The State Attorney’s Office issued the following press release:
My office has recently received several inquiries, concerns, and allegations that communications between some of the Escambia County Commissioners which required public notice may have been improper.
The Florida Sunshine Law is an important tool for ensuring transparency and accountability in government. It helps to protect the public’s right to know and to participate in the decision-making process. Open government is the core of our democratic principles.
My office will be reviewing the allegations we have received, including all available government communications, to determine if further investigationis warranted.
Our office will not be issuing any further statements on this matter at this time.
Escambia Commissioner D2 and aide pulled a political stunt Thursday night at the public forum and meeting. That Commissioner should be censured and aide fired for that , in my opinion. They are basing it on texts from Oct 1, 2021 when even yourself Rick had Bergosh in a podcast and ran an article about it Sept 2021. Also it was openly discussed in a COW in Sept. 2021.
I think then using the SAO like that should not be excused.
Also the text were stolen from the county and were not properly redacted that all this is being based on.
https://ricksblog.biz/real-news-podcast-battle-for-perdido-key/
Dated Sept 14, 2021
The bigger issue is the gerrymandering. The county election districts are not contiguous as required by the Florida Constitution and as advised by the Florida Association of Counties when it briefed the BCC and School Board. You cannot draw a straight line from District 4 South to District 4 North. The FAC recommended that district populations be equal within three percent. I don’t think the BCC used that percentage. There was widespread discussion about private meetings between commissioners, school board members and I presume ECUA members too to gerrymander the election districts to protect the incumbents and disadvantage potential other candidates. Bergosh openly said that he was moving Black voters over to District 3 to pack more in to help May. I did ask the county about the McMillian ruling and was unable to find out when it expired and for how many years or decades the county government has been involved in a conspiracy to prevent voters from voting in all BCC elections as in most counties in Florida to include all across Northwest Florida. Maybe Kohler will demand to know. One way to sort it all out for real would be for a BCC candidate to file a lawsuit asking the court to rule if the election districts comply with the requirements of the Florida Constitution and Florida Statutes. They don’t. At the same time, they could ask when the county should have changed back to at-large elections and ask that it be done. Doing so would affect county, school board and ECUA elections. At-large elections would benefit the county’s 37,362 Black voters, 18.4% of active voters. Only 44% of the county’s Black voters live in District 3 and not all of them are Democrats. The BCC made a big deal saying that it was intentionally gerrymandering the election districts to have four Republicans and one Democrat seat. The City of Pensacola covers less than 4% of the county with 17% of its population but it was gerrymandered to include part of three districts to protect incumbents. ECUA District 5 member Keven Stephens lives in District 4 in a $1.3 million mansion on the waterfront but no one seems to mind. In addition to it being true, he testified saying so to the Pensacola City Council. What a corrupt place. I did ask the League of Women Voters of the Pensacola Bay Area to get involved but they seem “OK” with local gerrymandering both at the county and city level. Shameful. The Women for Responsible Legislation group also doesn’t care about local gerrymandering.