Employee resignations have become commonplace at the Groveland City Hall.
By Steve Miller
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
Groveland. The name conjures a placid vibe, a place where grapefruit and orange groves separate historic farmhouses. Located about 40 minutes west of Orlando, the central Florida town of about 8,700 residents was Florida’s fastest-growing municipality between 2000 and 2010, with its population increasing 189 percent.
But it’s also a place that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating, according to the Daily Commercial newspaper, which hints the probe involves violations of the state’s open meetings laws. The story cited internal memos the paper obtained via an open records request. From the story:
The memos obtained by The Daily Commercial show that on July 11, City Attorney Anita Geraci-Carver advised [Groveland Mayor James] Gearhart about a “potential” Sunshine Law violation and the city should “act on it as if it were real.”
She was referring to an alleged incident where Gearhart and [Vice Mayor Tim] Loucks approached police Sgt. George “Scott” Penvose in a grocery store parking lot and asked him questions about police dispatching, which the council is considering outsourcing to the county. If that 30-minute conversation did occur, as Penvose said, it could be a violation of the Sunshine Law, which states that all government business will be conducted in public meetings.
The memos show a second alleged Sunshine Law violation that [City Manager Sam] Oppelaar immediately recognized. The city manager wrote that on April 5, when he was talking in his office about the possibility of the council voting to let him shed his “interim” city manager title, Gearhart said no immediate council action would be forthcoming on that. When Oppelaar asked Gearhart how he knew this, the mayor said “he had already spoken with the other council members,” the city manager wrote.
That’s not enough; last week, Oppelaar resigned during a public meeting, effective Sept. 27, after a resident challenged him to step down. According to another Daily Commercial story, story, the town of 8,700 has seen a prolific exodus of city officials this year. From the story:
So far this year, Groveland’s city manager/finance director, public works manager, utility superintendent, police chief and Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) manager have all quit, along with at least four other lower-level staffers. Several have cited either a hostile work environment or job meddling by Gearhart and Loucks as their reasons for leaving.
Difficult work conditions are rampant, but at a public level, the notion of so many departures often lead to suspicion of malfeasance. In this case, the FDLE’s involvement hints at such a thing. So what’s going on in Groveland? That was the header of an op-ed by in July that laid out the blueprint for small town madness.
Then there’s the lawsuit filed in Lake County against Groveland by an activist, non-profit group, Citizens for Sunshine, over the alleged violation of the open meetings act reported by Oppelaar. It names the city, Gearhart and Loucks as defendants. Citizens also filed for a temporary injunction and has filed between 15 and 30 such cases since its inception in 2009, said attorney Andrea Mogensen, who represents the group.
“The group formed because the media used to do this kind of thing with regularity, Mogenson told FCIR. “But today, the media outlets have fewer resources and Citizens is trying to fill that gap.”