Evidently on cue from the Chief Judge, the City of Palm Bay has prepared a bizarrely worded resolution on the Brevard County Clerk’s Office. While the Clerk’s Office is currently down 50 full time equivalent employees we are working to maintain the branch service offices in Palm Bay and Merritt Island. It is quite true, and should be apparent to anyone, that if we lose another 20 to 30 employees to layoff and another 50 to 60 employees to furlough (out of an original 350) we will be unable to continue operating the branch service offices.

This is not some bogus govrenment bluff where a few jobs are threatened and the sky falls. Our losses and potential losses represent one third of the employees we began the year with. The damage being inflicted upon us by the Legislature and the Judiciary is not a flesh wound but deep cuts into the operations. I have a Chief Judge decrying cuts as well as the City of Palm Bay yet neither offers any financial relief to our projected $1.5 million revenue shortfall for this year.

I have no idea who wrote the Palm Bay resolution but through Public Records request (FS 119) if by no other way, I do expect to find out. As of tonight, NO ONE from the City of Palm Bay has EVER contacted me to verify any single item in their resolutuion. NO ONE from Palm Bay has contacted me to tell me when the resolution is to be discussed. Once again, I do not do well with sneaky people, and the manner and form of this resolution, with no effort to determine the facts, reflect nothing but pure cowardice on the part of the Palm Bay City Council.

Given the numerous errors in the resolution and opinions masquerading as facts, I can clearly see why the City would prefer no debate with me on the issue.

The resolution ‘demands’ justification for the possible closure. Rather than ‘demand’ by resolution, all anyone had to do was ask. We are projecting a $1.5 million shortfall, which could worsen based on civil filings. Palm Bay itself will further erode court revenue as they install the Orwellian Red Light cameras for the money and pull back on traffic enforcement. Rather than issue citations with teeth (points and license suspensions) the city opts for the fast track red light tickets where the city will reap four times the revenue as an authentic traffic citation.

We are already down the equivalent of 50 employees out of 250, and another 20 to 80 may follow in layoffs and furloughs based on the actions of the Legislature. If we are reduced by over one third of our expected staffing we cannot continue to man five service counters as well as support the active courts. It is an impossible task. I will be glad to take Palm Bay our expense and revenue histories and trends, they need only have asked.

The resolution ‘supports’ reasonable measures to increase efficiency of Clerk of Court operations. Well, so do I. If Palm Bay is trying to say our operation is inefficient then simply say so, and then back it up with facts and observations. I could clearly repeat the same senetence above inserting for ‘Clerk of Court’ the ‘City of Palm Bay’. Everyone supports Palm Bay being more efficient, but what would be my point?

The resolution claims ‘the Florida Legislature is considering legislation that could increase the efficient operation of the Clerks of Courts offices around the State, resulting in savings that would serve as an alternatve to closing the Palm Bay Office’ and that is just untrue. There is no such legislation to increase efficiencies, there is legislation to transfer all courts employees to the Judiciary. The Judiciary claims this will save the State $200 million out of the $500 million to be spent on the Clerks. To date, the Judiciary has provided NOT ONE spreadsheet to back up where the $200 million in savings will come from. NOTHING. If the City claims such legislation exists, let them detail the bill and the amount contained in the bill for savings. Good luck, there are no numbers and no facts, just the grossly unsubstantiated claims by the Judiciary.

The resolution requests an evaluation and audit of the Clerk of Courts be conducted by the Board of County Commissioners. I have no problems there, please be my guest. Unlike other Constitutional Officers the Clerk has always been open to anyone who desired to audit as long as it is at the other entities expense. I have no problem with Palm Bay, being as they seem to believe there is cause, paying for the audit. One obvious point missing, however, is the reason for the audit. If Palm Bay seeks to make allegations of fraud, or waste, or mismanagement, do so. Stop the weasel wording and state the desires.

Palm Bay never asked me for any information as it may ruin a perfectly ignorant resolution. Normally one checks their facts before proceeding, but evidently not in Palm Bay. Out of common courtesy one would normally tell someone they are the subject of a resolution, but again, evidently not in Palm Bay. I certainly do not blame them as this resolution would collapse if I were told of the contents and the date and time it was to be discussed. It was a good sneaky plan to be able for someone to rant and rave and grab a microphone, but forewarned is forearmed and I guarantee I will make the Palm Bay Council Meeting and get to the root of this resolution. Should Palm Bay silence me at the meeting as the issue is discussed you may rest assured it is not because they believe the facts are on their side.

My belief is the entire reason for the wording of the resolution is my opposition to the Palm Bay Works Stimulus Tax Referendum. I am not good at calling skunks canaries, and the referendum throws millions of dollars at nebulous ‘job creation’ undefined projects, while more money is to be spent putting down asphalt with a life cycle of 20 years with money bonded for 30 years. Now at least one Palm Bay Councilman tried to dispute my pointing out the obvious by claiming the asphalt bonding would be phased in. However, phasing the bonds requires bonds of length of 20 years issued in series. If Palm Bay were telling the truth they could simply vote on and issue 20 year bonds with a 20 year tax. The ballot language is specifically for 30 years. If the bonds are to be 20 year notes issued over the next ten years, of what ‘stimulus’ is a bond issued for asphalt in 2014? Are we expected to be in perpetual recession?

Palm Bay now seeks to shift the focus from their ill-planned referendum. Given my comments above on the haphazard resolution on the Clerk’s Office, I can only imagine how the money will be spent should this ill conceived bond issue be approved. The Palm Bay City and Chamber have refused an open debate on the Palm Bay Works Tax Referendum, but the Council Meeting will provide the forum for the Brevard County Clerk’s Office Works (or Doesn’t) debate.

(Editor’s Note: The Board of the Palm Bay Chamber voted in March to support the Palm Bay Works Referendum, and also voted to organize a forum with a panel representing both sides of the issue, but the details of the forum are yet to be released.)

I have been accused of unilaterally implementing changes and failing to meet with the Judiciary. This is also false. We met with our lead Brevard County Judge on the proposed changes SIX WEEKS ago. if we met six weeks ago on this issue, and I was going to implement the changes unilaterally, we would have implemented them over a month ago. The Brevard County Judges requested a full month to meet and discuss this ‘critical’ issue, and we waited. The meeting occurred and I was told NOTHING of any results. Not Wednesday the day of, not Thursday. I was to meet with our lead Brevard County Judge Friday but he had to cancel due to trial (no problem, he is one of our workhorse Judges) and we rescheduled to Tuesday. After hours Friday, before I had even met with our Brevard County Judge, I recieved the e-mail below from the Chief Judge in Seminole County.

By the end of last week we were forced to lay off 15 more employees due to declining revenues, some because of the economy, some due to Legislative changes in the last few years raising fines and fees for the State and the Judiciary as well as the January emergency session which moved certain fines and fees directly from the Clerks to the State and the Judiciary. Based on the Judicial power play in February, aided and abetted by the Office of State Courts Administration (OSCA) I now see why so much of our funding has been moved. OSCA has been advocating a complete take-over of the Clerk’s Courts employees and claiming such a move would save $200 million (out of $500 million), telling the Legislature the Clerks are sandbagging and squandering a few hundred million dollars a year. Speaking from a County where we have gone without pay raises for three years, did away with sick leave, and have hung on each year by the skin of our teeth in the courts area I was more than a little angered by the false accusations.

The Clerk’s Office has made suggestions for many years to save expenses on courts operations. Our perpetual plea for centralizing criminal courts in the most modern and safest courthouse, centralizing jury pools and trials in the courthouse with the largest number of courtrooms and jury areas, and providing a full time County Judge in the jail to moderate the pace of the jail proceedings and allow for more pleas to be taken in the jail, has fallen on deaf ears. When asked to sum up the cost savings of these proposals just for the Clerk, we estimated over $500,000 annually (14 or so positions). Our numbers and ideas were once again ridiculed by a few who have no experience or history with any of our suggested changes.

It is hard to say where this shall go. One thing is certain, as the Clerk of Courts I cannot legally order employees to come to work for free. Our revenue is on a daily basis, not a beginning of year appropriation, and if we do not have the money we cannot pay all of our employees – and must reduce. I have told our employees not to worry about maintaining the State’s performance standards for everything under such conditions, but instead we must focus on the highest priorities within the courts. In my book, Criminal Courts must take precedence over Civil Courts, but evidently based on last week we are to be ordered to carry two gallons of water in a one gallon bucket. Just as King Canute could not order the waves to roll backwards, the Brevard County Clerk’s Office cannot lose the equivalent of over 50 people (now) and perhaps another 50 in May (Summer furloughs and layoffs) and still do everything for everybody as we did at the beginning of the fiscal year.

I never claimed to be a lawyer, but as an engineer I can tell you quite plainly one cannot overrule the rules of mathematics.

Below are Judge Simmons’ e-mail to me and my response.

—–Original Message—–
From: Scott Ellis [mailto:Scott.Ellis@brevardclerk.us]
Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 10:47 PM
To: Clayton Simmons; Scott Ellis
Cc: 18thCircuit Judges
Subject: RE: Order
Dear Judge Simmons,

I would like to know where you get the facts for the comments in your letter.

Evidently this letter is meant to be a let all tell all letter, so let us tell all.

I advised Judge Dugan well over one month ago of the revenue situation and of the proposed changes. I offered to meet with you, you did not return my phone call and did not offer to meet after the investiture, You claimed you called me multiple times, you called once and I returned the call the day of the investiture. You did not call the following week but instead chose to send me a letter with various legal citings.

I met with the Brevard County Judges. They were advised of the changes as well as briefed on the financial situation. They asked me to wait another month until they could meet this week, I did wait while in the meantime had to plan for another 15 layoffs. The Judges met Wednesday, I received no input from the meeting, none, thus we plan on moving ahead with the changes in transition next week and fully the week after.

You say I failed to produce meaningful financial data concerning changes, that is outright untrue. I submitted all the data I was requested to submit on central criminal, central jury, and a full time judge in the jail. I was not asked to submit financial data for the Civil Court Clerk data, but that would be easy – FIVE full-time court clerks at about $200,000 annual savings. I find it odd you claim I had unilaterally implemented changes when they had yet to occur and claim I failed to submit requested financial data when I clearly did. I would think the Brevard County Judges, all of whom received the data, would have copied you with it. It is one thing to dispute the data, which to date you have not, and another to accuse me of failing to submit the data. It was submitted and done so IN DETAIL.

I do not have to cast the courts as a contributing source to our financial woes, they are a contributing source. While we had hoped for the Legislature to review the various fee and fine structures and money movement made during the last two sessions to address funding issues, OSCA and the Judges chose to go on a final weeks power play to wipe out the Clerk’s Offices. Surely you cannot deny this, nor can you deny you traveled to Tallahassee to vote to take over the Clerk’s Office and did not have the courtesy or courage to inform me of what you had done. I found out from Tallahassee about ten days after the vote. Judge Silvernail was in Tallahassee earlier this week to speak in favor of the bill moving the Clerk’s funding even though the Judiciary was not involved. The Brevard County Staff Attorney, Ashley Hardee, has been surreptuosly getting hardcopies of e-mails I sent our employees and distributing them to the local Brevard County Bar, and I assume from your comments, yourself. So, yes, Judge Simmons, I clearly state the Judiciary is a contributing factor to our financial woes.

The cost savings from pulling back the Civil Court Clerks comes from the obvious, they are to be re-assigned to other duties NOT in Court Clerks to take the places of those lost due to layoffs. I am not sure what kind of mixed hearings you mean, but clearly if we reduced the numbers of Civil Court Clerks we would not be covering every action of the courts. It is not simply being in court but also the work-up for court.

Today I went to Viera to meet with Judge Dugan, but due to the constraints of his trial he could not make the meeting. In fact I have been available to meet with anyone at any time over the last few months.

The cost savings we seek are not a matter of convenience as has been stated by one of your Judges, but a matter of financial survival. You may speak all you desire of your definition of statutory requirements, but the facts are if we lay off 20 people now, 30 people in another month, and furlough 30 more a month later (out of the original 350) it is impossible for us to do everything then we did in the past. I have offered other ideas for cost savings, some taken, some ridiculed without a basis in fact or math.

I spoke to those in attendance at our quarterly meeting, which included a Judge, Court Administration, the SAO, the PD, the Sheriff, and State and County probation, to request they lay out the most important tasks we perform for them as we will not be able to do everything as timely as before.

I do not know what more you want, but I can guarantee you if we try to run for the next few months with full budget as planned for 2008/09 we will be be broke and closed before the fiscal year ends.

We have to take appropriate action to deal with the large losses in people and revenue, and I expect you as well will take whatever action you deem necessary based on your understanding of the law.

I too regret it has come to this, but the Judiciary’s decision to claim to the Legislature the Clerks had large amounts of money just waiting to be saved by placing Clerk’s employees under Court Administration has clearly fractured any trust between the Clerks and the Judges as well as left a great many counties, such as Brevard, which were already in tough financial condition and have been so since the beginning of Article V, even worse off than before. It will be quite apparent as our office shrinks dramatically that the end result of the final week actions in Tallahassee successfully harmed all of us in the courts system.

Scott Ellis
________________________________________
From: Clayton Simmons
Sent: Fri 3/20/2009 5:28 PM
To: Scott Ellis
Cc: 18thCircuit Judges
Subject: Order

Dear Mr. Ellis:

I regret that you have chosen to unilaterally implement changes in clerk support of the court without speaking to me first and in contravention of clear statutory requirements that you clear any changes in support with the Chief Judge in advance.

I wrote you on February 18, 2009, in response to your undated memo circulated on or about February 3, 2009, and advised you that the court did not approve of your proposed unilateral changes in clerk services.

The Brevard Judges met with you February 23, 2009, and voiced their concerns about these proposed changes and challenged you to produce meaningful financial information that would justify these changes. To date you have not chosen to honor the court with that data.

I realize that your office, along with every other county and state office in Florida is experiencing serious financial difficulty, but that does not justify ignoring well established law. I further realize that you are attempting to cast the courts as the cause of your financial woes, however, you have not yet shown why having clerks at some types of hearing and not having them at others (when most of the time different types of hearings are mixed together on the same judge’s docket in the same court room) would result in any material savings.

Accordingly, at the request of the Brevard Judges, after careful consideration by the Judges of what hearings require clerk support for the efficient delivery of justice, I am issuing the attached order. I have signed the original and will email you a scanned copy on Monday and mail you a copy of the original by U.S. mail. The order is effective immediately.

You will note, in recognition of your financial issues, that the Court is authorizing you to implement some of the changes in support that you unilaterally announced, however the other changes you unilaterally announced are not acceptable and may not be implemented.

I regret that it has come to this, but the court remains open to working with you in any reasonable way to optimize the efficient use of your personnel for necessary court functions.

Respectfully

Clayton D. Simmons
Chief Judge
Florida’s 18th Judical Circuit
Brevard and Seminole Counties

Total Clerk Revenue (all functions) 2003/04: $22,214,701
Total Clerk Revenue (projected) 2008/09: $21,136,587

I’ll also repeat the obvious to anyone but the money hungry at OSCA. Court Administration in the 18th Circuit (Brevard-Seminole) manages about 20 people. The JAs and Staff Attorneys manage themselves. The two Clerk’s Offices manage 550. It would be interesting to see how they could handle the additional 550 after ‘shedding’ duplication. If any ‘duplication’ should be eliminated it should be Court Administration. When I was on the County Commission, Court Administration was three people plus the JAs and Staff Attorneys.

There has not been any release of any financial data outlining where all the savings are supposed to come from – it is “give us the job and trust us to save the money.”

As for Judge’s budgets up only 13% in five years, that is an outright fraud. In five years we have added five Judges and two Hearing Officers, an increase of 30%. As for “how much cash the courts are generating”, we are preparing charts of fines assessed, fines not assessed, and fines converted to community service. We are also looking to get community service not served. I would never say the Brevard County Clerk’s Office is perfect, but I will put our work ethic up against the courts any day of the week, even Friday afternoon.

If the Judiciary/OSCA position were sound they’d not have waited until the final month before the Legislative Session to launch it. It is just like a lot of people run political campaigns, throw out the dirt at the very end and hope a decision is made before you can get it all cleaned off.

Now that may be true in certain circumstances, but I highly doubt any secured loan had a clause for discontinuing payment when the payment created stress on the borrower. We are not seeing a rule of law, there is no dispute of the facts of the matter, we are simply seeing a delay because it feels good to do so.

The mediation maneuver is going to make things even worse for housing. There is little to mediate and those in default will have the ability to play the courts for more months of free living. If you are $15,000 in arrears and $50,000 upside down there is nothing to mediate, but the lender must pay for mediation costs and send someone who can ‘do’ something. The myth has been spread the Judges are clogged with foreclosures. Most foreclosure work takes place outside the courtroom in ensuring actions and files are complete. The final hearing takes a few minutes per house – you either can get the mortgage caught up or you cannot. Court Ordered Foreclosure Mediation at $250 a pop will be a windfall for certain attorneys.

There is no way we will ever dig out of this mess. The Courts have decided it is their job to keep people in their foreclosed homes, like a social welfare agency. How are lenders out of state supposed to have representatives here for every case? In the order is states that not only must the lender pay for the mediation, if the lender fails to make the meeting the entire Foreclosure case is thrown out and must be started anew. My experience is we already have numbers of professional rent cheats adept at prolonging the eviction system to squeeze out further free living, now we have an even more stringent system than the evictions which I guarantee will be played to the hilt by thousands of house owners.

If I were a bank given the rules in Brevard County and the Lien Police in some of the cities I would pull a State Farm and hit the road. If one cannot foreclose on the secured asset one will not make further loans on secured assets. The Courts are, like the Federal Government, assisting the improvident at the cost of the provident who will find it shortly even more impossible to get a bank loan or mortgage. If you think the banks are tight now, just wait.

Most bizarre is the requirement for the plaintiff (lender) to have someone at the mediation who can ‘cut a deal’. If these ‘deals’ are cut, particularly with debt being slashed, the Year of Mortgage Jubilee picks up further steam. Evidently disappointed only Federal Judges may get such authority during bankruptcies, the State now moves to gain itself the same powers through ‘persuasion’. This destructive maddening rush by Legislators and Judges to crush contracts will in the end eliminate private lenders such that only Nationalized Banks will be making house loans.

There is no rumor, there is fact, and the fact is the Office of the State Court Administrator (OSCA), Judge Quince of the Supreme Court, and the current Chief Judges of all Florida Circuits are working overtime on the Legislators to strip the employees and their funding from the Clerk’s Office.

The Judges have been telling the Legislators how the Clerks have all these large pools of money which are spent without accountability. This is totally untrue, both in the fact there is no large pool of money and our expenditures are very tightly limited every year. I sat through a presentation by Judge Quince who dodged the questions from Senator Fasano on Judicial work hours, questioning her comments about the heavy workloads allegedly straining the Judges. It was about time.

It is very clear the battle in Tallahassee is real and no matter how it turns out the Clerk’s Offices will lose something. It may be some funding or it may be all funding and the courts employees. The Judiciary has committed itself to convincing the Legislature the Clerk’s Offices have millions of dollars ‘in a black hole’ and if all of the Clerk’s Court employees (about 350 in Brevard) were assigned to the Judges the Courts would save tens of millions of dollars. Even if not handed off to Court Administration, the damage has been done with the false representation the Clerks have lots of money and spend it secretly.

In Brevard County our expenditures are tightly capped in Tallahassee. We have foregone raises for two years and both last year and this year were forced into a reduced hours work week. In five years our Courts spending has risen about 18%, and much of that was due to moving an entire Department (Records Management) from Recording fee funding to Courts funding and the ADDITION since 2004 of FIVE Judges (from 22 to 27) PLUS two more Hearing Officers – quasi judges who hear cases. Given the plunge in revenues this year from a weakening economy and two consectutive raids in the Leglislature by the Judiciary of what was Clerk’s revenues our five year increase is more likely to be around 10%.

I am still a bit taken aback the Legislators would take the Courts seriously on this issue. It is time to start laying out the facts no matter whose feelings get hurt now. Court Administration barely supervises a few dozen employees with the Staff Attorneys and JAs working directly with the Judges. They would have no concept how to manage or budget for 350 employees. There was a little bit of gallows humor circulating to the effect if the Legislature sends the employees to the Judges both will get what they deserve – a collapsed courts system and spiraling expenses.

The Judiciary is claiming the issue is information from the Clerks when in fact the real issues are money and control. Evidently one Chief Judge in the panhandle mentioned Brevard County because we are a deficit county. I would like to show him we do not have the same operation as yahoo county with a couple of judges in a single courthouse. We have been burdened for years with a judiciary which refuses to change how it operates in the face of common sense operational requests from the Clerk, State Attorney, Public Defender, and the Sheriff. Two independent studies, one paid by the County (Carter Goble), one paid by the Clerk (National Center for State Courts) have been blown off. We are in the unenviable position of having our workload (expenditures) increased to cover operational issues other counties do not face, while at the same time our revenues are lessened by habitual waiving and conversions of fines and fees and the reluctance to use cash and surety bonds for court appearances.

Most Brevard County Judges are not directly involved. Those who work the hardest are generally the least political. All, however, share some of this as none had the courage to tell me what had transpired in Tallahassee a few weeks ago with the meeting of the State’s Chief Judges. Many Judges around the State believe the Clerk’s Office is funded solely to serve them, not the public. They fail to understand the need for quality employees in all aspects of our operations, including those in the court which least interface with the Judges, such as the Information Center and the Customer Service Counters.

I regret the various upheavals we will have in the next few months, but I assure you they will pale compared to the wholesale usurpation of the Clerk by Court Administration.

If you want proof of the decline of journalistic ethics, look no further than the Florida Today.

I had just posted my column about negative campaigns when I stumbled across this beauty on the Florida Today opinion page. Note their concern isn’t with finding the truth and halting the flow of misinformation – they want everyone to be able to spread lies freely, without having to worry about being ‘negatively’ attacked for not telling the truth.

Their motives are clear, as there is no mention of the fact that in the Clerk’s race Needelman was caught red-handed in not one, but TWO confirmed lies told live on the air. Only Ellis’ wry comments in response to Needelman’s allegations are worth mentioning here:

“Stay out of the gutter. Don’t throw mud. Bag the dirty tricks.

That’s our message to Space Coast candidates and their campaigns as the two-month sprint to the Nov. 4 election begins.”
[Read more at Florida Today...]

“To my friends, neighbors, and supporters,

I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to run for Brevard County Clerk of Courts. We all knew we faced a challenge in going against an incumbent for this position. My feelings were strong, and they still are, that we needed a change in this office. Therefore I decided to make the run.

In spite of the challenges we faced in this race, with your help we waged a great campaign, and we got a lot of issues out there for examination and scrutiny that had never before been seen. That was the main goal of this campaign-to show why this office is in need of major repair.

I absolutely believe that because of the light we shed on the issues, the people of Brevard County are the real winners in this election. My campaign will force needed change in that office. Whether by my hand or my opponent’s, it does not matter. What is important is that those changes be made for the betterment of all Brevard citizens.

With that said, I want to express my gratitude to all those who showed confidence in me, those who formally endorsed my campaign, my contributors, and all those who volunteered so selflessly of their time in support of my cause. You all are golden to me, and I will never forget your help and encouragement through this long, arduous and extremely challenging campaign.

Regardless of the outcome, in my mind we are all “winners” because we waged an honest, clean, dignified and factual campaign. If, at the end of the day, you walk away with your integrity, and you know that you have presented issues that are factual and will have to be addressed, then you have done your job.

We are all winners. Thanks for all your help and support. I’ll see you out on the river. I’m going fishing!

Sincerely,

Mitch Needelman
Candidate for Brevard County Clerk of the Circuit Court”

[display_podcast]
Click here for pdf snapshot of Needelman campaign web site as it appeared August 7, 2008

Apparently my coverage of Needelman’s Campaign Web Site HomeTown News Interview “modification” has earned me a spot in the State Rep’s legal counsel’s crosshairs. Here is a post from earlier today from someone called ‘Badge451′ from the Florida Today Clerk of Courts forums who claims to be some type of law enforcement. 

“Here is a bulletin for our Mr. Nye:

You have been an annoyance to me from the very start. Your arrogance and pompous attitude, your self-importance, your smugness when you “thought” you had caught Representative Needelman in some kind of deliberate lie are all revolting and nauseating. You disgust me, as you do so many others.

I was especially outraged by your cowardice when confronted with your own lies regarding all this. Instead of being a man and apologizing because the holier-than-though puppetboy had made a mistake, you attempted to minimize it and pass it off as unimportant.

Well, guess what, it isn’t unimportant. You attempted to ruin the reputation of a STATE LEGISLATOR. You did it in several different forums, you did it with malice and intent, and you were WRONG.

You never saw that information on Needelman’s website, because it was not there. You might have gotten it from some other source, from an email prior to final editing for print in HTN, but you NEVER got it from Needelman’s website.

You doctored that pdf as sure as I am sitting here typing this. You thought you could weave all that crap together, and you almost did it. HTN went along with it to a certain extent, but if you read their article closely, they NEVER said it was originally on Needelman’s website. All they said was that the article they ran and the current website do not match. The reason why is left to speculation. Read it again, Puppetboy, and try not to wet your pants. They did NOT support your allegations.

Not only did you jump the gun by printing what you THOUGHT they said, they never said it. And neither of you… not HTN or YOU ever contacted Needelman for comment before going to press. Another big NO-NO. Additional proof of malice. “Rush to Judgement”, Puppy. And you know what happened the last time somebody did that. They lost, big time.

Further proof of malice??? Here is some for you. I printed every single time you reposted that “report” of yours. I lost count of how many times you did it, but according to my source, every time more than ONCE is additional proof of malice. Ouch. It sucks to be you right about now…

Here is another bulletin for you. Needelman can update his website anytime he wants to, and he does not have to get your permission. No changes were made in this particular content, but if he wants to make additions, deletions, change logos or fonts or whatever, he can do it, because it is his website. So you’ve got nothing to be hollering about in the first place. The fact that you are doing this, and suggesting something improper or illegal just further digs your own grave.

YOU, however, are not privileged to post whatever you want, alter other’s words or writings, or do anything that suggests that someone has done something wrong or illegal without actual proof. Again, I reiterate, even if you could by some miracle prove what you are saying, there was nothing wrong or illegal about it. Just your PERCEPTION of it, which is also wrong, and which is going to cost you a lot of money. I hope you got a good bang for your buck, and a big fat checkbook so you can put your money where your mouth is. Which for you means you would have to sit on it.

The reason you are not privileged to do that on your website, is because you are presenting it as a source of information, you accept advertising, and you proclaim to be a “journalist”. I am sorry to tell you that when you do all those things, you elevate yourself above us mere mortals to an alleged “professional” status, and you are held to a higher standard of conduct than the rest of us; both professionally and legally.

What you post or print CAN be held against you if it is incorrect or a deliberate lie. Especially if there is malice, and in this case, based on all the postings you did on the FT blog, proving malice is a walk in the park. If it can be proven, and it CAN, that you fabricated something and said you saw it on Needelman’s website when in reality it was something you constructed, then you are guilty of libel. You know what the penalties are for that.

That is why actual newspapers and real journalists are so careful about what they say and do. The field is always ripe for lawsuits. Since you mentioned the National Enquirer in one of your posts, you should go and research how much they have paid out in lawsuits they lost because they were not careful about what they printed. The only difference between you and them is that you are a little creep wannabe without a pot to p*ss in, and YOU can’t afford to defend yourself against a libel case. The National Enquirer spends more for coffee stirrers than you make in a year. They don’t care about the lawsuits. They take a calculated risk, and their profits from their outrageous headlines far surpasses what they pay out in legal fees. It is a cost of doing business for them. Not so for you, is my bet. This is going to break you into tiny pieces.

Do you have a fleet of attorneys on retainer like they do?? Do you have even ONE??

The reason I ask this, my little buddy,is that the s**t is about to hit the fan for you. I would brace myself for the blow. You have never seen a hurricane like the one that is about to hit you. Allow me to explain:

You and your leader have been very disrespectful to me and my position as a former law enforcement officer. You have also been very disrespectful to two fellow law enforcement officers, Hartman and Needelman. I have endured the insults, and the jokes pointed at all three of us, and I have allowed this to go on for days. But now I am done, and I have to tell you I don’t get mad, I get even. Ellis thought I threatened someone on this forum before? No. I don’t do threats; I take action.

Let me tell you how that works for me. I have documented every post you and Ellis have made in his various aliases. I especially like the one he did yesterday in which he proved that his twisted little mind will doctor official court records right off the Clerk of Courts website. (That information is already on its way to Tallahassee, by the way. There will be a subpoena to FT for the ISP of the person who did that little trick. If it turns out to be traceable to Ellis, they will address that immediately.) It probably won’t require a lot of action on their part, as he will be out of a job tomorrow. But they may take punitive action and order audits of his records. That would be massive, and I hope in their suit against him he is required to pay the cost of the auditing.

The rest of the information, and the stuff I printed from the website, (yes, all your little comments that prove malice, the repeated postings of your accusations and lies about where you got your information, all of it) has been carefully catalogued and filed. I put it all into a nice big package and delivered it to Representative Needelman late last night. Since I am a fellow retired law enforcement officer, he was more than glad to see me on short notice. The Brotherhood of the Badge is alive and well, you know.

He does not watch the blogs, so he was quite surprised to see what you and Ellis have been up to. He was also both angry and disturbed at the level of “disconnect” both of you seem to be having with reality. He thanked me for my concern, and assured me my time had not been wasted. When I left I was not sure if my information was really worthy of his attention. The blog is, after all, just the blog. It will all go away after the election and everyone will forget about it, no matter which candidate wins. But I was glad that I had at least made him aware of what you were doing. I mean, you have worked SO HARD to destroy this man. He should be aware of your efforts so he can properly “thank” you if he desires.

Now, today is the last day before the election. So I did not expect him to do anything with my information today, because I am sure he is extremely busy with last minute campaign matters.

So you can imagine my surprise when I got a very interesting telephone call about 3:00PM today! It was from Mr. Needelman’s attorney. He was going over the package, and he wanted to verify a few points with me so he was sure he understood completely what you had done.

We chatted for nearly an hour. We went over a lot of the documents I had provided. He has already had one of his investigators do a background check on you, and he shared some of that with me, since I am obviously going to be a key witness in this matter. My, My, you have some deep dark secrets, don’t you my boy???

Well, to make a long story short, he is going to file suit against you. He says this is a very strong case, and he is somewhat amazed at how stupid you have been in making such a trail to your motives apparent in all this. I guess maybe you should have hung out in journalism school for a couple more semesters until they got to the part about legal liability and how to avoid making mistakes that can get your a** sued off.

Actually, he is quite confident you are going down in flames. And he is looking forward to it, as are all of us who feel you are fungus that needs to be sprayed with Lysol. Meet Mr. Lysol, Attorney at Law.

He is a specialist in this sort of thing. I didn’t know that some attorneys specialized in slander, libel and defamation, but apparently they do. In his case, 85% of his cases are like this one, or very similar. And while there is a misperception that public figures cannot sue or be sued because they are in the public domain, that is not true at all. If malice can be proven, if there is motive or intent to ruin a reputation, a career, or cripple someone’s life because of what is said or implied, there are grounds for a suit. Guess what, little buddy?

Officer Hartman, if you are still reading these, take note. You might want to contact Representative Needelman for this lawyer’s name. I think you could use his services, too.

Well, I hope you enjoy your evening. After the election is over, your life is going to change dramatically. I would venture to say that when they are done with you, you won’t be writing or publishing ANYTHING, except that monthly payment check for restitution to your victim.

The reason I am posting this, aside from my obvious glee in knowing this is going to happen, and I have a part in it, is to inform the rest of you here who support Rep. Needelman and believe he has been mistreated by this cretin, to please contact him at his website and let him know if you are willing to be a witness and give a deposition in this case. You are all anonymous now, so his lawyer has no way of contacting you, and the website will probably be abandoned by FT after this election is over. So please, if you want to be a part of this action against Matthew Nye, post to Needelmans’ website, www.mitchforclerk.com and let him know, giving your name and contact information. After the election is over, Mitch will get the information to the lawyer, and the lawyer, or a member of his staff, will be contacting you to set up an interview. Also, please print anything you see that may be used in the lawsuit. I cannot monitor all the time, and I am sure I may have missed some things. Anything you can hold onto will be helpful. Include the posts that are obviously Scott as well. It all goes to motive and intent.

I am looking forward to this almost as much as I am to Needelman winning the election! Nye, you are going DOWN!!! It’s just too bad this is civil. Nothing would make me happier than to imagine you in a prison cell with a roommate named Bubba who thinks you’re cute and likes to dance.

Thanks,

Badge451″

Stay tuned, and don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

I can tell the disgraced and disenfrocked former Palm Bay lobbyist is back in town as the negative attacks have moved from the (Florida Today) BLOG to the radio, TV, and the nebulous website, mitchforclerk.com.

New to the Needelman website is a “What Ellis Says, What Ellis Did, What Mitch Will Do” section put together minus the Third Audit Protocol.

There are various disjointed statements entitled What Ellis Says, yet there is a curious LACK of quotation marks, perhaps because these disjointed sections have been written by Mitch and his campaign staffers to paraphrase in their words what I ‘said’.

Well, when you say someone SAID something, there needs to be a quote and source and there is no quote and no defined source for any of these comments.

However, being a mixture of fact and fantasy, I will address them.

On the Term Limits issue, Legislative Term Limits passed in 1992.  I ran all of 1992 for the Brevard County Commission.  I did fully support the amendment, but the embellishment contained in what I did is false as my old Toyota truck had a topper, I did not even have Scott Ellis for County Commission signs on it, and in the radio forum Mitch claimed I stood around on corners with a sign for the Amendment when the only sign I had to wave was for the County Commission race.  Local term limits were later enacted and deliberately did not include any of the Constitutional Officers as they were considered Administrative/Executive in nature rather than Legislative.

As for the late night radio show, I do not recall I ever ‘demanded’  Dr. Weldon step aside nor severely chastised him.  The “will of the people” is in quotes, so where is the radio clip with the What Ellis Said?  It’s pretty easy to state in 2008 what was allegedly said anywhere in 2007 when there is no record to back up anything, and without a show date I am unable to provide a playback (like I could provide an image of the Sarno landfill check) to show what really was said (and by who) on the show.

What Ellis Says on the Certification issue is a huge mish mash.  He actually had a quotable answer I had written to him and his aide who surreptiously acting as a concerned citizen asked me the question.

My answer and the question asked, which Mitch and his aide COULD HAVE QUOTED me:

Q: Why have you not obtained the certification for the Clerk of Courts in the 8 years you have been in office?

A: The State certification required 8 weeks of hotel in Tallahasee the first two years. Most of the material covered was material I already had in school (finance, technology) or on the County Commission (budget, minutes).  For the first four years I was in office I did not take a day off, much less have time for 8 weeks off learning most of what I already had.  I inherited a crashed Clerk’s Office and put in countless hours around the clock, it would be poor leadership on my part to go off for weeks of unnecessary conferences while everyone else was struggling with the recovery.
But, hey, that’s not as good a quote for What Ellis Said as the jumble of phrases and comments passing as if it were some quotable commentary or reply written by myself.  What is covered above is we were swamped in work, I was swamped for the first years taking ZERO time off, and I did have experience as a County Commissioner and a Programmer as well as a Computer Science degree and an MBA, and that many of the certification classes were geared to rural Clerk’s Offices.
Satisfactory completion means you go for the eight weeks, there is not a certification exam.  Being certified means you get an extra $2,000 annually in salary, meaning I chose to forego $12,000 to be in our office putting my shoulder to the wheel with my co-workers rather than camped out in a Tallahassee hotel.  As for the other Clerk’s, none inherited anything like the mess we had in Brevard County, a collapse quite well known amongst the other Clerks.

Now the section entitled What Ellis Did is so full of baloney the infamous Third Audit Protocol must be whimpering in some corner after being banished from the Needelman Campaign.

The reporting function was one of the last functions to be fixed as the first priority of the crashed system and backlog was re-establishing daily operations (a days work in a days time) and knocking down huge backlogs in case dispositions, uncollected fines and tickets, license suspensions, squaring monies with the cities and counties (it has all been estimates) and fixing the general ledger and getting it current.  The reporting function was fixed and the State claimed the error rate was too high, and when we asked what the error rate was for other counties, we got a blank answer.  Now while Needleman claims our answer of we needed to do nothing was arrogant and flippant, the reality is since 2004 we have virtually done nothing and what was not broke at the time of the letter in 2004 is not broke today.

Mr. Needelman complains we fail to meet State Collection Standards for one area yet conveniently fails to state the shortfall (89% versus 90%) and neglects that the other collection rates exceed the State standard.  On top of this, the Clerk is not a Judge and we do not have debt enforcement powers.

This one is so false (and conveniently no numbers are mentioned) in “His courts are a mess of backlogged cases, mismanaged schedules, and failure to meet even minimal expectations from Judges, Lawyers and Citizens.” all I can say is ask a lawyer how much, if any, of this statement has any credibility.

One would think if AFTER EIGHT YEARS of failing to meet ‘minimum expectations’ the State would have already removed me from office, I would have had an opponent in 2004, and the Florida Today would have my transgressions living on the front pages weekly.  None of this has happened because none of the charges are true.

Now here is a whopper that is both not true and in part completely verifiably not true.  Now one may claim “His computer system is still not functional after EIGHT YEARS” and pass it off as hyperbolic exagerration and opinion, but the follow up claim that  “over $500K of ‘consulting fees’ in just the last year alone” has been spent is another flat out fabrication like the lawsuits I allegedly filed against the county and my signature on the Sarno Landfill check.  We are NOT paying consultants on the Courts software, have had little work outside ourselves and the vendor for the last eight years, and in fact there are NO software consultants allowed to work on the Courts program because it is PROPRIETARY software.

One final comment on my oft ridiculed 25 year old degrees.  I survived numerous weed-out classes at UCF in the Computer Science curriculum to get the degree in one of the top two programs in the State for Computer Science.  I worked as well in the computer field during my four years in the Air Force.  I completed my Masters in Business Administration at UCF at night while working as a software analyst for RCA at the Cape. The MBA was difficult at night, but not as hard as the Computer Science degree had been.  Maybe after a few months of this it is time to get personal as Mr. Needelman has a 1990′s undergraduate degree from a flunk-proof diploma mill which taught a few classes at the Sarno Plaza by my house.  There is no comparison in the two educations we achieved.  I am one of the first to state that often one may be well educated but lacking in common sense, and that formal education is not everything, but for someone who brags about a diploma mill degree to constantly knock a real degree from a real university is the ultimate in chutzpah.

Best of all, however, is TWO DAYS before the election Mr. Needelman NOW decides  “Today we begin to post issues and answers for you”.  The man has been in the Clerk’s race for eighteen months and NOW decides to begin to post issues.  He has had the opportunity for months for candidate Forums and events and dodged nearly every one except two (which had no debates) and the joint appearance on the Bill Mick Live show.

I do not blame him. Just like the other baloney issues the last week and the month of despicable garbage thrown into the Florida Today Blogs, had any of these issues been tossed out months ago they’d already be in the Third Audit Protocol Trash Bin, or for the more slyly disappearing phoney claims, down the Memory Hole with an interview re-write.

They did me one better, and at approximately 8pm Saturday night posted the following on their home page:

Editor’s note: It has come to the attention of Hometown News that candidate for the clerk of courts, Mitch Needelman, has posted an “interview” with Hometown News on his Web site, mitchforclerk.com.

Actually, what is posted is a set of e-mailed questions from reporter Gretchen Sauerman, who sent the questions to Mr. Needelman July 22 for a story.

While we were aware that Mr. Needelman had posted the e-mail on his Web site, we were not aware that there are differences between the post that appears on www.mitchforclerk.com as of today, Aug. 23, and the actual e-mail between Mrs. Sauerman and Mr. Needelman exchanged a month ago.

We do not know what Mr. Needelman originally posted on his Web site. We do know what appears on his site today and the original e-mail he sent to us do not match. The main difference is that his original e-mail contains an accusation that his opponent, incumbent Scott Ellis, has ” … unsuccessful (sic) sued the County a number of times in the last eight years.” That statement does not appear today on Mr. Needelman’s Web site.

[Read more at HomeTown News...]

I sincerely hope the voters of Brevard County will question both Mr. Needelman’s attention to detail, and now his character, as this makes the second time he has leveled a serious (and completely false) allegation at incumbent Scott Ellis.

The first time he accused Ellis of being complicit in the Sarno landfill deal by signing the check as Clerk, even though Ellis hadn’t yet been sworn in as Clerk yet. To his credit, he promptly apologized for his mistake after Ellis called him on it.

This time, however, he chose to try to conceal the mistake entirely, with someone claiming to be a paid employee of his going so far as to accuse me of libel for printing comments from his own web site!

To give you some insight into the mindset of the folks in the Needelman camp, here is a quote “LostInBrevard” posted on the FloridaToday forum after my call to Bill Mick’s show on Friday morning:

“…and I am waiting to see how you get the general public to know…on the Friday before the election…with no money? What get Florida Today to do it? Oh yeah…they are socialist, why would they help Scott? Umm…make a commercial? Really- and that is the general public? A mail out? No time…but costly (scott has no money)?”

I will let you draw your own conclusions as to Needelman’s intent in regards to this issue.

Here is the audio from the Bill Mick Live show last Friday in case you missed it:
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