County Commission Shows Public Who They Work For

In what amounted to a reprehensible mockery of the democratic process itself, Manatee County Commissioners voted 6-1 to move forward in gutting the county’s own wetland protection policy during Thursday’s land use meeting. 

Deep down, I’m sure most of you had little doubt that would be the outcome. Sure, the planning commission strayed from the script at last week’s meeting, but that’s a volunteer board that only makes recommendations. Planning commissioners don’t have to raise piles of campaign cash or consider the fact that their taxpayer-funded salary is more than they made prior to being elected, the way that most county commissioners do.

Unless they harbor higher ambitions in the public sphere—and it seems two of them might—there exists far less incentive to risk being remembered as one of a handful of people who went against the loudly expressed will of the public in approving policies that are certain to exacerbate our already considerable water woes just so that the development cartel can adjust the commas on their bottom line. 

In coming years, every time citizens are out on the water trying to enjoy what had once been a paradise only to have their attempt at recreation spoiled by the sight of bloated, rotting fish corpses, mats of blue-green algae, or great big floating piles of lyngbya, they’ll have some names to curse. At the top of the list will be their county commissioners—Kevin Van Ostenbridge, Amanda Ballard, Jason Bearden, James Satcher, Mike Rahn, and Ray Turner. Commissioner George Kruse, in his new role as disgruntled outsider, cast the sole dissenting vote. 

Former county administrator Scott Hopes once reportedly told staff not to waste time watching commission meetings because they were just theater. It seems that may have been one of the few times Hopes had not been lying through his teeth. 

Over the past few weeks, this publication has laid it all out for the community. We reported multiple times that developer Carlos Beruff has been suing the county since 2015 over its wetland policies, essentially asking for exactly what was brought forward as this “county-initiated” proposal. We reported that county staff had been removed from the role of preparing the staff report that would guide commissioners because they objected to removing the 50-foot buffer requirement from our most critical wetlands. 

We reported that Daniel DeLisi, the so-called expert that the county had outsourced the guidance that would typically be done by its own highly-qualified staff was the same exact expert Beruff used in his unsuccessful lawsuits, and we reported that Delisi testified to Manatee County attorneys in a deposition that he was not an environmental scientist, nor a wetlands expert. 

We also reported that DeLisi was not the first man considered for the job and that Alec Hoffner, Senior Scientist at Kimley-Horn and Associates, had been loosely engaged prior. This made sense, since, unlike DeLisi, Hoffner is an environmental scientist, an actual wetlands expert, and works for the firm that the county had already hired to consult on the pending overhaul of its comprehensive land use plan and land development code. However, a source who claimed first-hand knowledge of what transpired during those meetings told TBT that once Hoffner expressed the same opinion as staff, the county decided he wasn’t the right person for the job. 

Clearly, the fix was in, and just in case any of the commissioners hadn’t heard this themselves, a full house (and overflow room) showed up to give public comment. One member of the public even read a large portion of an investigative report by TBT’s Dawn Kitterman into the record. 

For his part, Mr. DeLisi stood at the podium and softly spoke what was essentially the same mealy-mouthed, misinformed, hem and haw fest that he gave planning commissioners last week. These are arbitrary and unique requirements, I’ve seen no science to support the idea that bigger wetland buffers improve water quality, there are other methods by which you can accomplish it, blotty blue, blotty blah. 

DeLisi did seem to be struggling to put even a little bit of bass into his voice and give something approaching the sort of full-throated pitch that might suggest he believes his own brand of gobbledygook. But I guess getting your ass handed to you by every court and board in the county up to that point has a way of undermining your confidence even when you’ve been assured that the outcome is predetermined. Don’t worry, Danny Boy, that was just an exhibition. I’ve already taken care of the board that counts.

One by one, members of the public confronted the board with the many flaws in DeLisi’s presentation. Dr. Abby Tyrna—a Ph.D. environmental scientist who specializes in wetlands—once again shot enough holes in DeLisi’s assessment to make it look like Swiss cheese. Rob Brown, who was the Manatee County Environmental Program Manager for 34 years—including when the comp plan was being written—then made it look like Swiss cheese that had been taken to a gun range and sprayed by an assault rifle. Brown told commissioners that the county had indeed used the science that was already available back then to support its conclusion on the necessity of adequate buffers. 

Much more damningly, however, Brown then brought up an element of the proposal that had never been considered or discussed to this point. He pointed out the fact that the wetland buffers also apply to phosphate mining, which means that not only developers but phosphate mining giant Mosaic—which owns more land than anyone in Manatee County—would also benefit from the change. Think about that, folks. The mining considerations of this policy had never been discussed or considered before Tuesday’s meeting, yet not only was it not enough for anyone to consider a continuance, not one commissioner even asked that the implications be explained!

Rusty Chinnis, a recently retired Longboat Key contractor and avid fisherman who has lived in the county for 41 years, provided what may have been the most effective presentation. Chinnis simply forced commissioners to watch a few moments of recently shot drone footage of Manatee waterways, showing that they are indeed choc full of toxic lyngbya, while describing the foul odor of the highly-toxic cyanobacteria. It was a striking visual aid that screamed, Your water is already a mess, why on Earth would you even think about approving a policy reducing its protections?

Despite the public’s head-spinning rebuttal of their expert, few commissioners were interested in asking questions or getting more information. Turner and Bearden said nothing at all, while Satcher offered some soft-headed and irrelevant story about some friend from another county who was in a pickle owed to government overreach. Rahn stumbled through a brief attempt to pretend he was doing his job, and then just nodded along.

Amanda Ballard, who looked painfully disinterested in the proceedings, finally got in the game and asked DeLisi to respond to public comments that suggested other coastal counties had similar protections and that there was nothing unique about Manatee’s. DeLisi muttered some nonsense about only having had a few weeks to work on this, having an idea regarding counties he’s worked with, and a vague assurance that he’d make sure they had the most complete information.

If DeLisi is not aware of the easily verifiable fact that Manatee County’s wetland policies are in no way uniquely rigid or that a solid majority of counties have similar policies and do not just defer to the state minimums, it’s because he hasn’t looked, probably for fear of not being able to testify to his lack of awareness. As we’ve already established that DeLisi is not a wetland expert, however, this shoots serious holes in his claim that his expertise lies in wetlands from a policymaking standpoint. Commissioners would do well to ask what exactly we’ve paid this guy tens of thousands of dollars for if it isn’t actual wetland or wetland policy expertise; that is, if they didn’t already know the answer. He’s the bought and paid-for industry shill who tries his best to sell a justification for whatever the desired outcome is.

Kruse, who obviously knew what was going on, as he was once a member of the we get things done for Carlos crew, had some fun asking uncomfortable questions. Even this somewhat gentle ribbing, however, seemed too much for the DeLisi, and at one point, he essentially told Kruse, look, I got a phone call, and I’m just here doing what I’ve been asked to do. Kruse responded by saying that he hadn’t asked for anything. One day, DeLisi was there and he was going to do the job that county staff usually did. 

Van Ostenbridge stepped in to tell Kruse that the six conservative Republicans on the board asked staff to look at some of the county’s regulations and see if there was anything duplicative that could be cut—conveniently leaving out the fact that staff was no longer involved precisely because they did not come back with the preordained answer of yes, the wetland policy, we should just defer to the state minimums.

Kruse later recounted the state legislature's recent effort to pass SB 1240, which would have prohibited counties and municipalities from "adopting laws, regulations, rules or policies relating to water quality or quantity, pollution control, discharge prevention, or removal of wetlands, and preempt such regulations to the state.”

“So the state's already trying to take control of this, and we're trying to voluntarily give it to them before they take it,” said Kruse, again reminding commissioners that the county had already defended the public interest in the policy in court on multiple occasions while the expert was on the other side. “It's like we just won the Super Bowl, and then we went out during the off-season and hired the quarterback from the losing team to run our team next year. It doesn't make sense.”

Of course, there was one person sitting up there who could have brought clarity to it all, and that was Nicole Knapp, who had been the comp plan manager and impact fee administrator when putting county staff on the sideline, passing on Hoffner, and going with DeLisi played out. But Knapp was recently named acting director of development services and given a $38,000 bump in pay, which was apparently enough to quell any crisis of conscience she may have encountered. Looks like she’ll be the odds-on-favorite to get the full-time post. 

When the gavel dropped, the public got feisty. Cries of “shame” echoed through the chamber and most of the commissioners wouldn’t face the public. Van Ostenbridge, however, was sporting the kind of grin that’s usually only seen on men who’ve been so deeply disliked and thoroughly rejected for so long that they come to enjoy playing the role of heel. Like dog breeds of lesser intelligence, those types usually need only a pat on the head from their master to be content, and I’m sure his developer sugar daddy was reaching down to tell him who was a good boy in short order.

Today played out like The Lorax as a live-action movie. I’ve been covering Manatee County government for over 13 years and I’ve honestly never seen such a corrupt, intellectually-vacant policy decision, nor such a transparent giveaway to special interests, and around here, that's saying a lot. At a time when this county needs brave and stalwart leadership on environmental protections more than ever, it is instead in the hands of spineless puppets who can be bought on the cheap. May the gods have mercy on us all. 

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. His 2016 short story collection, Casting Shadows, was recently reissued and is available here. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.