ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN KEY WEST THE NEWSPAPER NOV 28, 2008
WHEN CITIZEN WATCHDOG STARTED ASKING QUESTIONS, KOLHAGE CALLED HIS BOSS AND ASKED THE SHERIFF TO INVESTIGATE HIM
by Matt Gardi
Can anyone ultimately ever prove motive? The only method people have to assess motives, are facts they can prove. That is why I have no alternative but to believe that staff from the county clerk’s office removed information from their public website, in an attempt to help State Attorney Mark Kohl win re-election, and County Clerk Danny Kolhage condoned it.
I’ll be straight up about one motive I had. I wanted to see State Attorney Mark Kohl replaced because I felt he was soft on crime. For the last few years, I forwarded any example of this to Free Press reporter Robert Silk. One particular morning in the heat of the recent election cycle I had the chance to read in the Key West
Citizen about a charming Mr. Dieter in Marathon who allegedly beat up his wife and her son with a golf club. Mr. Dieter it appears, according to my review that morning of the sheriff’s and clerk’s websites, had previously been arrested in 2004 for attempted murder and numerous other charges.
According to the clerk’s
website on the morning that
story broke, the state charged
him with five counts ranging
from aggravated assault to
battery, and dropped three of
the five charges, while Dieter
plead to two counts. He was
sentenced concurrently to a max
of 11 months and 29 days, and
received credit for three months
and a day served. And he was
out on the street, violating his
probation, within six months.
As I had done on othr occasions,
I sent that information in an email
to Mr. Silk.
A few days later, to illustrate
my point to someone
else, I happened to go back to
Mr. Dieter’s case on the clerk’s
site. Oddly, any information
regarding what Mr. Dieter had
been sentenced to for his myriad
of charges was gone. Most of
the case history was still there,
as well as a lot of boring event
detail. Only Dieter’s slap-onthe-
wrist plea agreement was
missing
Granted, not as austere as
gaps in the Watergate tapes, but
this missing information clearly
exemplified a central campaign
issue— that Kohl was soft on
crime. And it was only a month
before the election.
Let’s be real here folks,
it didn’t really look too good
to have another violent crime
allegedly be committed by
someone who Kohl had slapped
on the wrist for a previous violent crime. Why would that
information be removed from
convenient public access on a
four-year-old closed case, one
month before the election and
a few days after the article appeared
in the Citizen? Clearly
it didn’t hurt Kohl to have it
disappear.
So I e-mailed Clerk Kolhage
about the missing sentencing
detail, and copied reporter
Robert Silk. First, I cited the case
and the exact information that
had been removed, and then I
asked detailed questions. Does
his system track when changes
or deletions are made, and
by whom? If his system does
track the changes, who made
the changes, and why? I also
asked if the State Attorney had
access to his system, and if they
had any administrative rights
beyond “Read Only.”
Of interest, I did not mention
where I was currently employed,
which is at the Office of
the Public Defender as a senior
systems analyst— because my
concerns had nothing to do with
my job, and I had been very
conscientious in not using work
time to do my research.
Now, if you were County
Clerk Danny Kolhage, and a
member of the public made
you aware of such an odd deletion
from your public website,
wouldn’t you respond by either
explaining why it was gone, or
replace the information immediately?
This is where actions
begin to paint the picture of
motive.
The next morning, at
work, I received a call first from
a member of the clerk’s staff and
then from Mr. Kolhage, himself.
Both tried to explain the issue as
a misspelling of the defendant’s
name. I expressed my concerns
about being at work, and asked
Mr. Kolhage if he could respond
to the questions in my e-mail
in writing. To paraphrase, he
heatedly told me that this was
how he was responding, there
was no conspiracy, nothing else
was missing, and that the typo
would be fixed. End of story.
Well I’ve worked in government
long enough to know
that when someone is hesitant
to put something in writing,
you can usually assume, where
there’s smoke, there’s fire. But
for my part, I let it drop. The misspelled
name was corrected on
the website, but the sentencing
info remained missing, arguably
with the approval of Danny
Kolhage. It was October 7, one
month before the election.
However, Mr. Silk was, apparently, continuing to casually
probe and ask questions.
About two weeks later, he
made an official public records
request for any system log file
that would show the detail of
changes made to that particular
case information.
Well, for some reason,
Kolhage then called my boss,
Public Defender Rose Enright,
apparently angry about my activities.
Ms. Enright reminded
him that it was something I had
pursued on a personal level,
and had nothing to do with her
office, or her oversight of my
employment.
Shortly after that Mr. Kolhage
now believed it important
enough to have the sheriff’s
department open an investigation
of what he termed in the
police report as my “…allegations
and implied inferences that
there were some improprieties
going on.”
Then, according to Robert
Silk, Kolhage tried to brush off
Silk’s public records request by
claiming it could not be released
as it was now part of an ongoing
criminal investigation!
So, after having sent an
e-mail to Kolhage asking questions
about a public website, he
had called me at work, though I
never told him where I worked,
he had called my boss at work
regarding my actions, and now
Detective Hamilton of the Monroe
County Sheriff’s Department
came to visit me with a printed
copy of my e-mail.
Along with investigating
any illegal activity at the clerk’s
office, I was led to believe that
I was now under scrutiny for
possibly having used work
resources to obtain my information!
I pointed to the e-mail that
was sent at 10 at night from a
personal account, and showed
it only referenced the clerk’s
public website. I also explained
that I had made no allegations
of any illegal activity, and had
only asked questions which still
remained unanswered— and
I said that I was puzzled by
Kolhage’s bizarre reaction.
I might have been intimidated
if not for the fact I had wet
myself laughing at the absurdity
of being accused of wasting public
resources by a clerk who was
wasting public resources.
D e t e c t i v e H a m i l t o n
wrapped up his investigation,
citing no criminal activity had
occurred. But the sentencing info
still remained missing in action
on Kolhage’s website.
Mr. Kolhage eventually
provided Silk with some convoluted
info that did illustrate
the sentencing info that was
removed, but did not show by
whom, or when. Fortunately,
Detective Hamilton’s report
does include this information.
Apparently, Maria Arellano,
a felony clerk in Kohlage’s
Marathon office had made the
changes.
According to her sworn
statement, “This is not an isolated
case. I edit (clean up) all
or many cases that I’ve come
in contact with…” and, “The
implied allegations of the email
from Mr. Gardi is totally
unfounded.”
Her supervisor, Gail Mercer’s
statement said, “The Implied
allegations made by Matt
Gardi are not founded. Changes
made to the case in question were
done only to conform to other
cases appearance.”
Implied inferences, allegations,
improprieties…whatever!
Excuse me, but I was damn right!
Someone should explain to the
clerk and his staff the difference
between allegations, and
observations. I was 100 percent
accurate in my observations that
specific sentencing information
was removed from the website,
and all I asked for was who,
when and why. I never made
accusations of illegal activity,
so why the smoke and mirrors
to obfuscate the facts that were
eventually admitted to in the
police report?
Questions were swarming
around my head like black flies
in the mangroves. If deleting
information was so routine, why
not just reply to my e-mail in the
first place stating that?
On the other hand, if the
concern existed about “illegal”
conduct, why not initiate a criminal
investigation immediately,
and not more than two weeks
later when Silk’s public record
request would further prove my
observations?
My e-mail was sent on October
6, Kohlage initiated the investigation
on October 22. Also,
if everything was so innocuous, why hasn’t Kolhage ever replied
to my questions? Instead I had
to get my answers by requesting
a police report from the sheriff’s
department— which I received
in minutes by the way. How
many county resources were
wasted as a result of the fact
that Kolhage didn’t reply to my
e-mail immediately?
And why is it apparently
a standard work practice to
remove helpful information
from a convenient format such
as a publicly accessible website?
Are we to now expect that sentencing
detail will be removed
from every case in the system
for some illogical “conforming”
reason?
Quite the contrary. It’s
standard to have that sentencing
detail appear in the case
information, and Mr. Kolhage
and his staff know that. Who
are they trying to kid?
To prove my point, if you
go to the clerk’s website and
review other cases, you can easily
find sentencing information
(www.monroe.fl.us.landata.
com).
But here’s the kicker. Now,
for some odd reason, that very
same sentencing detail I originally
asked Mr. Kolhage about
having gone missing before the
election, and that was admittedly
removed to “conform to
other cases” by his staff, is miraculously
back on the website!
After the election! Go figure. For
fear of a full body cavity search,
I will avoid asking Kohlage for
an explanation.
Sure Kolhage can say that
he called for an investigation that
ultimately cleared him of any illegal
activity, and I can’t tell you
with certainty what the motive
was for removing the information
in the first place, and then
not replacing it immediately. All
I can tell you is what actually
happened:
• Information was removed
from the Clerk’s site
days after the Citizen article
appeared.
• Kolhage was made aware
of it, and ignored it.
He angrily called me at
work, although I had never given
him that information.
• He tried to get me in
trouble by calling my boss.
• He attempted to intimidate
me by initiating a criminal
investigation.
•He resisted responding
to a public records request by
the press.
•His staff claimed they
deleted the information as part
of their normal work routine to
justify its removal.
• But then they put the
information back on the websire—
after the election.
At the very least, in my
opinion, Kolhage abused his authority
and his control of public
resources. And he disrespected
a citizen who was simply asking
questions about his alleged
abuse of his authority.
Hopefully with a real State
Attorney now taking office, public
officials won’t feel so comfortable
with such questionable and
intimidating behavior.
