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The first EPA Shade Meeting -- full text Got a comment? Make it here.
EXECUTIVE SESSION - VENICE CITY COUNCIL City Council Members present: CITY ATTORNEY ROBERT ANDERSON: Gentlemen, this is Traci for this shade meeting, and we're going to go on the record now. This is a closed, attorney-client session conducted in accordance with Florida Statute 286.011(8). The purpose of a closed, attorney-client session such as this is for me to have an opportunity to discuss a strategy and settlement negotiations regarding an ongoing piece of litigation or administrative proceeding. In this instance, it's the ongoing EPA criminal investigation of some of the activities at the pollution control division. Once again, everything that's said in this meeting is being taken down. There will be a verbatim transcript of all that is said. It will become a public record at the conclusion of the matter, much like all of the shade meeting transcripts became public records at the conclusion of the FAA administrative proceeding. So we need to limit our discussions to strictly strategy or settlement negotiations as it relates to this matter. And again, you need to be cautious as to what you say because, again, a transcript is being made of everything that's said. As you're aware, we have, for approximately two years now, been the focus of an ongoing criminal investigation. The parties involved in this investigation include the Department of Justice, the United States Attorney's Office, the EPA, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the FBI. At this point in time, the violations that they allege have occurred of the Clean Water Act include five: Number one, they contend that there have been illegal discharges to Curry Creek; number two, failure by the City to monitor its discharges of reclaimed water; number three, a falsification of records; number four, illegal discharges to Knights Trail Park; and number five, obstruction of justice. This case has taken a turn. The United States Attorney's Office has made a decision that they are prepared now to present an indictment to a federal grand jury of the City of Venice for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. What they've done is they've afforded us an opportunity to resolve this before an indictment is issued by means of a plea agreement; but understand, at this point in time, if we're unable to resolve this with the United States Attorney's Office pursuant to a plea agreement that they have prepared and submitted to me, then they are prepared to take this case to a federal grand jury for the purposes of seeking an indictment against the City of Venice for certain criminal violations of the Clean Water Act. The plea agreement that they have offered -- first of all, they're going to limit the charges in the plea agreement to just the failure to monitor discharges and the illegal discharges to. Knights Trail. They will not proceed in the plea agreement with any of the other charges. Those will be dropped, and the plea will strictly be to those two felony charges. Now, let me tell you what it is that they've shared with me as far as what they've been able to put together as a result of their investigation. They say that one of the operators has confessed to illegal discharges and the falsification of certain records to the regulatory agencies. That employee has since attempted to recant his confession. One of the things that works against us is that our discharge point to Curry Creek, under our permits, we are obligated to measure and monitor all of those discharges. For the discharge in question, it just so happens that the flow meter at that discharge point was inoperable. Well, we have a back-up flow meter. Well, it just so happens that at the time, that one wasn't working either. So we did not meter the flow into Curry Creek for the period of time in question which is approximately July and August of 2001. They believe we did that deliberately because we discharged for longer than our permits allowed and in volumes that exceeded our ability to discharge. They also contend that we improperly and illegally discharged reclaimed water to Knights Trail Park. You'll remember at one point in time we had an agreement with Sarasota County that allowed us to use Knights Trail Park as a wet-weather discharge site, and we did it through an irrigation system. They believe that at some point in time we either sawed off, cut, broke, or whatever the discharge pipe at Knights Trail and then had an open discharge at Knights Trail that was not monitored nor metered. They contend that they have visited Knights Trail during times of open discharge, that they even conducted a dye test to see where the flow would go, and they've had a biological report to determine whether or not there's been any negative results from our open discharge at Knights Trail. They've also alluded to obstruction of justice. They believe that some of our employees obstructed the investigation. We all know or else it's been alluded to that at one time they had an attorney who was dealing with our former city manager, George Hunt, wired and they tape-recorded some of his conversations; and based on those tape recordings, which I have listened to, the U.S. Attorney's Office was contemplating bringing felony charges against George Hunt for obstruction of justice. They chose not to. They thought that subsequent portions of the taped conversations he got to the edge of the cliff and then backed off, such that they didn't think it warranted that. Also, the fact that he resigned at the time that they were considering pursuing those charges, they've just decided not to. They have given us a deadline of November 15th of this year to respond to the plea agreement. The plea agreement would require us to plead guilty to three felony-count violations of the Clean Water Act. A fine would be imposed in the vicinity of $120,000. COUNCILMAN JIM MYERS: Wow. ANDERSON: We would be required to cooperate with other investigations and other prosecutions. They believe that they are going to go after some of our former employees. We would also have to commit to making some operational changes, and it might set the stage for us to have to pay some restitution, if indeed these biological studies show that what we did caused harm to adjacent properties. The purpose of today's meeting was just to advise you of this latest development, and I want to propose a course of action. We cannot take any action at a shade meeting. But I'm going to tell you what I propose to do at this point in time, and if you have any problems with that course of action, I'd like to discuss it. But it is my intention at this time is we need to retain defense counsel. That has been something that Mr. Black and I have looked into for a while now. Quite frankly, this is a very specialized area. You need somebody conversant with environmental laws, specifically the Federal Clean Water Act, but you also need somebody who is familiar with criminal defense. Those are specialties that you just don't find in the Yellow Pages listing under "attorneys." But I have indeed located some attorneys that can provide us those services. And what I propose to do is the Fowler White law firm, which has provided us defense work on insurance claims through the Florida League of Cities -that's Jim Yacavone's firm -- they've done a really good job for the City of Venice in past pieces of litigation. They have two of their attorneys in their Tampa office, a gentleman by the name of Ron Noble and another gentleman by the name Seth Rodner, R-O-D-N-E-R. Ron Noble is their environmental attorney, and he is very knowledgeable with the Clean Water Act. Seth Rodner heads up their criminal department. And they believe that the two of them working together can provide us the services necessary to see us through this proposal and identify any alternatives that are available to us. o it's my intention -- I've made contact with both Mr. Noble and Mr. Rodner, and unless I hear some strenuous objections today, it's my intention to enlist their services tomorrow. And then what we will be doing,- we will continue to evaluate the city's position and then identify all available options. I requested during my administrative report today that we have another shade meeting at the next meeting, which is November 9th. At that point in time, I hope to have more information for you, a better assessment of the plea agreement that's been presented to us, input from Mr. Noble and Mr. Rodner, and then we will determine a course of action at the next shade meeting. And then once we decide how it is that we're going to proceed, whether it be accepting the plea agreement or rejecting it and attempting to defend ourselves, then, of course, I'll advise the U.S. Attorney's Office accordingly. So today I really just wanted to advise y'all of this new development regarding the EPA's criminal investigation and tell you that that's my intended course of action, which I have developed with the assistance with the city manager. We also had an attorney assisting us in the EPA investigation, John Thomas, who is an environmental attorney out of St. Pete. He was brought on board by George Hunt and John Lane to provide the environmental law assistance and help us -- guide us through the EPA criminal investigation. But he does not have a criminal defense background and therefore, in my conversation with John Thomas, he agrees that if this goes to the next step, he doesn't have the expertise to see us through that. We -- Marty and I have involved him in this discussion. He has reviewed the plea agreement. He is going to provide us with a report, and I have even talked to him about the various attorneys that I've identified to provide us assistance, and he concurs with my selection of Mr. Noble and Mr. Rodner. So that's where we're at. Again, I think unless I hear and strenuous objections to this course of action, this is the intention of how I wish to proceed, and then I will be back to you in approximately two weeks with a status report and then we will just determine a course of action after that. COUNCILMAN JOHN SIMMONDS: Mayor, I assume that we can ask some questions. MAYOR DEAN CALAMARAS: Yes. SIMMONDS: As I understand what you're saying, right at the moment, worst of all worlds is that we pay $100,000, say we're guilty of something that we might be able to fight and find out and prove that we weren't guilty. But the worst of all worlds right now is the $100,000 plus cooperation in the prosecution of others. Is that what you're saying? ANDERSON: Not really from my perspective. I think the $120,000 fine is obviously a large sum of money. But I, quite frankly, think the two biggest prongs in the plea agreement is the admission by the City of Venice that it committed three felony violations of the Clean Water Act and, number two, whatever costs of restitution might be involved in correcting any damage that was caused by the discharges. Quite frankly, those cause me more concern as the attorney than the fine. But one other thing that I need to show you and that we need to -- it's a piece of the puzzle. Remember that the management personnel of the utilities department for the last two years has strenuously contended that they have done nothing wrong, that they are guilty of no violations of our permit, Clean Water Act, or anything else. Well, the FBI, the EPA, DEP, and the U.S. Attorney Office has the advantage of two years worth of investigative material that we haven't been privy to. And I've got the city employees who were involved in this declaring their innocence. So at this point in time, the burden is on the United States government to prove their case, and I just want you to know that our employees have been steadfast in their declaration of innocence. SIMMONDS: I assume the city manager -- and I look at this more than a legal question. This is also a management question. I'm assuming you're on board 100 percent with this, his recommendations? CITY MANAGER MARTIN BLACK: We need to engage outside legal counsel that has criminal and federal experience with the Clean Water Act. And then some of what is alleged and is offered in the plea agreement will require us to invest an unknown amount of funds in our system, above -and beyond what we're already doing now. We don't have a way to cost that out. We have been able to obtain copies of some environmental assessments that were done on one piece of property and it is clear from that assessment that there appears to have been damage that may have been attributed to our use of that property. Now, is this related to that event? I don't know. Again, we don't have the benefit, as Bob said, of the details of the investigation. I am deeply concerned about the city admitting to criminal events because I don't personally believe that the city as a corporate entity or members of our community knowingly or otherwise supported or otherwise said that it was okay, in the event that these allegations prove true. It just troubles me, as a manager, to think that the city will beheld corporately accountable for individual actions. And -- SIMMONDS: A resume of that means you do agree with the city -- or rather the City Attorney's recommendation 100 percent. BLACK: We do need to get outside counsel to advise of these next steps because it's a serious issue for us to agree that we knowingly violated criminal law, criminal aspects. ANDERSON: And I at this time am not recommending one way or the other as to whether we enter into the plea agreement. I just don't know at this point in time. VICE MAYOR RICK TACY: Yeah, that is what I was going to ask you is what we're doing now is hiring these two to look at what they've got, to see -- because if -- if we decide to challenge it, we could really get our -- get spanked too. Am I -- ANDERSON: And that's the kind of assessment we have to do. Because, folks, there are all kinds of tentacles associated with this. If, indeed, we enter that plea agreement, I think you're going to hear at the public meeting where this is agendaed for your determination as to whether or not to enter into the plea agreement -- I can imagine that the former employees of the City of Venice are going to parade in here and say, "Don't do this. We didn't do anything wrong. You should fight this." Okay. So, you know, that's just another aspect that you have to take into account. What I have been told, though, by our environmental attorney John Thomas is that the fact that we discharged into Curry Creek without an operative flow meter and we didn't when we entered into the monthly operating reports give any indication that the flows were estimates because of an inoperable meter -- they were just logged in there just as if with had a meter determining how much had been discharged -- that those are indeed violations of the Clean Water Act. The fact that they have done a dye test and found that we have flooded Knights Trail and some adjacent properties is a violation. Okay. TACY: Now, did we do it with the advanced waste water, or was it secondary or -- I mean, what were we blowing out there? BLACK: We were pushing out reclaimed water. Our permit requires that, in effect, we have the spray-head irrigation so it comes down like rain. The allegations in the plea agreement and the charges we've seen are that we didn't use that. We actually had an end of an open pipe. The difference is between a sprinkler that spreads it around and a hose that actually then squirted it out of the end of the pipe. It creates much different environmental impacts. TACY: What type of im -- I mean, if this water is good enough to be used on our lawns, et cetera, what type of environmental damage other than maybe -- ANDERSON: It degraded wetlands on the adjacent properties. BLACK: It has more to do with the volume because you're able to do -- you know, if your flow is constrained having to go through a smaller nozzle and create a mist versus having a full-out, couple-inch bore of water, you create a much different impact. The misting is presumed to percolate through the soil, loosen at the nutrient level before it gets into the water bodies. Direct hose discharge would be presumed that you're not getting any benefit of that percolation. So that's what the allegation is. CALAMARAS: Jim Myers has been trying to jump in here. MYERS: That's all right Go ahead and finish what you want to say. TACY: What are -- mean, if we -- if we're going to challenge it, I mean, potentially we could be spending more than the 120 but -- ANDERSON: I have no idea to quantify that. Wee are too early on in this process. I don't have all of those answers, but this is big enough that I wanted to inform you early on, and we will develop those kind of scenarios as to what are our options and what's the cost associated with each. TACY: And -- ANDERSON: We do not have that at this time. TACY: And that's going to be decided by the 15th. ANDERSON: Unless we can buy an extension of time. CALAMARAS: Okay, now, Jim. MYERS: There was one element that you mentioned there about we were also guilty of not having corrected the problem and the current status, and I wanted to ask, isn't the management contract with OMI taking care of that particular element of it? BLACK: We are no longer discharging to Knights Trail. We have an interconnection to the County's reclaimed system, so we do not have to use Knights Trail. MYERS: No, that isn't my question. My question was, if I understood what you were saying, Bob, is that we as a city have not -- are still doing something bad out at that plant, but -- you know, with the operation of it and so on and so forth, and I wanted to ask is having --is it OMI? Is that the right name? ANDERSON: Yes. MYERS: -- managing it has corrected any of those particular problems, if, in fact, that is a problem? BLACK: We believe that with the management we have corrected all of these issues, that we're no longer taking the actions that are alleged. MYERS: Okay. That's what I was referring to. BLACK: But I also want -one of the things that -- in the plea agreement they are asking us to, in effect, plead guilty to three items. There were more than that that they were alleging, and they've also hinted that there may be more than even what they are willing to share at this point in exchange for our cooperation. It not only calls for us to remit, but cooperate with pursuing potentially former employees. COUNCILMAN FRED HAMMETT: What does cooperation mean? What does that mean? ANDERSON: Provide documents, provide access. SIMMONDS: You have to do
that. ANDERSON: Well, no, you don't. BLACK: You don't have to incriminate yourself. CALAMARAS: They are looking for public documents, aren't they -- ANDERSON: They're certainly entitled -- BLACK: They've already got those. ANDERSON: They've given-us grand jury subpoenas for documents, and they can use the public records and freedom of information to secure documents. They want more cooperation than us just turning over documents. HAMMETT: I don't understand that. BLACK: Let me give you an example. Our current engineer of record, Camp, Dresser & McKee, has been contacted by the EPA investigators to ask questions about how the system was originally designed and how now that they are preparing our permits how they would assess it. CDM is not under any obligation to provide information unless they are subpoenaed. We conceivably can see a request coming from the attorneys for us to spend money to pay our consultants to assist with their investigation. ANDERSON: We've already paid David Farabee, another consultant, a considerable amount of money to explain to the EPA criminal investigator how it is that our system works, because we thought a better knowledge of the system we would be able to show that we didn't commit any violations. And again, that was based on the representations made by utility management that we had done nothing wrong, and if they were more knowledgeable of our system and our procedures, they would realized that. That hasn't panned out. CALAMARAS: How about the fact that it was AWT water, reclaimed water? It's -- you know, it's not like we -- we weren't pumping raw sewage. In effect, we were pumping clean water. ANDERSON: To say that the water that you discharged illegally was better than the quality of the water in the receiving body is not a viable defense. BLACK: We have limits by our permits and if the allegations are true, it doesn't matter what you were pumping. It could have been drinking water. CALAMARAS: You see the paradox is that the -- we're allowed to dump that water into the creek for, what, two days a month -- ANDERSON: Approximately seven days straddling July and August. CALAMARAS: But then if we overdo it, we're violating the law, so -- and by doing it one day too many. BLACK: But these allegations actually go a step further because on occasion we've gone beyond our permit requirements and then had to advise, for example, during hurricane conditions or extreme wet weather -- the State on behalf of EPA has delegated authorities. Often times they will allow, during emergency conditions, you know, in effect emergency operations. We did that with the interconnect on the reclaimed water. The State had not yet finalized, our permit this summer to allow us the interconnection with the County. They saw that as a good thing. Technically we didn't have the permit, but the State, during the emergency conditions and under the Governor's order was able to give us an approval to use, during that hurricane preparation period, the emergency response period, the ability to use that. But we notified them, we documented it, we adhered to all the other requirements. What they're alleging is that not only did we go beyond, we then attempted to cover up the fact that we went beyond that. And that's where the allegation then moves to another level. ANDERSON: I just want to go back to the OMI question. We have no reason to believe that OMI, as the operator, isn't operating the east-side plant in accordance with all appropriate laws, rules, regulations, and our permits. So in that sense, we don't have a need to change operational-protocols; but we have not discussed these allegations, these charges, and these findings with OMI to see if, indeed, our protocols need to be changed to ensure future compliance. Okay. So we just didn't want to bring OMI in yet. We don't know that we need to because as long as they're operating in accordance with the law and the operating permits, then we don't have to contend with this. This we have to contend with because there is an allegation that before we went outside the law and outside the permits, and I don't believe OMI is doing that. We've gotten no indication of such, nor has the EPA, DEP, or the U.S. Attorney's Office advised us of any current problems in the operation by OMI. MYERS: Is OMI aware of this -- this -- ANDERSON: No, not at all. BLACK: They were aware that we were under a criminal investigation, but they are not aware of any of the substance because that information was made known when [EPA criminal investigator] Dan Green was doing his interview. The sum and substance, the U.S. District Attorney's Office has asked that we not broadcast this. It's an ongoing criminal investigation, we can't compromise it. CALAMARAS: Since this is a plea bargain, are we allowed to give our term? You know, let's say we plead guilty to something or another, can we change some of these terms? For instance, how can we obligate the City to an unknown cost to mitigate certain damages? You know, it could be $10 million. That would be all of our ad valorem budget. ANDERSON: The plea agreement is negotiable, I just don't know to what extent. CALAMARAS: We could suggest some of our terms. BLACK: One of the things that is a little different here -- for example, when you're working with the DEP on the civil issues, we're able to work staff with our engineers and some folks to figure out what was a reasonable approach and work through them. I don't have any experience and I won't speak for Bob, but neither one of us have experience in a criminal investigation of the Clean Water Act. So we're not in a position to really advise you any more than we can at this point. SIMMONDS: Judge has been trying to get -- CALAMARAS: Yeah, Judge. COUNCILMAN JOHN MOORE: It's good discussion, but I do think that Bob is absolutely right that when you're looking at a federal criminal felony indictment, you need to have a very specialized criminal law firm or team representing you. You need an attorney representing you that knows the United States Attorney's Office and the people there, who works there, in and out all the time, he is in that court all the time. Not only can he try the case for you, but they can make end roads into potential plea agreements, so on and so forth. So that is something, it seems to me, we need to jump on absolutely immediately. The other thing -- and I really find this troubling. This has been ongoing for at least two years, and I've heard rumors of FBI agents and criminal investigators for the EPA down here in Venice interviewing all of our employees and gathering evidence against us for two years, and now we're being confronted with an option of pleading to a three-felony indictment in little over two weeks, which is totally unrealistic, it seems to me, to have to make those kind of decisions without having done our own investigation and gotten our own evidence and our own facts straight. But maybe we have done that, and I guess that's my question: Where do we stand on our own factual investigation here, and how much time is it going to take us to decide whether or not the facts would warrant such a plea agreement or something less than that or would warrant us going to court, going to trial? ANDERSON: Fairly early on in this process, George Hunt and John Lane made a determination that the city had done nothing wrong and that all they had to do was cooperate with the EPA investigation and that the facts would support their position and that hopefully this would quietly go away. They wanted to hire John Thomas to assist the city in responding to EPA's requests and interview some plant operators and some of the other parties involved. But it was always done in this notion that we've done nothing wrong, they just don't understand our system, we will cooperate, we will provide them as much assistance as possible to show them that we've done nothing wrong, and then maybe they'll just close the investigation with no formal charges and we can move on. In hindsight, that might not have been the best call, because obviously the regulatory agencies and the U.S. Attorney's Office feel very strongly that we've committed felony violations of the Clean Water Act and that we need to be held accountable for that. John Thomas, the environmental attorney who was retained, he did interview most of the witnesses, and Marty and I in our last meeting with him asked him to provide us with a report summarizing his investigation and how it relates to the charges and the evidence provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office to set the stage for the plea agreement so that we can assess that. I will tell you, though, that he says there are -- the City of Venice has some real concerns regarding the discharges to Curry Creek without an operative flow meter. It's kind of like how do you defend yourself because that's exactly what happened and that is a criminal violation. And the other thing is the open discharge to Knights Trail and the fact that the monthly operating reports, the reports filed by the city with the regulatory agencies did not disclose that some of the flows were just estimates made necessary because of an inoperable flow meter. So John Thomas says that even his investigation leads him to the conclusion that some of the violations that they've alleged and that they base the indictment on we don't have a defense for. BLACK: Right. MOORE: We know that in reality there are people who are guilty of felonies who plead to misdemeanors or get off with a civil fine sometimes, and we are talking about technical violations. We're not talking about violations here that have criminal intent behind them. We are talking about violations that -- of the Clean Water Act, which is a per se violation -- a per se felony simply because you discharged without a flow meter, not much criminal intent there, unless you can go one step further and say that somebody intentionally did that. ANDERSON: And they've taken that step. MOORE: Now, that's a factual issue. ANDERSON: The City of Venice, as far as the regulatory agencies are concerned, has a history of violations. We just, within the last year, entered into a consent order with Florida Department of Environmental Protection and paid a fine for acknowledged violations of permits, requirements, and statutes. At one of the meetings that was conducted fairly early on in this process and in the U.S. Attorney's Office, George Hunt told the Assistant U.S. Attorney, the EPA criminal investigator, and the representative of Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the city considers permit violations and administrative fines as a cost of doing business: "We violate, you fine us, we pay the fine, and we move on." And, quite frankly, the U.S. -- Assistant U.S. Attorney was surprised to hear that, because her next response was, "Mr. Hunt, one of the most difficult things is proving willful [sic] and knowingly having done something and you've just told me that the City of Venice willfully and knowingly violates its permits and the Clean Water Act as a cost of doing business." The fact that they went so far as to have the FBI wire an attorney in conversations with our city manager and involve the FBI in this, the fact they would consider obstruction of justice, the fact that they have sent us a series of grand jury subpoenas for documents and they don't believe that we have been forthcoming with all the documents they've requested, the fact they have Florida Department of Environmental Protection sitting at the table at all of those meetings, they do not believe that the City of Venice by mistake violated or exceeded one of its permit's conditions or made a technical violation of the Clean Water Act. BLACK: Let me share with you a technical aspect of the metering for the discharge to Curry Creek. The reports are required each month to show how much flow, and they are supposed to read that meter to so show how much of the reclaimed water is being discharged to Curry. In the reports that they're alleging we had staff falsify these documents or not file them appropriately, the reports record the volume over a series of at least two months -- and I think it's also a longer period of time, but they are focusing on a two-month period -- our staff person who signed that puts on the report the number that matches the absolute permit maximum that we are allowed under law and under our permit conditions to discharge with no indication it's estimated; and not only does it once, does it at least twice, and shows consistently over a period of time that we don't acknowledge that we're estimating, but we're showing consistently that we're going to the absolute maximum of our permit conditions. When you look back to other years, you don't see that. So it leads -- in the allegation, it creates a set of apparent circumstantial facts that you really can't overcome. John Thomas, who's assisted with this review from an environmental perspective, says, you know, that creates a real problem for the City's perspective from, you know, evaluating this and responding that this was just an error; and then to have a backup meter also not functioning during this period of time and only having the corrective measures taken after the EPA contacts the city leads them down a path that this was knowingly done. And that's a circumstance that, you know, in talking from an engineering perspective and attorney perspective we really don't have a good defense. MOORE: I guess that's why I'm emphasizing -- and I use that as an example -- why we need to have a criminal lawyer that's familiar and comfortable dealing with the U.S. Attorney and is familiar with the Clean Water Act. ANDERSON: Alrighty. I'll proceed as we discussed. And again, I've got another shade meeting scheduled for the next council meeting, which is November 9th. Hopefully by then I will have more of an assessment and more information for you and will be better able to answer some of yours questions. We did want -- MOORE: I would hope that you can get an extension of time because we're gonna be five, six days from answering this plea agreement that they've laid on the table. ANDERSON: Yep. MOORE: And I would think that would be one of the first steps our criminal lawyer would try to pursue. ANDERSON: Mr. Noble and Mr. Rodner are awaiting my call. HAMMETT: I have one -- do we have any of those employees left? ANDERSON: None of the employees that I believe are the focus of this investigation are currently on the payroll for the City of Venice. HAMMETT: Thank you. ANDERSON: But again, that's based on what I know to date. HAMMETT: I understand. BLACK: From what we're able to determine from John Thomas's interviews and the information and the instances that are referred in here, because no names are used, it appears that we no longer have any employees in any of those roles. HAMMETT: How long can they keep it a mystery? "They" being the prosecutor. The evidence, who they have, what -- ANDERSON: The fact that there is a cloak on this now was probably done as an accommodation to me. I requested that, but I also told the U.S. Assistant Attorney that I needed a sufficient amount of what evidence they had in order for me to do any sort of evaluation and assessment of the need for us to seriously consider their plea agreement. Her concern was, "Well, Bob, if I give you all of that, isn't that a public record that I have to concern myself with?" So I did the research, and I believe this investigative material is exempt from 119 under the exclusion for an active criminal investigation. And based upon that representation to Judy Hunt, she provided me with the cover letter which goes into some detail as to the evidence that they gleaned during their investigation. It is normal that if, indeed, they proceed to present all of this to the federal grand jury for an indictment that at that point in time you are going to see a press release and a fair amount of it become public at that point in time. If we do a plea agreement, quite frankly, until the plea agreement is entered, I don't believe that we're going to have to contend with high visibility on this. But obviously, once the plea agreement is entered, you're going to have to take action before that at a city council meeting, and we are going to have to go in depth as to why we're doing this, what it entails, and then you will have to vote to approve the plea agreement offered by the U.S. Attorney's Office. So at that point in time, all of this will become public. But at this point in time, it's only us and John Thomas, the environmental attorney, who have been privy to this information up to now. BLACK: We obviously should not share this with anyone. That's part of the reason Bob's and my comments to the media is simply that it's an ongoing criminal investigation and we're not in a position to comment. ANDERSON: And the information that you have received today at this shade meeting is confidential and you should not disclose it nor discuss it with anyone. MYERS: Fair enough. ANDERSON: All right. Thank you. CALAMARAS: I'm going to need at least three of you to come back into the meeting so I can reconvene and adjourn.
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