- April 18, 2024
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Flagler County will fight to get back the money it has spent defending its officials against baseless complaints.
The Ethics Commission recently ruled two complaints against county officials — one by resident John Ruffalo against County Attorney Al Hadeed, and one by resident Dennis McDonald against County Commissioner Nate McLaughlin — legally insufficient, clearing Hadeed and McLaughlin.
But the Ethics Commission left the county on the hook for the legal cost of fighting the complaints, refusing to grant the county's petition to have Ruffalo and McDonald pay for the county's legal costs.
The County Commission voted Feb. 15 to challenge that decision with an appeal through the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeals.
In a presentation before the County Commission's vote Feb. 15, attorney Mark Herron, who represents the county through its insurance company and is a former chairman of the Ethics Commission, said he believed the Ethics Commission "went off the rails, so to speak, in making its determination" not to award fees to the county in the two cases.
Herron noted that the complaints against the two officials hadn't moved far through the Ethics Commission's evaluation process. They were determined legally insufficient early on.
The legal standard for seeking fees against someone who has filed an ethics complaint is high: The legal team representing the person who was targeted has to establish that the complaint was made with malicious intent to injure the target's reputation, that the person making the complaint knew it was false or made the complaint with reckless disregard for the truth, and that the complaints were material.
County Attorney Al Hadeed already filed a petition to make that case before the Ethics Commission, but the Ethics Commission didn't grant it.
Herron said the aggressive language used in the complaints to describe Hadeed and McLaughlin — words like "sneaky," "underhanded," "dishonest" and "corrupt" — is itself evidence that would support a finding of malicious intent.
So is the fact that the complaints were two of 22 complaints of various forms filed by a group of individuals — most of them associated with the Ronald Reagan Republican Assembly of Flagler County — against local officials, Herron said. The complaints, which have repeatedly been found baseless, were mailed to officials' home addresses just before major holidays.
In the complaints against Hadeed and McLaughlin, Herron said, there was evidence that Ruffalo and McDonald made them knowing that they were false.
Before the vote, County Commissioner Frank Meeker, who was a target of an Elections Commission complaint by a member of the same group last year, addressed McDonald and what he referred to as McDonald's "cabal" directly, saying McDonald had been persecuting elected officials to inflict monetary pain, and that he seemed "to relish making elected officials pay out of pocket."
In the case against McLaughlin, Meeker said, McDonald "had all the information, all the knowledge, all the supporting documents necessary to conclude Commissioner McLaughlin did exactly what was provided by law."
In Meeker's case, a complaint filed against Meeker in the name of Mark Richter, Jr. — the son of former County Commission candidate Mark Richter, who was also involved in filing complaints against officials — cost Meeker about $5,000 out of pocket. That was money he then couldn't send to help pay for medical expenses for his young granddaughter, who died of cancer last year.
"In having defend my reputation from this thug, I wasn't able to send additional money to my son, who is now and was then serving his country in the military, while desperately trying to save the life of his daughter, 5-year-old Mekselina Mayme Meeker," Meeker said. "The cause and effect had collateral damage, from these twisted actions, directly impacting my ability to send my son money which would have helped save the life of a 5-year-old child, my granddaughter."
The County Commission's vote to file an appeal to seek fees from the case against Hadeed brought by Ruffalo was unanimous; the vote to file an appeal to seek fees from the case against McLaughlin filed by McDonald was 4-0, with McLaughlin abstaining.
If the appeals court rules in favor of the county, the county's petition for fees would go before an administrative law judge in an administrative hearing. The Ethics Commission would then have to vote on the administrative law judge's recommendation.
