Last March, when Mayor Kreps and the
commission negotiated Village Manager Dennis Kelly's resignation, the
village agreed to pay him approximately $80,000 in severance. That
hit a snag.
It looks like Mayor Kreps and her
commission have decided to hang an emerging scandal solely on Dennis
Kelly while protecting those current employees who initiated and
participated in the cover up of illegally monitored phone calls in
North Bay Village.
According to what several sources have
told me, the Village discovered that some time in 2012, the village
phone system was recording all calls made to or from village numbers.
This is illegal under Florida law. Recorded phone calls, with the
exception of emergency services, must be announced and the caller given
the option of disconnecting. You can imagine that as a policy having all phone calls recorded and open to review could be a problem
– for example, confidential personnel and legal matters could be
made public, medical information revealed during an insurance call,
personal family information could be made public and overall, people
find it a bit creepy to be recorded without their knowledge or
consent. So it's illegal in Florida, as it should be.
During his tenure, Dennis Kelly found
out that the recordings were happening anyway. The reason given was
a misset switch that instead of recording just the emergency services
calls was recording all calls. Mistakes happen like this with
technology and our State Attorney's office is set up to deal with
that. When a mistake like this is found, the municipality reports it
to the SAO, who review the relevant facts and assuming they find
nothing to contrary, write a letter or report explaining what
happened and admonishing the administration and everyone moves along.
Not here in North Bay Village and the
situation quickly went North Bay Village Crazy™. Instead of
documenting and reporting the phone monitoring, Dennis Kelly and the
current Finance Director opened a safe deposit box under their own
names and personal addresses, took the disk containing the recordings
and stashed them there. I don't know why they did that but I have
been told that is what happened. Upon his termination, Dennis Kelly
told the administration about this.
The recordings were retrieved and given
to the State Attorney's Office for investigation. The SAO opened
an investigation, because by then the circumstances seemed
suspicious. It's just not normal to take a piece of evidence and
hide it. As is customary in the SAO, the new village manager was
informed about the investigation and his cooperation sought. The
underlying expectation is of course that the village manager will
keep it confidential. And once again, things took a North Bay
Village Crazy™ turn.
You see, when there is a new
investigation, almost everyone is a suspect. The commission, the
management, the police, and part of a good investigation is to
prevent people from tampering with or even being aware of the early
evidence. So confidentiality matters.
The Village Manager did not keep the
issue confidential. According to sources, Rollason called in the
Police Department management staff and briefed them on the issue.
Remember, the PD controls the phone system, presumably knew about
the recordings, possibly knew that the disk has “disappeared” and
now knew that the SAO was looking into it. Not exactly CSI stuff
but it gives lots of time to start preparing defenses and
obfuscation.
Here's where we are left. The Village
illegally, perhaps mistakenly, recorded and monitored every phone
call made to and from Village Hall. It is entirely possible that
certain calls were reviewed illegally by village employees hoping to
find out information. The then Village Manager and the current
Finance Director took the evidence and hid it in a personal safe
deposit box and never reported the problem. The new Village Manager
briefed the principals of the investigation on the investigation
itself.
In a flourish only those of who know
her would have expected, Mayor Kreps has chosen to lay the entire
issue on Dennis Kelly and has led the effort to not pay the
negotiated $80,000 severance. For his part, Kelly is suing the
village for his money.
Kelly is the only one being held liable
for consequences. The other three employees, the tech manager who
programmed the recordings is still with us, the finance manager who
hid the recordings is still in place and recently received a raise,
the new village manager, who had nothing to do with the original
problem but whose indiscretion may yet derail the SAO investigation,
was hired to the permanent position even after his deliberate leaking
was known.
In other words, just one guy in this
web is being held accountable, Dennis Kelly.
Tonight there will be a special meeting
of our commission to authorize a private, closed to the public,
meeting on the subject. Secret meetings are the worst way to deal
with cover-ups. Sunshine is the best disinfectant and no matter how ugly
this might get, Mayor Kreps should be dealing with it publicly. We
have a right to know.
Kevin Vericker
January 15, 2014
