The biggest lie has always been to keep quiet; and the best life-enhancer is to provoke, unsettle, rile – in short, to make people face the truth.
Gore Vidal
It's a shame you have to slap these guys around before they become civil and give you the data that you requested. Don't hesitate to do it. We pay these smartasses' salaries. lee
From: Solis, Gerard D. [mailto:GSolis@usf.edu]
Sent:Tuesday, January 26, 20101:09 PM To: 'lee decesare'
Cc:Mohn, Lori
Subject: RE: public information
Dear Lee Druryde Cesare:
If you will review your request, which appears below, you will see that you asked for Mr. Gonzalez's "salary". This word choice is consistent with your question as to whether Mr. Gonzalez is employed by USF:
I would like to know if Tom Gonzalez is the attorney the university uses in its legal business with the workers and faculty, and if those are not areas of his employment at USF, is he at all employed by the university at all, in what area, and what was his salary last year?
We answered that question for you in our response (see below). We can only respond to what you specifically ask for and not what you may have meant or intended.
I interpret your email below as a new public records request because it’s asking something different than your original request seeking salary information. In response to your latest request, I can inform you as of the date of this email there are no records responsive to your request because we have not received a bill for Mr. Gonzalez’s services. This concludes USF’s response to your request of 01/26/10.
The email exchange below will give you the flavor of the kind of attitude your counselor Mr. Solis has toward a member of the public that pays his salary. It is not acceptable either in tone or in willingness to answer a public-information question that a citizen is entitled to ask and entitled to get a speedy response to.
I ask you to tell me if what Mr. Solis says about hiring the law firm of Tom Gonzalez is indeed coincident with the university's practice of hiring and whether it is coincident with the equal-opportunity hiring laws and the equal-opportunity requirements attached to federal grants to the university. If so, I shall ask for elected officials' and the EEOC's attention to your hiring protocols and the federal government to do a compliance review of the same.
Please vouchsafe this citizen a response to this question.
Respectfully,
Lee Drury De Cesare 15316 Gulf Boulevard 802 Madeira Beach, FL 33708 tdecesar@tampabay.rr.com
copy: Dr. Roy Weatherford, faculty union USF
From: Solis, Gerard D. [mailto:GSolis@usf.edu] Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:09 PM To: 'lee decesare' Cc: Mohn, Lori Subject: RE: public information
Dear Lee Druryde Cesare:
If you will review your request, which appears below, you will see that you asked for Mr. Gonzalez's "salary". This word choice is consistent with your question as to whether Mr. Gonzalez is employed by USF:
I would like to know if Tom Gonzalez is the attorney the university uses in its legal business with the workers and faculty, and if those are not areas of his employment at USF, is he at all employed by the university at all, in what area, and what was his salary last year?
We answered that question for you in our response (see below). We can only respond to what you specifically ask for and not what you may have meant or intended.
I interpret your email below as a new public records request because it’s asking something different than your original request seeking salary information. In response to your latest request, I can inform you as of the date of this email there are no records responsive to your request because we have not received a bill for Mr. Gonzalez’s services. This concludes USF’s response to your request of 01/26/10.
Gerard D. Solis Senior Associate General Counsel University of South Florida Office of the General Counsel 4202 E. Fowler Ave., ADM 250 Tampa, 33620 Tel: (813) 974-2131 Fax: (813) 974-5236 gsolis@admin.usf.edu
From: lee decesare [mailto:tdecesar@taMPAbay.rr.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:40 AM To: Solis, Gerard D. Subject: FW: public information
Mr. Solis: The A ttorney General has said that 48 hours is a reasonable turnaround time for a public-information request. Mine has languished longer than that by far. I ask again to know how much money the university paid the Gonzalez firm last year for its servcices.
Lee Drury De Cesare
From: Mohn, Lori [mailto:lmohn@usf.edu] On Behalf Of Solis, Gerard D. Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 4:35 PM To: 'tdecesar@taMPAbay.rr.com' Cc: Mohn, Lori Subject: FW: public information
Dear Lee Druryde Cesare:
The University utilizes the law firm of Thompson, Sizemore & Hearing, P.A. on various legal issues. In response to your request, attached please find a copy the agreement between Mr. Gonzalez’s law firm and the University of South Florida. Mr. Gonzalez is not employed by the University of South Florida.
Sincerely,
Gerard D. Solis Senior Associate General Counsel University of South Florida Office of the General Counsel 4202 E. Fowler Ave., ADM 250 Tampa, 33620 Tel: (813) 974-2131 Fax: (813) 974-5236 gsolis@admin.usf.edu
Tom Gonzales, board attorney for the schools, has sent mea letter with a copy to you alleging that the bullying law does not apply to school employees. He errs. He does so deliberately. He thinks if a lawyer says something about a piece of writing that it must be taken as gospel even when the plain English words say otherwise.
This big spoiled baby litigator expects people not to disagree with him; if they do, they must fall down and do obeisance, beat their chest, kiss the hem of his robe, and say they erred and to please forgive them, Massa Tom.
I am not adept at that maneuver, however, and beg to differ with Mr. Tom's quixotic interpretation of the law.
I append the implementation submission that the schools sentto the Secretary of Education as required. It plainly says both employees and students will receive the benefits of the bullying law. I read in the paper a case in which employees have already used it in another county. I infer the thinking that went into that faux document that the board cooked up for Dr. Smith was the usual board and administration flim-flam of "We'll say this, but we won't do it." That's their idea of adroit administration.
A person of average intelligence can understand that the law applies to students and personnel according to the language of the law and the language of this implementation proposal by the HillsboroughCounty schools. Mr. Gonzalez distorts the law ad lib and expects people to swallow this distortion because disagreement is not coincident with his bosses'--the board and administration--desire to be able to retaliate against teachers or staff with the Professional Standards Office Abu Ghraib, which the board and administration use to shut teachers up by cooking up false charges against them and threatening their jobs.
Iasked Ms. Kipley, the erudite home-ec credentialed head of this Professional Standards gauntlet, who wears the most astonishing high-heeled see-through footwear and who got the job with no competition, having been beneficiary of the jobs program the superintendent runs for family and sycophants, for sample public-information charges against teachers.Sheprovided a stack. I asked her for charges against administrators; she didn't come up with any: zilch. Professional Standard is a boutique Abu Ghraib that tortures only teachers.
The Professional Standards office is nothing but an in-house control mechanism to shut up teachers with the understood threat of losing their jobs if they speak out. If teachers have access to the bullying law, they have a tool to fend off this bullying and threats to their jobs.
The board pretends it doesn't know what's going on.The board is dumb, but not that dumb.It gives silent approval to this bullying abuse of teachers.
This situation is simple.We don't need Machiavelli to explain what's going on. Mr. Gonzalez' piney-woods Jesuitical reading of the law comes from his bosses' desire to prevent teachers and staff from having the protection of the bullyinglaw. Mr. Gonzalez will twist language to say anything he thinks his bosses want him to say. He thinks his flim-flam will make the criticism go away. The man's ego is the Hindenburg.
Don't let him bamboozle you, Senator.And do what only an elected official can do: ask the Attorney General for an opinion on whether thebullying law applies to both students and staff in the county schools. Mr. Gonzalez, the board, and the administration will hate you.But the bazillion of teachers in the county will worship the ground you walk on.
These teachers that the board allows the administration to bully and mistreat are your constituents; they live in your country. They teach our children and grandchildren. They should have the protection of a senator such as you have shown yourself to be who is not afraid to use her power to rein in such dicey practitioners as Mr. Gonzalez's in his louche treatment of language to coincide with his bosses' prejudices and ugly practices.
It's a shame you have to slap these guys around before they become civil and give you the data that you requested. Don't hesitate to do it. We pay these smartasses' salaries. lee
