[Dond1959]

Originally Posted by Advogado

The public records request was filed by attorney George Angeliadis of the law firm Lucas Magazine. Angeliadis is a former circuit court judge, appointed to the position by Governor Scott and defeated when he ran for election in 2020. Angeliadis has refused to disclose who is paying for his attempt to gain access to communications from Villagers exercising their First Amendment rights to petition their government, what the object of his fishing expedition is, or why he feels he has to hide his client's identity. Further details are available in the on-line news. The Daily Sun has, not surprisingly, said little about the whole thing.

Has anyone ever heard of a similar stunt being pulled anyplace besides Sumter County? It is hard to imagine who has the motivation, financial interest, and deep pockets to finance: the compilation of the “hit list” of Villagers contained in the public-records request, the preparation of the request, and the review of documents that will ensue. Might this fishing expedition be related to the grass-roots movement to increase the Developer's sweetheart impact fee and rollback the 25% property-tax increase? Nah, that would be too obvious.

BTW, this is not the first effort by Angeliadis to stifle free speech. A video of him browbeating a Villager trying to speak at a County Commission meeting while Angeliadis was employed as Commission attorney, back in the days when all five Commissioners were the Developer's puppets, is available on youtube: Angie takes on Angeliadis - YouTube

Hopefully, Angeliadis's actions in the video and his representing a mysterious client (who doesn't have the courage to identify himself) in this fishing expedition are not his finest performances as an attorney. In fact, I wonder if he advised his client of the old legal maxim: People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. It is far from clear that this fishing expedition won't end up with his client's being on the hook.

In any event, I certainly agree with the original poster: It should be interesting.

I guess you have not heard of Florida’s Sunshine law. You cannot conduct local or state business in private. If our new commissioners were conducting government business in private they were violating the law. They were either ignorant or disregarded the law. All communications should be disclosed and brought into conformance of the law. You can attack the person bringing the suit, but it doesn’t change the issue of commissioners not following the law.