Pam's Mad.......Too Bad

Clerk Pam Childers fired off an angry round of emails this afternoon, directed at me.

She is angry that I told the truth in this blog and dang-it---she doesn't like that.

After I was completely exonerated of the ridiculous "crimes" the D2 commissioner and his secretary had baselessly and inaccurately accused me of, I requested the proof of the vindication so I could publish it.

The clerk could have (and should have) sent it immediately.  

It was the right thing to do.  

Nope--she instead wanted me to twist in the wind and wait through the long holiday weekend to get it the following Tuesday.

Thankfully------The State Attorney's Office provided the document that same Friday afternoon (just like Pam could have and should have done) so I could publish it that Friday Afternoon.

Pam didn't like the fact that I published the truth.  The truth is she and her attorney would not release it Friday--telling our attorney they "couldn't" release it.  Which is/was a garbage, BS Lie.  They didn't want me to have a win going into the weekend so they withheld this one document they could have easily released.

When they lie, I tell the truth.   

Pam didn't like that........so she dumped this garbage email into my inbox late this afternoon:

"Commissioner Bergosh,

It was brought to my attention last week that you have made some false, defamatory and damaging statements on your blog about abut me as the Clerk and my General Counsel Codey Leigh as it relates to the Grand Jury and your request for information.  I thought about asking you about this while at our most recent Board of County Commission meetings but thought I would give you the opportunity to address this via email.

 Your printed statement “… I have requested this public record from the clerk and she and her attorney have refused to send a signed copy of it to me”.

 Sir, I have not heard from you in many months if not years.  I have not received a request from you in writing, via text or a phone call to me or my general counsel regarding a record of the Grand Jury.  I have also asked my Public Records Center to look for such a request but there was none.  To write a blatant lie is disrespectful of a sitting county commissioner that should act in the most upstanding behavior both verbally and in writing.  It is my request that you remove this statement from your blog. 

PAM CHILDERS

Clerk of the Circuit Court & Comptroller

First Judicial Circuit, Escambia County"

To which I simply replied:

"I made the request through our attorney, Alison Rogers, and she informed me that your office on that Friday afternoon refused to provide it.  So we got an unsigned copy directly from Greg Marcile.

 That’s what happened"

To which She came back and said.....

"To state “YOU requested and I refused” is a blatant lie and you know it.  So the County Attorney requested it on your behalf, an email sent and received Friday afternoon of Memorial Day.  Proper procedures were followed and the document was released Tuesday morning following the Monday holiday…. this is within 8 business hours.  This is a typical turnaround time for a court document due to statutes/court rules that must be followed, not to mention this type of document is not electronic but is a lock and key situation.  The request made had information appended to it that was not consistent with the document that we had in our files.    Once protocols were followed as to grand juror names, County Attorney Rogers was given the document…and she thanked us for it.  There was no emergency nor a request on your behalf. 

 Remove the language in your blog.  I’m sure you can spin up something else to write.  This is why I do not read blogs or free newspapers.  It’s a spin of the facts.

 Pam"

To which I replied (and recieved NO RESPONSE.....)

"I requested it through the attorney, not a lie.  It is a fact of reality.

 You don’t make demands of me, and you are not my editor.  The language is accurate as of when I wrote it that Friday.  Thankfully, Greg stepped up and did what you should have done on the spot because he knew it was the right thing to do.  I was exonerated and I wanted to publish the no true bill.

 I’ll tell you what Pam, return the unredacted backup of my iPhone you possess illegally, the one you bragged about having to staff at the SAO, and then we can move forward with a mature conversation about how your feathers are somehow ruffled over semantics.

 You might be the clerk, but you do not have permission nor do you have authorization to have the personal identification information on my children and other citizens  in those unredacted files you possess illegally.  Who all did you give them to, anyway?

 We requested you return them (through an email Alison sent some time ago) and you blew the request off…….." 

Election Ugliness Begins

 

People that play stupid games will win stupid prizes....

This August 20^th, the date of the Republican Primary election, will be my 7^th contested election in Escambia County for local office.

And each cycle that I have been through, the nastiness and ugliness intensifies. 

Whether in the school board races or more recently for county commission—it never ceases to amaze me the depths of cowardly depravity folks will go to in order to smear their opposition or artificially manipulate an election outcome.

It’s nasty, it is ugly, and frankly it is the reason lots of folks never run for office.

This election season is off with a bang, and the Election Ugliness has officially begun.

DYSFUNCTION JUNCTION

You know folks are desperate when they bring in surrogates to do their dirty work.

Clerk of the Court Pam Childers actively encouraged at least two existing county employees to run against me.  One has, and I am told the other is considering it. She’s mad we are suing her to compel her to do her job.  Ho hum.

Sitting commissioner Mike Kohler’s recently departed secretary, Steve Stroberger, is one of these that was encouraged to run by Childers, and he is running.  Good for him.  But is it really helpful to have a sitting commissioner get his secretary to run against another sitting commissioner on the same board?  (Check with disgraced former commissioner Doug Underhill and his former secretary Jonathan Owens on that).  Worse, this commissioner, Kohler, on a recent trip to Tallahassee pulled aside a friend of mine and started trashing and slandering me and making false statements about the contents of my stolen data files. (Oh yeah—someone stole those from the county and guess who ended up with them?  Answer, the guy I beat by 17 points in the last nasty election I was in, Jonathan Owens).    As soon as he, Kohler, was done shooting off his mouth, of course my friend called and told me everything Kohler said.  Wow, what a desperado.

Interestingly—these comments made by Kohler in Tallahassee were made before the county released the redacted version of the stolen county records.….Although the files do not contain what he lies and says they do—there are some things he mentioned that he would not have known had he not seen a copy.  So that will be looked at and questions will be asked during depositions.  This information will also be passed along to the investigators looking into the criminal conduct surrounding this theft of county files.  Did Pam Childers, who has and does possess at least one copy of my unredacted stolen data file—did she give Mike Kohler a copy?  Did she give it to the candidate she encouraged to run, Steve Stroberger?  Did Doug Underhill give it to Mike Kohler?  Too many questions.  But we will get to the bottom of it all as we commence depositions here in the next few months as the county's replevin case moves forward.  The Old Bull is walking down the hill, not running.  And all of these individuals must know by now that mere possession of these files, unredacted and without authorization, is a Felony under state law, right?  Yeah, that’s right.

Meanwhile, I have conducted polling for this race. 

And the numbers are about what I expected them to be.  This scientific polling indicates there is one heck of a battle for the bronze medal between Stroberger and Owens, and I’m comfortably ahead of both of these individuals by double digits.  But those two, each more than 20 points behind me, are within 6-8 points of each other for the Silver Medal…..

Interestingly, though, another creepy, sleazy thing happened during the time this poll was recently in the field.  Apparently, according to another friend I have that contacted me, Johathan Owens and Alex Arduini attempted to get people on the internet to “stuff the ballot box” and send bogus responses in on my poll for my opponents and against me.  My friends forwarded this to me, below.

 

How desperate do these desperados have to get?  Stealing my files, slandering me, and trying to disrupt elections communications and polling??  Sitting elected officials attempting to unseat incumbents on the boards upon which they sit?  The clerk of the court actively encouraging sitting county employees to run against us??  It’s weird, surreal, and dysfunctional.  Why can’t these folks just compete, straight up, on the issues?  Why the sleaziness and sliminess and anger and vitriol and weirdness? These guys are almost as bad as our local newspaper, the PNJ, who argue they have absolute, complete immunity to have my son’s stolen tax forms and my daughter’s stolen bank account information—even though neither of these items is a public record nor a matter of public interest and the possession of this data unauthorized is criminal under Florida Law. 

Read 817.5685

Well, the last data point I’ll share from my poll:  When respondents were asked if they believed the area’s only daily newspaper, the PNJ, was fair, balanced, and accurate---the response was 62% NO and 38% Yes among all parties and demographics.  It was worse among only Republicans.

People don’t like and don’t trust the PNJ. 

It’s not just me.

See you all on August 20^th  😊

Pam Childers Loses in Court on Motion(s) for Summary Judgment against County 401(a) plan......

Commissioners were notified late this afternoon that both of Escambia County Clerk of the Court Pam Childers' motions for summary judgment in the Escambia County 401(a) lawsuit were denied by Circuit Court Judge William Stone. 

Denied.  

These motions have been before the court for several months and this is a huge loss for the clerk and a big win for Escambia County--- and paves the way for this case to move forward to trial.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  I do not take the 401(a)--I take the FRS pension plan, which I joined when I was on the school board beginning in 2006.  So I have no "dog in the hunt" as it relates to the 401(a) plan issue.  But what I do have is a philosophical disagreement with the politicization and subsequent weaponization of this issue by the clerk via her unilateral decision to summarily stop paying these amounts---after she paid them, business as usual, for years and years.  Suddenly, coincidentally after rumors and hearsay that someone allegedly called her an unflattering name---then suddenly this plan, in her opinion, was/is ILLEGAL!!  This plan is not illegal, her legal opinions were weak and this situation is purely political and an attempted power game, so far as I can tell.

Read both of the orders from Judge Stone below...

Latest Briefs Filed on 401(a) Case: Compensation is Salary--Retirement Benefits are NOT Salary

Three briefs were filed last Friday in the circuit court related to the county's suit against the clerk of the court for her refusal to fund the lawful retirement accounts of three sitting commissioners.

Two of the briefs (here and here) were filed by the clerk's attorneys and essentially argue that the retirement contributions are salary--and thus the higher rate of return for the local plan amounts to an unlawful increase in commissioners' "salaries".

The county's brief goes into great detail in demonstrating that the retirement benefits of the local plan are not salary under Florida law.  Further, the county brief describes why the clerk's insistence on focusing on the "57%" figure is a political argument not relevant to the issue before the court.  From the county's brief:

"The County's opinion is that the Clerk's injection of "57 percent" is more about politics and policy choices than the actual legal issues. The fact is that, until June 2021, the County, the Clerk, and ICMA all agreed that the contribution amount toward the Local Plan would be equal to whatever the FRS's charge was in a given year. This is why the County is correct to say that the Local Plan does not cost the taxpayer a penny more than the FRS. The amount the County spends on the Local Plan is exactly the same.      The Clerk's injection of this figure into this motion (and her statements to the press) just shows that what the Clerk really seeks is to make policy: to overturn a legislative choice made by the Board of County Commissioners which she finds personally objectionable."

Judge Stone's Most Recent Order on the 401(a) Suit is Interestingly Cryptic --YET Telling Also....

 Below is the 3 page order from Judge Stone, the Circuit Court Judge seated in Okaloosa County who is handling the County's Case regarding the 401(a) issue between the Board of County Commissioners and the Clerk of the Court, Pam Childers.  Although caught off guard by Jim Little's article on this topic (as the BCC was not made aware of this order before it made it into the PNJ Friday Morning)--I did note something from Little's article (and the Judge's order) which was somewhat interesting and telling:

"Stone also wants further arguments on how Florida law defines compensation and salary.  Stone noted that one law makes supplemental compensation illegal to elected officials, while the law that created the Florida Retirement System says that retirement contributions are not considered supplemental compensation under the law.  Stone said he doesn't find it 'reasonable' the legislature would've created the authorization for the retirment programs while also making contributions to them illegal"

Right.  (Imagine that I am saying that, a reaction to just that seminal quote above from Judge Stone's order,  really, really s-l-o-w-l-y)........   R-I-G-H-T.

read the order for yourself, below.

I'll Be on "Real News with Rick Outzen" Tomorrow Morning at 7:10

I'll be on the most listened to, highest rated and best area morning drive news/talk program, "Real News with Rick Outzen" on AM 1370 WCOA tomorrow morning at 7:10. 

 

I've been invited to appear tomorrow morning on the Pensacola area's #1 rated, most listened-to and best and most popular morning drive news/talk radio show- "Real News with Rick Outzen" on AM 1370 WCOA.

We will discuss the BOCC meeting from last Thursday evening, and some of the important issues we voted forward at that meeting, including: Approving a $5 Million Dollar boat launch-park in D1 on the lower Perdido Bay, approving a park in D4 at the headwaters of Carpenter's Creek, and the future of the effort to eliminate the looping exit off of I-110 south to Gregory Street.  We will more than likely also discuss the recent news about the effort to bring back the New Year's Eve Pelican Drop to Downtown Pensacola in 2023/2024--and also--------the legitimate, voted-upon, legal, and now disclosed BCC expenditures that are not being paid by the Clerk of the Circuit Court Pam Childers.

It will be a great discussion.  Tune in live at 7:10 or check back here for the podcast which I will post once Rick publishes it.  

Bear Trap Part III

 

The legal saga over a 401(a) plan's "legality"  will eventually be settled.  But for the clerk of the court and comptroller--either outcome produces a pyrrhic victory so far as I can tell.....

As I discussed via multiple blog posts way back in June  and August, respectively, of last year--the ratcheting up of legal wrangling back and forth by the Clerk's office really does not help the Clerk's case.

It's simple.  The 401 a plan is either legal for commissioners--or it isn't.

And a judge will decide this.

And then we can all move forward---- as the legality of the plan is and aways has been the seminal question that needs to be answered so far as I am concerned.

Meanwhile--a bona fide contract approved by the Escambia BCC has been terminated by the clerk (constructively) via her failure to uphold the terms of it by the withholding of payments stipulated within said contract.  That's what my issue is and has been from the beginning--I don't take the plan at issue but I jealously guard the powers, rights, and responsibilities of this board, just as constitutional officers like the clerk guard their powers, duties and responsibilities under statute.  The passive allowance of this unilateral decimation of a bona fide contract of the BCC by the clerk  is bad  precedent to set, outside the purview of the clerk, and in very poor form if----as many believe-----the contract and stipulations as to 401 a payments are in fact legal.

But again, that is now in the hands of  one judge and a bunch of lawyers, and now even more lawyers(with new lawyers signing up recently to jump on the clerk's side churning up legal bills, fees, costs and $$ invoices the clerk will likely ask us to pay--not unlike orcas and sharks churning the bloody water feeding on a decaying whale carcass  out  at sea....it's an ugly display.  Meanwhile-the legal team the county is utilizing has provided their service pro-bono).  

So yes the legality question will get worked out--some lawyers will churn fees and costs others are

The Court Wants to Hear from the Clerk.......Within 20 Days

Attorneys for the Escambia Board of County Commissioners filed an amended cofmplaint with Circuit Court Judge William Stone on Monday of last week and yesterday afternoon the Judge responded.

This all stems from the Clerk's unilateral termination of a bona fide contract between the BCC and ICMA regarding a 401(a) retirement plan.

Apparently, with this order, Judge Stone  wants to now hear from the Clerk, and her side of this matter.

And it looks like he wants an answer relatively quickly as to why he should not grant the request for mandamus that the BCC's  attorneys have petitioned the court to order.

20 days and then hopefully we can get this nastiness behind us.

Read part 1 of the Judge's order here

Read part 2 of the Judge's order here