The Big Story
School Board Covers Hiney
The School Board did just enough to stop me from filing a Writ of Mandamus against them, a lawsuit to force a government agency to follow its own rules. For six months they have been stone-walling Larry Murray’s questions about one church, Eagle’s Rest Ministry, getting free rent every Sunday at Poinciana, adding up to over $6,000/year in taxpayer-subsidized lost revenue. The rules were clear. Everyone owed $100/day rent. Eagle’s Rest hasn’t paid for years.
So the Board recently voted to change the rules so that nobody has to pay any rent for the Poinciana auditorium. This is how the district deals with legitimate criticism of their failing to follow their own procedures: When caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they say, “No problem! Free cookies for all!”
A couple of months ago I wrote about Andy Griffiths’ attacking me for using “rumor” when he had the “facts.” My “rumor” was four official documents Andy knew nothing about, supporting the legal requirement that the Ministry pay rent. Andy had an official denial from his hand-picked Superintendent, Mark Porter, that nope, no problem there, also showing no apparent knowledge of his own district’s black-and-white rules.
After I wrote that column, Andy started an email exchange with me trying to sweetly persuade me he was right after all. I think he finally read Larry’s documents. Since the official policies, guidelines, and forms destroyed Porter’s “no problem” assertion, Andy switched to attacking me on other grounds.
First, he said the district’s in-house attorney, Dirk Smits, denied he had ever emailed me specifically — just maybe I’d been included on some “reply all” emails.
So I emailed Andy a copy of the four-email exchange just between Dirk and myself. Dirk couldn’t find the district’s official policies on their website. I sent him the link. This is not to discredit Dirk on not finding the link. I needed help to find the Clerk’s audit of the County’s misuse of their credit card on the Clerk’s website. But a baldfaced, provable untruth denying the email exchange? Business as usual in the district. No comment from Andy.
Next, Andy denied he had ever emailed my publisher Guy deBoer and respected senior journalist and friend Mark Howell with a gotcha’ email making fun of my expose of the Eagle’s Rest subsidy, flaunting Porter’s “No problem here” as his “facts” which I didn’t know. Andy in fact wrote, “I want [Rick] to have the facts which are missing from his last article. Never let facts get in the way of an off-the-cuff story based on rumor.” So I had to send him a copy of that as well.
Andy’s last and meanest attack was on the subject of “no comment.” I had written that when someone responds to an inquiry or criticism by the press without a response or comment, the normal inference is that they do not have an answer or defense. Andy wrote, “Your interpretation of no comment is a sinister theory. But everyone (who knows you or reads you) knows that’s your style.” Andy, in a court of law, mounting no defense is called “nolo contendere” and you stand convicted. Juries are free to infer whatever they want from a defendant’s refusal to take the stand in his own defense.
To Andy’s credit he wrote me a long email in response to my private email to him with the above information. He does sincerely apologize for my taking the “sinister” slur as an insult, and recognizes that I have praised his district work three times in the recent past. But even in his most sincere attempt to have a friendly dialogue, in which he states “I personally like you and appreciate what you are trying to accomplish,” he states I am “shallow” and “have no credibility,” that I have a “reflex to rush to judgment based on a negative finding.”
I would like him or anyone else to come up with any facts to support these insults. Only three people including Andy respond to my criticizing their actions by attacking me personally, while ignoring the factual allegations completely. Then he writes, “you are overly sensitive about my opinion.”
Uh, Andy, responding to your slurs and correcting your statements is not “oversensitivity.” My goodness, one has to have the skin of a rhino to do my and Larry Murray’s jobs. We are the calm ones reasonably citing documents and emails. You are the one crying, “You’re so bad!” Which denotes oversensitivity? And is this the level at which school board decisions are being made?
Finally, will you and the board allow no one to sincerely and capably try to help you fix things to further your mission? That is all I am trying to do, and I am so undersensitive I won’t let you scare me off.
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Free rent for all is the answer to catching ONE group getting a free pass? With all the tax payer moaning and groaning about the half cent sales tax for the schools in Monroe County, one would think dismissing all that revenue is not a wise decision by the board. The ADULT thing to do would be to admit the error, apologize and start charging the offending entity. The superintendent and board come across as recalcitrant children instead of responsible stewards of the school system.