THE BIG STORY

Roman Gastesi’s money isn’t his

BY RICK BOETTGER

     Our county administrator has been deposed in his four-year-long losing lawsuit against Stand Up for Animals (SUFA) and its director, Linda Gottwald. If he repeats his words in court, I don’t know how the judge and jury will stop themselves from laughing.

     To recap, in August of 2010, Roman froze SUFA’s bank accounts, putting them out of business, so, as I allege in detail in my upcoming formal state ethics complaint, George Nugent’s friends could get the quarter-million-dollar contract to run the Marathon and Big Pine animal shelters. SUFA had done a great job, no complaints by the county and rave reviews from animal lovers, for eight years. George’s friends quickly closed the Big Pine shelter, suffered a mandatory quarantine of the Marathon shelter, and had to fire the director who had convinced George to get rid of SUFA and Linda in the first place.

     The pretext for putting SUFA  out of business was that she had breached her fiduciary duty to the county, spending a tiny amount of money in a way the county didn’t like. This has been nonsense from the start. SUFA was, on page one of their contract, an “independent contractor.” Any legal definition will include language like this: “An independent contractor is not under the control, guidance, or influence of the client, and does not have a fiduciary duty.”

     A fiduciary is someone like a lawyer holding someone’s money in escrow. It’s illegal for him to spend it in ways not defined by the escrow. SUFA, and every other contractor with the county, simply gets paid for services rendered. SUFA has counter-sued and won every step of the way since August 2010. Roman was deposed to find out what justification he thought the county had to grab SUFA’s money.

     Roman testified after the person the county sent to explain SUFA’s contract, Beth Leto, had demonstrated she had no idea what “independent contractor” and “fiduciary” meant. She simply asserted that the county was completely free of legal liability for anything SUFA did, but SUFA was actually under strict control of the county, and not at all independent. So Roman had to back up this absurd position.

     He tried to do so in the most surprising, and actually hilarious way I could imagine. Roman said repeatedly that any money the county spends remains county money forever.  Question: “If the county buys a concrete block … from a hardware store, it receives that concrete block. The money it paid to the hardware store is whose money?”  Roman’s answer, under oath: “It’s the county’s money.” He said the same thing about his own salary — even when it’s in his bank account, it’s still the county’s money, and they can take it back whenever they want to.

     This is Alice in Wonderland stuff here. This is what Roman’s lawyers force him to say in order to support their absurd position that the money they paid, monthly and in arrears for the services SUFA rendered, actually was still their money forever, and they could grab it back whenever they wanted — for example, when the county mayor wanted to give the contract to his friends.

     The county had their lawsuit overturned on appeal, and SUFA got its money back. So the county tried to get SUFA’s countersuit dropped by suing SUFA’s auditor and entire board of directors. The judge dropped the board. So the county tried a second time to include the board. The attempt was dismissed again, with prejudice. The county then tried to bar the board’s lawyer from asking questions during Roman’s deposition. This too was denied. Expensive investigations — our tax money — by the State Attorney, FDLE and a forensic accountant all found nothing. Lose, lose, lose.

     So now, Danny Kolhage is going to be deposed for his role. It will be bloody — or inventively hilarious, in some way I can’t imagine, like Roman’s. Roman also amused by maintaining he was “duped” into buying 80%-off cell phones for his kids by his underling, and that the Grand Jury was “politically motivated” in recommending he be fired.

     For years I have tried to get the county out of their SUFA mess, a worse scandal than Duck Tours ever was, though not as bad as the take-down of our police and fire departments in the ’80s. I may have in an odd way succeeded. Going through the two-foot-high stack of legal filings, I couldn’t find Roman’s signature on the initial filing. He, as the county administrator, is the plaintiff. I remember vividly the judge denying the initial filing of my suit against the city to re-open the cemetery gates because, though I signed my filing as the “lawyer,” I did not include the separate, notarized signature on my affidavit as the litigant. The suit against SUFA that put them out of business has only Roman’s attorney’s signature, that of the now-retired Suzanne Hutton.

     Roman said as much in his deposition: Questions about SUFA “just went to legal” and he “doesn’t remember” signing any lawsuit. It may have been that the county attorney made the same mistake I did as a pro se first-time filer. Or, “legal” was the loose cannon. Roman said he would have talked to Linda about spending questions, “the way we did with the YMCA” about a similar issue. The county’s whole case should never have been. Maybe it will now evaporate, and Danny can breathe a sigh of relief.

 

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