Konish: Why the Citrus Canker litigation was an important legal precedent that our City Commission ignored
Letter to the editor
When the Citrus Canker outbreak first surfaced in Florida, the Florida Department of Agriculture by Emergency Rule ordered the destruction of any citrus tree within 1500 feet of an infected tree.
High-dollar residential properties in Dade and Broward Counties experienced warrantless destruction of their backyard citrus trees without permission. Class action lawsuits were filed assailing this extreme governmental intrusion, and multi-million-dollar judgments were obtained against the State of Florida, Department of Agriculture.
The Florida Department of Agriculture refused to pay. This was eventually upheld by the courts. Florida Statutes prohibit the seizure and sale of governmental property in order to satisfy a court judgment.
The legislature was petitioned by the Plaintiffs as a last resort.
Could the City have challenged the biomass Power Purchase Agreement?
As for our biomass contract: yes, it was approved. Yes, it was a bad contract. Yes, sovereign immunity does not operate with respect to a contract to limit a judgment.
However, there is no way GREC could have ever collected a large judgment against the City of Gainesville. By not challenging or ever questioning the validity of the biomass contract, the stage was set for the eventual disastrous buyout. No four City Commissioners were ever close to challenging the GREC contract. Charter officers could not do that on their own.
GREC built a plant on City property that totally relied on City transmission lines. The biomass plant was purchased for about twice the cost of construction. The plant received numerous direct and indirect subsidies from the City and Federal government.
Instead of GREC at some distant point in the future going to the legislature to collect a judgment against the City, the City will eventually have to go to the legislature for a bailout.
Jim Konish, Gainesville
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
Ever since Hanrahan and her cohorts hid the details of the GREC agreement from the owners of GRU (the citizens of Gainesville), the Democrat politicians on the city commission have acted against the people, time and again. The worst actors have been the three mayors, Pegeen Hanrahan, Lauren Poe, and Harvey Ward.
Democrats unleashed. They’re good at this. Beware.
The precedent GREC set could be duplicated in other hapless college towns where only 3% of residents elect “winners.” Because key members of that tiny oligarchy (local pols and their donors) would be too embarrassed to ADMIT such a blunder, even though it wouldn’t cost gov’t a cent to reverse a GREC-style “climate change” based mistake. They’d rather the poor local 97% keep paying for it another 25 years, instead.
They loved the biomass plant like a bunch of weirdos fawning over Rosemary’s baby. Once new info had come out indicating that biomass was not the clean and carbon-neutral panacea it was sold as, they should have said “We don’t want it anymore and we’re done paying for it.” But we had a delusional idiot for a mayor.
We’ve still got that – the delusional idiot mayor. Crap, still got BioFiasco too.
Ah yes, another ignorant letter from a city commission wannabe.
And you voted for which city commissioner?