On the web: Record editorial points out thin-skinned Neville’s mistake

On the web: Record editorial points out thin-skinned Neville’s mistake

The Record
St Augustine, FL

Normally, I wouldn’t quote an entire editorial, but since its about us, I’m making an exception.

Wading into finer points of law is a slippery slope. So we say upfront that our comments here are not aimed at the legality of this subject, but the sense of it.

Monday night, City Commissioner Todd Neville brought up a situation with the online publication, Historic City News. Neville took exception to comments made by its publisher Michael Gold.

Gold wrote the piece following the city’s 4-1 vote to rezone the former Dow Museum Property in order to allow the Cordova Inn PUD to move forward. He said that the project’s developer, David Corneal, had been a contributor to Neville’s campaign. He wrote of impropriety and hinted at illegality.

City attorney Isabelle Lopez outlined the scenario to the Florida Commission on Ethics, which saw no impropriety in the matter. She asked that Gold publish a retraction. He refused, though he did move the story from the government section of the website to the opinion section: As if fact is discounted there.

Neville told commissioners Monday that, although the story targeted him, it painted city government with a broad and black brush. He asked that commissioners file a defamation lawsuit against Gold and the publication. His colleagues, correctly, balked at that immediate action, instead instructing Lopez to look into the legalities and possible costs of that action.

Again, we’re not attorneys. But we have a few thoughts. First, Gold is predictably doing what he does: Baiting controversy with those not on his political guest list.

Second, while Neville (Disclaimer: The Record endorsed his candidacy) had no legal obligation to do so, on an issue as high-profile as the Cordova Inn, he might have been both cautious and clever to have made the declaration that Corneal donated to his campaign — and that would have been that. Elected officials routinely report ex parte conversations or relationships with principles involved in a prospective vote.

Gold’s headline read “Should elected official vote in city business with their donors?” Practically speaking, and if you look at the hundreds of relatively small political contributions for the five sitting commissioners, it would be difficult to imagine conducting city business if commissioners had to recuse themselves from every vote in which interested parties had made contributions.

For instance, some 35 neighbors spoke at that meeting against the Corneal PUD. How many of those may have contributed to the campaign of Mayor Nancy Shaver — who voted against the project? How many — on either side — contributed to Roxanne Horvath, Nancy Sikes-Kline, or Leanna Freeman? It’s a small city. A few hundred campaign contributions could be tied in some way to just about every business or issue in town.

Suing a news organization (Disclaimer: We are one) is an uphill legal battle. And, once Neville became an elected official, the bar of libel was raised sky-high. It’s a double-edged sword that rarely cuts for the plaintiff.

More concerning though, is why we’d spend public money chasing closure to a dead issue. It’s not uncommon for cities to spend public dollars to defend elected officials from lawsuits, but going on the offensive and bringing a lawsuit on the city’s tab is pretty much unheard of.

Neville’s new to politics and needs to grow thicker skin. Taking the reins of a city inevitably means taking some heat from “press.” And, the way we hear it, we’re rarely “fair” or “unbiased.”

Our best advice on this one is to consider the source, and move on.

Simply put, it’s a waste of time, resources and money: Especially when all the city might hope to get out of the process — is even. Our commissioners need to be bigger than that, and we believe they are.

Pick your battles. This one’s shooting blanks. Even if you win, as a city, do we?