A Bradenton woman has filed complaints with the Florida Commission on Ethics against Bradenton Beach Mayor Jack Clarke, claiming he violated the Florida Government-in-the-Sunshine Act.
The Sept. 14 complaint also names city attorney Ricinda Perry.
Barbara Schelin is a former city clerk and former assistant city manager in Poughkeepsie, New York, who worked in Bradenton Beach for 14 years. She alleges Clarke and Perry broke the sunshine law when they held meetings with Anna Maria Oyster Bar president John Horne to negotiate the lease for the restaurant on the Historic Bridge Street Pier.
Those meetings, Schelin said, were neither held in public nor recorded. She included a 1974 state attorney general opinion that says, while such negotiations do not constitute a public meeting, “the physical presence of two members of a board or commission is not always required in order for a violation of the Sunshine Law to be demonstrated.”
The AGO also states that when a member of a commission is authorized to act on the board’s behalf in lease negotiations, that person is subject to the Sunshine Law and cannot negotiate in secret.
After Horne won the bid July 23, Schelin recounted, Clarke told commissioners he and Perry would negotiate with AMOB.
“Negotiations of this nature should be held publicly or, at a minimum, recorded,” Schelin wrote. She also wrote that Commissioner Janie Robertson apparently then contacted Perry to relay her concerns.
Perry’s response to Robertson was that the negotiations have been handled in the same fashion as she had conducted all other contractual arrangements during the 10 years she has worked for the city.
Schelin said she was surprised by Perry’s response, “because if something has been improperly done for many years, that does not make it right.”
Perry also said the negotiations amounted to her advising AMOB on what the commission had already approved. She also claims to have inquired about the property use, the buildings to include in the lease and to confirm parking concerns and maintenance.
Schelin said she believes at least two “negotiation meetings” took place between Horne, Perry and Clarke, in addition to at least two between Clarke and Horne. None of these meetings were held in the public or recorded, she stated.
Clarke told pier team members Aug. 5 that two meetings with Horne had produced “no result,” before Police Chief Sam Speciale, the pier team facilitator, asked him not to discuss the lease negotiations.
Schelin noted that Perry subsequently updated the lease contract to reflect a higher base rent and a percentage of restaurant profits — more revenue for the city — before the commission approved it. “I can only assume that to arrive at these new monetary features of the contract there were active negotiations,” Schelin wrote. “This appears to be out of the scope of what attorney Perry said was taking place.”
Barbara Peterson, president of the First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee, stated in an Aug. 14 email it could be that Perry “wasn’t negotiating — I have no way of knowing that — but if a lease is the end result, then how was she not negotiating?”
The First Amendment Foundation is a nonprofit organization that provides information, expertise and assistance to the public and news media to “ensure that public commitment and progress in the areas of free speech, free press, and open government do not become checked and diluted during Florida’s changing times,” according to the organization’s website.
Clarke faced another ethics complaint that was resolved in his favor Sept. 11. It accused him of violating the state’s voting conflict law when he failed to recuse himself from two votes that “benefited his special personal financial interest.”
Efforts to reach Clarke and Perry Sept. 16 were unsuccessful.