By Linda Dean Cooper

My Public Comment: Circle of Power

During the February 20 meeting, the Board of County Commissioners approved the funding of the Public Information Officer position from the Appropriate Reserves (Contingency) funds to the tune of $119,550 annually.  Make sure you notice RESERVES! The salary presented at the meeting was for $80,000, not $74,000 as advertised, plus expenses.

First and foremost, Levy County has so many other pressing issues, however, a PIO isn’t one of them.  But the new PIO hire, Mary Ellen Harper is very important to the circle of power by a select few in the Levy County government.  Keep in mind her father-in-law is a very prominent farmer in Chiefland and serves on the Planning Commission. Matt Brooks has pushed for a PIO position for some time now. He also had Michael Earnest appointed to the Planning Commission, but a conflict of interest reared its ugly head due to Earnest’s role as COO an All-In-Removal company based in Marion County and the then pending barn waste/composting ordinance.  Important to note that Matt Brooks is running for Clerk of Court and John Meeks is seeking his fourth term for District Seat 1 agreed to this appointment and Earnest’s ties to All-In-Removal were listed on his application.

The BoCC as a political body should not have the ability to hire any director, especially in an election year.  The organizational chart indicates that only the county attorney and county coordinator report to the BoCC.  That’s how the org chart has it listed and as it should be.  When the BoCC sticks its nose into hiring an influencer, that’s exactly what this particular PIO Harper is, an influencer it is to continue their reign of power by buying loyalty.  It takes three votes to fire the attorney or the county coordinator. The question has been raised that if the BoCC does the hiring are their new hires subject to the same three votes or do they report to the county coordinator?  Who evaluates the new hire? Does the new hire have five bosses plus the county coordinator?  Makes my head spin that’s for sure. The BoCC loves to operate in the gray when it suits them. 

Harper was not the best qualified candidate and the few of us that were there during the interviews knew that.  After the board interviewed all the candidates the commissioners voted by a secret ballot for their top three candidates, all the candidates left the auditorium except Mary Ellen Harper. She sat in the front middle section about four rows directly in front of the commissioners, looking squarely into their faces.  All the other candidates respected the process and left, but not Ms. Harper.  Everyone could feel the tension in the room.  When HR director Martin read the name of the top candidate, Harper had the job. Chairman Mills was the only one who did not have Harper as her top pick.  I got that information from a public records request because nothing more was said after Ms. Harper got the majority of votes.

The PIO interviews were conducted in the afternoon and the Bronson fire chief selection was across the street that same night.  Ms Harper won that job as well.  Ms. Harper put it on her FB page that she was the new Bronson Fire Chief and TV 20 had on their news site.  She was chosen out of seventeen applicants.

The County was very clear that the PIO was a 24/7 on-call position for disasters so there was no way she could serve as Bronson Fire Chief and County PIO.  But she tried.  Bronson Councilman Tyler Vorhees and Vice Mayor Virginia Phillips pleaded for the county to reconsider during the following regular BoCC meeting in public comments.  Phillips went as far as to say the county was discriminating against a woman.  Bronson Councilman Tyler Vorhees made an excellent point in his public comments at the end of the meeting about the many other firefighters who work for the county work at other municipalities.

For those of you who do not know it, municipalities every year must present their requests for fire funds every budget year to the county.  Usually, the local fire chiefs present their requests to the BoCC then the board decides the final amounts awarded for each request.  Perhaps the Town of Bronson had visions of grandeur of more money for future fire funding. 

The county made it clear to Ms. Harper to choose one or the other.  She withdrew from the Bronson Fire Chief position but now there appears to be animosity between the two local governments.  She knew that when she left the county interview she had the job and should have withdrawn from the running of the fire chief.  But she didn’t. 

Another example of amateurish writing was when Harper posted on the county’s FB page on February 12 incorrectly naming the former Texas Governor and former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry instead of our Senator Keith Perry in her post “Levy County Emergency Management Director John MacDonald traveled to Tallahassee last week to participate in the 4th Annual Emergency Management Day at the Florida State Capitol. Director MacDonald met with Senator Rick Perry,…”  If you are a seasoned, qualified PIO that should have never occurred. Senator Keith Perry has a satellite office in our government complex, which is even more embarrassing!

Harper says in her cover letter that “as the Director of Fire and Rescue Services in Farmington, Connecticut, I merged three previously independent fire companies and a staff of paid firefighters into a single unified fire department.”  Does she want a more centralized big government or consolidation of all the local fire departments?  You be the judge. That was tried under the David Knowles regime and failed.  Also was tried with Levy public schools, but it failed. The people did not want it!

One last observation.  In a recent FB post, Harper introduces the Planning and Zoning Director Stacey Hectus along with two other female employees in what looks like a photo op in unrelated workplace situations.  Hectus during her recent agenda item just gushed about how great it was to have the new PIO at the February 20 BoCC meeting.

Hectus is no stranger to controversy when her email exchanges from August 29, 2022, through October 13, 2022. exposed a bias and what appears to be a working relationship with Reid Nagles’ staff, owner of All-In-Removal, Big Lick Farms, and Black Prong Equestrian Village, to influence the development of the composting/barn waste ordinance.    

As the Planning and Zoning Director, she has an incredible amount of influence, power, and input dealing with the Planning Commission, county attorney, BoCC, and controls special exceptions applications, and applicants.  She has too much-unchecked power and needs to be reeled in by management. 

The circle of power is very small and close-knit.  The only way we, the taxpayers who pay the bills, can clean up this circle of power is to elect real public servants and remove these self-serving politicians.  Accountability starts at the top and currently, we have none.  Term limits will go a long way to clean up this mess, we need true leaders with backbone and vision to be elected, not self-serving career politicians in it for the power and money.

The above is what I wanted to say in the BoCC meeting, but I decided I would rather say it to the readers of Spotlight. I know when most of the public says anything at a meeting it falls on deaf ears as most public comments tend to do. 

————————————

Posted February 27, 2024