A veteran whistleblower, who has been practicing law for more than 42 years, accuses an honored Gainesville City Attorney of subverting the Florida Public Records Act, and since 1992 a Florida Constitutional provision, Art. I, §Sec. 24. Those provisions generally assure people requesting documents of a reasonably prompt and full response–but not in Gainesville.
The whistleblower, attorney Gabe Kaimowitz, today is sending papers challenging the constitutionality of a local Public Records Policy and Administrative Procedures, as well as two underlying local laws, to the attention of Chesterfield Smith for the Attorney General of Florida. Such papers are filed with the Attorney General when municipal ordinances and charter provision are challenged as being contrary to state law.
Gainesville City Attorney Marion Radson set into motion local laws to circumvent Florida Supreme Court decisions in 1979 and 1983 which affirmed the Public Records Act in general to allow the statutes to remain unchanged, to guarantee open meetings, and meaningful access to public records.
Mr. Radson has stated that the reading is too broad and infringes on public attorneys’ abilities to advise their municipal, county, or state clients.
So in 2009-2010, Mr. Radson pushed through that local Policy, without elected officials really understanding what was happening. The Policy surfaced in march, when the Gainesville Sun reported that the City was demanding nearly $40,000 from a former employee if she wanted access to the e-mails she had sent and received during her seven years as visual arts coordinator.
But more turns out to be at stake than was originally realized. Mr. Kaimowitz has learned that Gainesville’s well-known City Attorney Marion Radson really has something to hide.
Since 2004, City Attorney Marion Radson, (ret. July 31/continued to Oct. 1), has avoided repeated requests for financial and contract documents which would reveal how much is paid to private law firms annually to do public business. In the 1990s, the Gainesville Sun reported that Radson had authorized $626,000 to a Miami law firm in one year. Another report showed one Sarasota attorney being given $500,000 to defend the City. Nothing has been reported since then.
Mr. Kaimowitz notes that the nine-lawyers already in the Office of City Attorney annually get $1 million or more in salaries, plus benefits. Two of them were candidates to replace Mr. Radson. The junior candidate was selected, perhaps in part because the other local prospect has been married to a local judge for more than 10 years.
Conflicts of interest might have arisen, if that attorney Dan Nee had been chosen. So the younger Nicholle Shalley has been selected.
The whistleblower, Gabe Kaimowitz, has been representing the Butterfly Education Project, LLC, since May, in a legal action initiated for former City visual arts coordinator Erin Friedberg. Judge Victor L. Hulslander allowed Kaimowitz to intervene for the Project, and to have the corporation’s demands for access to City records heard with those of Ms. Friedberg.
Ms. Friedberg and Mr. Kaimowitz worked together to get 20 hours of testimony and submission of documents in the case against the City, #2012-cv-360 (FL 8th J.D. Alachua Co. Cir. Ct. 2012), primarily in July. But then Judge Hulslander disqualified himself on what was to have been the last day of submission of evidence on July 24.
Chief Judge Robert Roundtree then designated Judge Toby Monaco to hear this case. Judge Monaco invariably rules for defendants in civil actions, for the State in criminal proceedings. The First District Court of Appeal generally has affirmed him in more than 40 appeals taken from his decisions in Starke, and Gainesville. Judge Monaco is regarded as such a sure thing for Defendants that he was invited to a half-dozen times to be an associate judge to hear appeals in the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Palm Beach.
Judge Monaco who is unopposed for re-election did not hide his views in favor of Defendants in civil cases when he first ran. The Gainesville Sun reported that he was an “army brat” raised in Sarasota. He graduated from the University of Florida Law School in 1973 and spent 25 of the next 27 years “defending people who get sued.”
In his career on the bench, Judge Monaco particularly favors the University of Florida, and Shands hospitals, when they are defendants, as well as most other medical institutions and practitioners. He has been a proud member of a private Eighth Judicial Circuit Bar Association, LLC. Mr. Kaimowitz has sued the Association and he claims the EJCBA has deep roots in the legal community when there were no Negro lawyers. The EJCBA claims to have been started in 1957, but in 2011, the organization historian revealed that the organization has been organized since 1941. Its past presidents are identified to that era, long before the 1954-55 Brown v. Board of Education law suits.
All of the 8th Judicial Circuit Court judges are white. They have been since 1992, when Judge Stephan Mickle next integrated the First District Court of Appeal. Finally, Judge Mickle became a judge in the federal U.S. Court of the Northern District of Florida, then its chief judge and now its senior judge. Prominent EJCBA member, Senior Judge Maurice M. Paul, was kept on the bench once Judge Mickle was placed in federal court. Judge Paul has been on the federal bench here since 1981.
In 2004, Judge Monaco ruled against Mr. Kaimowitz, and in favor of the City of Gainesville, in an 18-page diatribe with few citations.
A recent public records request revealed that earlier this year, Mr. Radson secretly send a “corrected” version of that 2004 opinion along with other memorandum to the City’s elected officials and charter officers.
He was retaliating for Mr. Kaimowitz’s criticisms of him during citizen’s comment on Jan. 9, 2012. That unethical practice did not surface until late last month, when a cover letter e-mail from Mr. Radson was included in a package of miscellany in response to that public record request.
Mr. Kaimowitz has moved to have Judge Monaco disqualified. But Judge Monaco rejected that motion, and then threw out the hours of testimony. Once he did that, he denied a motion for his disqualification filed by Ms. Friedberg. Her motion generally was based on Judge Monaco’s evident hostility to Mr. Kaimowitz, in 2004 and at present. It would appear that Ms. Friedberg would be wise to proceed without Mr. Kaimowitz, at least in the court of Judge Monaco.
Mr. Kaimowitz has filed motions for Judge Monaco to reconsider his unwillingness to disqualify himself, and for Judge Roundtree to reconsider the assignment in the first place.
While these papers were being prepared, Mr. Kaimowitz received two press releases from the City of Gainesville. the City of Gainesville. They too are attached to this release.
Mr. Radson has been honored by his public attorney colleagues with a lifetime achievement award, and he had been selected as president of the 600-member Municipal Attorneys Association.
Mr. Kaimowitz will be raising these issues again during Citizens Comment at the next City Commission meeting this month. 
