profession and allow these instead to compete by open bid for the school-board lawyer sinecure—not at some future time but this instant. I believe that Tom must tell his employers—the board and Ms. Elia—that the time has come after his fifteen-year no-bid run to put the lawyer contract out for a competitive bid so that other area firms will have a chance for the heretofore no-bid job Thompson et al have hogged for fifteen years.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">The Ethics Commission as well should instruct Thompson etc. that its employees must obey the public-records law of Florida; should not participate in violating Title VII’s provisions for equal- employment opportunity; <span style=""> </span>must abjure colluding in covering up bad behavior on the part of clients such as an elected board member’s catalyzing and engaging in adultery on school property; and<span style=""> </span>must not suffer the administration to fire the board culprit administrator’s adultery partner with a manufactured charge to finesse the situation so as to avoid negative publicity for the board and superintendent while ignoring similar lapses on school property such as the coach-principal incident. The public has a right to know how elected officials, administrators, and the school lawyer comport themselves on the job. Their acts of betrayal to the public trust must not get the protection of cover-up. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I ask as well that the Ethics Commission advise Thompson etc. that it is not to send callow specimens of legal talent to board meetings who don’t know or don’t care enough about the Constitution as to remain mute when the Thompson factotum witnesses his board clients’ abrogating a citizen’s First-Amendment rights. A lawyer’s duty is to the law first, misguided clients second. Besides, as a member of the public that pays his fee, I and other petitioners at the board podium are his clients.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">People are terrified to object to anything lawyers do no matter how outrageous and athwart humankind’s beliefs in honorable conduct. <span style=""> </span>They fear lawyers will sue them and put them in the pokey. It’s no wonder many lawyers become bullies so that Shakespeare says we should kill them. <span style=""> </span>Lawyers learn that people fear that they will end up in <st1:place>Alcatraz</st1:place> or even <st1:street><st1:address>Crumlin Road</st1:address></st1:street> Goal in a rendition protocol of Abu Ghraib redux if they defy a member of the legal priesthood who has passed the bar, his or her score having been ever so marginal.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Goodness knows I send this missive to this <st1:state><st1:place>Florida</st1:place></st1:state> Ethics Commission in fear and trembling of retaliation from the Pantagruel minions of Thompson, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">But I gird up my aged loins to defy unethical lawyers who screw taxpayers in their positions as legal advisors to public bodies and who give legal gloss to crooked, obtuse, and ethically deficient elected officials such as those who blundered their way onto the <st1:place><st1:placename>Hillsborough</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>County</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype>School</st1:placetype></st1:place> Board. I am convinced that the Constitution and my antique Navajo fetish necklace that I secured on a recent trip to New Mexico with two of my grandchildren—twins--will protect me against the Forces of Darkness, legal or civilian. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I also rely as well on this Florida Bar’s Ethics Commission’s gallantry, which will prompt its members to drape me in its protective carapace of civility as a granny of ten.<span style=""> </span>Any society that doesn’t treat well its grandmothers who rat out misbehaving lawyers is on the skids.<span style=""> </span>Armageddon looms. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I see many Web pages of ethics committees for the national bar. Ethics lucubrations appear an addiction with the national legal community.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I shall write the bar president and at least one of these groups of ethics quidnuncs to report on this experience.<span style=""> </span>Its minions are dying to know what treatment provincial-citizen complaints get in our legal badlands from the state-bar ethics commission.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">I have no doubt that one of these societies will host a reception for all involved in this ordeal with requisite dull speakers, watered-down punch, and wretched food.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Very respectfully yours, <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Lee Drury de Cesare <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:street><st1:address>15316 Gulf Boulevard</st1:address></st1:street> 802<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><st1:place><st1:placename>Madeira</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Beach</st1:placetype></st1:place>, Fl 33708<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">727-398-4142<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">leedrurydecesarescasting-roomcouch.blogspot.com<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p style="font-weight: bold;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">tampabaygrammargrinch.blogspot.com<o:p></o:p></span></p>twinkobiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07865056039680988073noreply@blogger.com0