Frank Brenner, responding to the column "The Argument" in the Oct. 18 edition of SRQ Daily

Once again, Diana Hamilton has treated us to a less than penetrating analysis of the pending Barfield-Chapman lawsuit.  She has already established her role as a tireless attack dog in aid of the ongoing Barbetta-Caragiulo campaign to malign and discredit Commissioner Susan Chapman with the assistance of like-minded Michael Barfield, a serial felon. She now further cements that reputation with her Oct. 18 SRQ Daily piece of transparent nonsense. How so? 

Let’s start with her distortion of the reach of the Sunshine Law.  As she correctly states, the Sunshine Law requires that “meetings of any collegial public body . . . shall be open and noticed to the public” (emphasis added).  What doesn’t she understand about “public body?”  She must know that a gathering of merchants is not a “public body.”  Why then does she deliberately mislead us?

Ms. Hamilton predicts that the pending Barfield lawsuit will succeed in establishing a Sunshine Law violation by Commissioner Chapman. How so? First, she offers us a hypothetical meeting of silent commissioners and their constituent developers who seek relief from building regulations—a meeting, “other than topic, no different” than the merchants’ meeting attended by Commissioner Chapman. Such a meeting, she categorically asserts, would constitute a violation of the Sunshine Law.  So cocksure is she in her assumed role of legal analyst that she asks, “who would dare argue with a straight face that a couple of Commissioners going to merely ‘listen’ privately to developers would be perfectly acceptable?” (emphasis added).  I respond that I dare.  For commissioners to attend an event without speaking—whether it be of merchants or developers—does not, I submit, violate the Sunshine Law.  Attorney Richard Harrison dares as well.  Indeed, City Attorney Robert Fournier dares, for he has declared that the Chapman suit (identical, as Ms. Hamilton states, except for topic, to her cloned developers’ meeting) is “somewhat absurd” and is based on “an incorrect interpretation of the law.”  Thus, Ms. Hamilton’s hypothetical scenario—incorrectly determined by her to violate the Sunshine Law—sheds no light on the Chapman law suit or its ultimate outcome.

Ms. Hamilton’s assault on reason knows no bounds. She apparently relishes her role as an unguided missile.  For, referencing again her hypothetical developers’ meeting, she offers with utter certainty her flawed legal interpretation of the Sunshine Law, thusly: “the very act of attending any meeting not publicly noticed . . .  could be easily construed as a predisposition signaling some future legislative alliance between those Commissioners with those who called the meeting.”  Such silent attendance by commissioners, she asserts, could “easily” be construed, not as simply their efforts to ascertain the views of their constituents, but, rather, as a sinister “signal” of a position to be taken by them in the “future” (emphasis added).  From this muddle she incorrectly instructs us that “basic commonsense—even the most rudimentary understanding of how elected officials are expected to conduct themselves—ought [to] inform us that both meetings [the Chapman meeting and its imaginary, cloned developers’ meeting] violate our Sunshine Law.”

Diane Hamilton’s penchant for sowing confusion is best evidenced by her charge that Commissioner Chapman should have admitted to “an unfortunate lapse of judgment” by attending, although in silence, the meeting being used against her.  For Commissioner Chapman to say that her passive attendance did not violate the Sunshine Law, Ms. Hamilton declares with breathtaking incomprehensibility, is “sorta like blaming the speed limit when you get a ticket for driving too fast through a school zone.”  When you discern some meaning in this hash, please share it with me.

Ms. Hamilton concludes her disjointed exercise with a plug for Citizens for Sunshine, Michael Barfield’s front for his cottage industry of legal extortion.  Had her hypothetical meeting actually taken place, she declares, she would have “cheered on” a Barfield attack against the commissioners who passively attended.  Thus, she again demonstrates her support of the plunder of the city by career criminal Barfield.  Of this sociopath, she has in the past declared, “I, for one, am beginning to appreciate and like him more and more.”  I again remind her that she who lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.  The “dog” in this case is a serial felon with 68 criminal convictions (that’s right, 68), who has been labeled “a con man’s con man” by a federal judge.

Does any thinking person take seriously this self-described “pragmatic optimist with radical humorist tendencies and a new found resistance to ice cream?” I would hope not.

Frank Brenner, responding to the column "The Argument" in the Oct. 18 edition of SRQ Daily