The $8 million story that the newspapers won't tell you
Seven years later and the same lies persist, to wit: that the then-president of the Venice Taxpayers League, Herb Levine, taunted city council into arresting him, then sued.

In today's news accounts of the out-of-court settlement between Herb Levine and the city (Herald-Trib link | Gondo link), reporters Greg Giles and Kim Hackett focus on Levine's behavior prior to his 2002 arrest while making no attempt to put the arrest into any historic context, thus making it falsely appear that Levine set the arrest up in order to achieve financial gain. In reality, quite the opposite is true. The arrest does indeed appear to be a set up, and there was very much a financial gain to be made out of Levine's arrest -- $8 million utilities surplus that the city frittered away while Levine's arrest successfully silenced Levine from publicly tracking the money.

So successful was the cover-up that to this day, the attention of what really went on in that budget meeting was diverted to Levine and his arrest. With the exception of the Venice Taxpayers League at the time, nobody ever looked again at what happened to that $8 million utilities stockpile that Levine claimed that Hunt and council were playing hide the dollars with (within two years, the money would be blown on a variety of projects, including at least $1 to $2 million spent on a water department building that the city, under Hunt's and Calamaras' leadership, paid for, purchased, and never actually received as it was never subsequently constructed).

The setup
Then-mayor Dean Calamaras and then-city manager George Hunt had scheduled an off-agenda presentation at a budget meeting on September 24, 2002. The untitled presentation, given by Hunt, consisted solely of personal accusations aimed at Levine, this in a successful attempt to cover up some financial indiscretions, $8 million worth, that Levine had uncovered within the city's utilities funds.

Hunt's off-topic, non-scheduled, but obviously rehearsed rant was prepared in advance with council's apparent knowledge, as Calamaras opened the presentation by introducing Hunt: "Under council discussion, George did you want to make a presentation?"

Hunt then went on a near four-minute tear about what a lying and conniving person that Herb Levine was/is and that Levine was lying about a multi-million dollar surplus in the city's utilities department. In typical Hunt "straw man argument" style, Hunt deliberately mistated and misquoted Levine, then spent the rest of the rant tearing apart the invented misquotes (audio -- MP3).

Levine sat silently through the rant. At the end, Levine, along with then-Taxpayer League members Roy Stout and Geri Weinberg, applauded Hunt (the applause can be clearly heard in the above audio, along with Calamaras' sneering response to the applause).

"I thought he was hilarious," Levine would later tell me. "It never occurred to me that he might be setting me up."

During the final public speaking portion, Levine responded, stating only that Hunt was a liar. That was all Levine was able to get out -- council exploded with a simultaneous collection of threats and insults. For example, Councilman Jim Myers and Councilwoman Virginia Warren immediately interrupted Levine and each other by shouting simultaneously, with Myers calling Levine "a hyena."

Levine walked away, but the insults continued. Meanwhile, Myers thought he was getting the last word in as he continued to try to taunt a response from Levine. Levine, no longer amused, turned around and called Myers a drunk.  For that, Levine was promptly arrested as he tried to sit back down in the audience (audio of fracas and arrest -- MP3).

The meeting was over. There was nothing left to do but bang the gavel and be done. That thought never occurred to Calamaras or to then safety director Joe Slapp. Calamaras ordered that Levine be ejected from a meeting that had effectively already ended. Slapp, still a law enforcement officer, took the extra step of arresting Levine.

Then came Calamaras' now-infamous joke, aimed at Weinberg and Stout: "Anybody else wish to come forward and get arrested?"

In the subsequent dialog where council and Hunt congratulated each other for narrowly avoiding death by insult (audio -- MP3), Councilman Rick Tacy accused Levine of threatening Hunt with violence, Councilman David Farley wondered whether the FDLE could remove Levine from the community, and, worst of all, Hunt lamented not being able to bring a gun into city council meetings any more, as he felt terrified of Levine: "[Levine] was obviously threatening me, and we've gone through the carry situation, and I don't carry [a firearm into city hall any more], I have no defense of myself, and how stable he is or how unstable he is I'm not sure."

Hunt can also be heard in the audio saying "I think he was intoxicated."

Strangely, Levine was given a breathalyzer test during the booking process, this at the request of an unnamed city hall staffer. Levine blew a 0.00.

"If overstatement is a symptom, maybe instability is contagious now. I'm glad Hunt didn't have his gun. It doesn't take much to make him feel threatened, it seems."
-- Tom Lyons, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 10/01/02

Hunt was in his late 40s or early 50s at the time, while Levine was 72. Hunt had previously admitted bringing a gun into city hall, a practice he claimed he had since stopped.

Calamaras was a slimeball then, age hasn't improved him any
In today's news accounts, Calamaras is apparently claiming that the incidents in 2002 were all Levine's fault and this was all based around Levine's greed. Calamaras states with pride that Levine was seen playing golf three days after the arrest, so Levine's injuries must not have been bad.

Think so Dean? Well, let's just take a look, you pathetic slimeball.

While in custody, Levine was placed in ankle manacles for the transport from the cells at the Venice Police Department to the jail in Sarasota. Levine slipped and fell, hitting his head on the metal steps, as he was trying to board the prisoner van.

Almost a year later, Levine was hospitalized as doctors had to drill a hole into his skull to relieve pressure from internal bleeding stemming from the injury. Levine was close to death. I know -- I visited him daily while he was recovering.

Wait, Dean, don't go away -- here's a few more interesting fun facts about those fateful days in 2002, facts that led me to conclude that Levine was likely being set up by Hunt and Slapp with Calamaras' probable fore-knowledge and approval.

City attorney, police chief told in advance not to attend the fateful meeting
Despite the fact that this was an annual budget meeting, both the Police Chief and the City Attorney were instructed not to attend the meeting. Both City Attorney Bob Anderson and then-police chief Jim Hanks have previously told me that they were instructed by then-city manager George Hunt not to attend the meeting. The men stated to me that they were not given any reason for their requested non-attendance, but it would be the first and only time in the city's history that the sitting city attorney and police chief were not required to be at the city's annual budget meeting. All department heads, including these two, are required to be at every budget meeting. Then-fire chief Mike Johnson, for example, was required to be at the budget meeting.

The disappearing and re-appearing audio
The audio of the meeting was provided to me after I requested it, but not officially. Officially, the audio originally didn't exist as there were some unknown technical problems that reportedly prevented that portion of the meeting from being recorded. That's what both I and the State Attorney's Office were initially told.

Unofficially, I received one of those rare but delightful "I never called you, but..." messages from the same city official who denied my records request for the audio. I was told to wait until after hours and then to look under a specific bush at city hall. Feeling particularly nervous and creepy, I did so, and discovered an audio compact disc of Herb Levine's arrest. I immediately posted the audio to the web as MP3s.

Remember, this was 2002 and not too many people read this web site at the time, including most staffers at city hall. The police department obviously weren't checking this site regularly. That was a big mistake.

On the day after Levine's arrest, Slapp gathered affidavit after affidavit from city hall staffers, many claiming that Levine had actually become violent. These were presented to then Assistant State Attorney Kurt Hoffman in the hope that Levine would be vigorously prosecuted.

According to Hoffman at the time (who spoke then "off the record"), Hoffman queried city officials as to the existence of any audio of the arrest. Hoffman was reportedly told (presumably by Slapp, but Hoffman would never confirm the name) that there were technical problems that prevented the recording from being provided to the prosecutor.

Hoffman then asked how it was that he was able to download and listen to the audio from Venice Florida! dot com. Slapp and staff reportedly didn't have an answer for that but they did have a planned tactical response.

Venice Florida! dot com gets a visit from the cops
Slapp shoved then-chief Hanks into a metaphorical broom closet to get the new police chief out of the way while Slapp quickly launched a criminal investigation into how I received my information. Within days, I was visited by two detectives, Mike Treanor and his partner, and was told that if I didn't cough up my city staff sources, I'd be taken to the police station.

I told the pair to go ahead and drag me in (I'd like to say that I was being brave and fearless, but the truth is that I was barely able to conceal the fact that my knees were shaking the entire time). They didn't drag me in as threatened. Instead, the pair left and said that they would be back and that I wouldn't like it.

The pair never returned, but the incident sparked a personal feud between myself and Treanor that would last until shortly before his death of cancer two years ago, when we met for the final time and agreed to forgive each other.

I complained loud and long to anyone who would listen, including Mayor Calamaras. Calamaras privately sneered at me, stating to me that I made the whole thing up, including the audio presumably (how I invented an audio recording was something that Calamaras never explained to me).

Meanwhile, Chief Jim Hanks did a brief investigation and apologized to me about the Treanor incident. Hanks stated he was shocked and that it would would never happen again. Kurt Hoffman dropped the case against Levine, stating that the city was just as guilty as Levine in disrupting their own meeting and that Levine had broken no law. Citing a sudden decline in health, Slapp resigned within days of Hoffman's decision not to prosecute Levine (our story on Slapp's resignation, dated 12/15/02).

Now, years later, comes the Gondo and Herald-Trib articles, still painting Levine as the lone gunman on the grassy knoll. Incidentally, it was me who kept inquiring about the status of the Levine lawsuit. The Herald-Trib is claiming that they did all the work in uncovering this secret deal. In reality, the Herald-Trib piggy backed onto my requests after they figured out what I was requesting and why. They have more money and lawyers than I do, so good on them that they achieved the result that I couldn't, but for them to take sole credit for exposing the settlement is flat out not true -- the paper didn't know about it until I started raising a ruckus.

"Congrats to Mayor Dean Calamaras for causing an arrest of Herb Levine, who went too far in his classless haranguing of council and George Hunt. Those meetings deserve to be civil. Way to go, Dean."
-- Bob Vedder, publisher, Venice Gondolier Sun print edition, 09/28/02 

Yet another reason that I stopped subscribing to the Gondo in 2002.

Like Calamaras, Bob Vedder is such an asshole.

John Patten is the head of Web Operations for Creative Pages, and has worked in broadcasting for over 12 years. He can also be incredibly rude at times.