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Nets to You
Rad Field
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12/05/02 Integrity, Tenacity &
Smarts
No doubt about it Allen Gwinn is one smart guy. Technocrat, computer geek,
seeker of information. More importantly, he can distinguish between right
and wrong. He believes rules are to be followed or legally removed, but
not selectively enforced. That conviction is why he filed a complaint with
the Ethics Commission against Mayor PreTend Mary Poss two years ago after she
paid herself $30,000 out of her campaign proceeds for some campaign loan that
she had not reported in the past.
That's the Complaint that is the subject of the former State employee who has
filed a "whistler blower" lawsuit, as reported on www.Dallas.org
in Former
Ethics Commission Attorney Lawsuit Alleges Corruption in Poss Ordeal
and in
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Suit:
Ethics attorneys withheld key letter:
Fired
lawyer says bosses kept data from man who filed complaint against Dallas
council's Poss
12/05/2002
By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning
News |
Top
attorneys for the Texas Ethics Commission withheld information from a
citizen who filed an ethics complaint against City Council member Mary
Poss, according to a whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Austin.
Robert W. Schmidt, a former attorney and investigator for the
commission, alleges in his lawsuit that his bosses initially withheld a
key document from Allen Gwinn, the Dallas resident who filed a
campaign-finance complaint against Ms. Poss. The document, called a status
letter, indicated that the commission had proposed a resolution to the
complaint and that Ms. Poss had rejected it.
In April, Mr. Schmidt approached his bosses –
then-Executive Director Tom Harrison and general counsel Karen Lundquist
– and told them he thought they had intentionally held back the status
letter, the lawsuit states. Two weeks later, he was fired for what he
called a clerical error. . . .
Mr. Schmidt's lawsuit alleges that his bosses were friends
with Kenneth W. Anderson Jr., who was Ms. Poss' attorney, and favored Ms.
Poss.
Mr. Harrison and Ms. Lundquist withheld the status letter
from Mr. Gwinn because they thought he would publicize it, according to
court documents. The publicity would have been "to the political
detriment" of Ms. Poss, the suit alleges. . . .
Mr. Gwinn challenged Ms. Poss' campaign-finance records in
January 2000, arguing they did not adequately explain why she used
campaign money to reimburse herself for campaign expenses.
Ms. Poss wrote checks totaling $30,473 to herself and her
husband, Mike, in 1998 and 1999, according to city records. The money came
from campaign donations. The records say the couple was owed the money for
campaign expenses between 1994 and 1999. . . . |
and on WFAA.com
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Lawsuit:
Information withheld about ethics inquiry
12/05/2002 By Chris Heinbaugh / WFAA-TV |
A 'whistleblower' lawsuit accuses two state officials of withholding
information about an ethics investigation into Dallas City Council member
Mary Poss.
The suit was filed by an Ethics Commission attorney, who
alleges he was fired because he began pressing for answers.
Almost two years ago, Dallas City Hall watchdog Allen Gwinn
filed a complaint about Council member Mary Poss. She'd been reimbursing
herself from her campaign coffers, but wasn't accounting for it on
disclosure reports.
"None of this was documented the way the law said it
needed to be documented," Gwinn said. . . .
However, Gwinn's complaint went to the Texas Ethics
Commission. By law, he should get a quarterly status report. But this past
March, the letter didn't show. . . . The
letter was potentially embarrasing to Poss, because it revealed the
complaint was viewed as valid - and Gwinn was likely to publish it on his
Web site, Dallas.org.
Schmidt asked both the executive director and the
commission's general counsel why Gwinn's letter was withheld - violating
the law.
"When I raised my concerns, they basically told me to
stay out of it, that they would take care of it.
Schmidt said two weeks later, he was fired. . . .
It's
important to note that because Ethics Commission investigations are
confidential, Schmidt's lawsuit never actually names Poss, her attorney,
or even Gwinn.
But Gwinn isn't bound by those rules, and is naming names. It
is known who the parties are because Schmidt's attorney confirms Gwinn's
information is correct. |
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Allen Gwinn, Sharon Boyd,
Avi Adelman |
Four years ago, I did not know
Allen Gwinn or Avi Adelman. Four years ago, I wasn't even on-line
for e-mail, and certainly had no idea that I would be a webmaster.
I just knew something very wrong happened in the arena sales tax
election and could not let it go. |
With the encouragement of troublemakers like
former Councilwoman Donna Blumer, I re-activated It's a Bad Deal's website
"DallasArena.com" and started writing little short commentaries on
City Hall doings -- acidic little commentaries. I don't remember when
Allen Gwinn got in touch with me, or whether Avi Adelman made contact
first. But, I liked them both immediately.
A more unlikely trio of amigos, you will never see. Allen is this high
energy over-achiever who would have been a successful Renaissance man. The
guy knows so much about so many things and is always educating himself with new
information and learning new techniques and skills. If brains were
computers, Allen's retention capacity would exceed your hard drive, your CD
drive and your disk drive. The guy can give you a headache just trying to
keep up with him. When he notices that your eyes are glazing over, he
slows down to near warp speed to give you a chance to catch up.
Avi Adelman is much like Allen in the smarts and integrity and tenacity area, he
is just not as controlled and disciplined as Allen. That's not a bad
thing. Avi is the artist in our trio -- the little engine that could or
will blow a piston trying.
Coming from completely different backgrounds and political persuasions, the
three of us have a lot in common. Particularly, we are people who think
one person can make a difference. We believe if you see something is
broken, you fix it. If you see a wrongdoing, you report it and try to stop
it. We also believe there is a clear line between right and wrong.
I wish I could find the article about when Kirk and Poss tried to get the City
Attorney to come up with a law where they could silence Allen, Avi and me by
shutting down our websites. Unfortunately, my FrontPage search engine is
not working, and I can't fix it. Are any of you out there FrontPage
experts? If so, please get in touch. **Avi came through with
DallasArena.com's "Nets
to You", and
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Online
critics battle Dallas officials for Internet research records
By
Phillip Taylor,
Special
to freedomforum.org
01.25.01 |
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. . . Adelman launched BarkingDogs.org in 1999 and began posting sales
records, zoning documents and meeting reports concerning the neighborhood
and its drinking establishments. The site has even attracted national
attention for pictures Adelman posts of drunken bar patrons who wander
into the neighborhood to relieve themselves. . . .
But Adelman recently learned that the Dallas City Council
last year explored a variety of ways to "deal with"
BarkingDogs.org and sites for at least two other online critics. A battle
over records revealed that some members asked for research about shutting
such sites down through claims of trademark violations, cybersquatting and
Internet libel.
The result: The city attorney's office spent some $3,625 to
learn that it probably couldn't sue sites such as Dallas.org or
dallasarena.com for trademark infringement nor could it win an Internet
libel lawsuit in a foreign country.
. . . few people knew about the research until council member Donna
Blumer discovered the expenditure and demanded to know the details. The
Web site operators also filed freedom-of-information requests to get the
research and learn who had commissioned it.
Initially, the city stonewalled such efforts, refusing to
release the research or the names of those who requested it. The city
relented and has released some documents but continues to withhold others.
. . ."The report did find the First Amendment protections to be very
broad on the Internet," Johnson said in a telephone interview.
A
record released last week showed that one requester was Mayor Pro Tem Mary
Poss.
Adelman's site has faulted Poss for failing to address code violations
at a restaurant in her district, while Allen Gwinn has her as the main
subject of Dallas.org's investigation on local campaign financing. Sharon
Boyd's dallasarena.com cites Poss and Mayor Ron Kirk for their domineering
leadership and nicknames them "Mayor Pre Tend Poss" and
"Mayor Con Jerk." . . . The Web site operators in December
secured a number of records that revealed that some members had requested
research into Internet domain names and online libel as far back as last
June.
. . . Johnson said the council has never considered a lawsuit. She
added that her office routinely conducts research to answer lingering
questions in the minds of council members or her staff. . . . But
the Web site operators remain suspicious.
They note that Hicks' research . . .also said the city
probably couldn't win a libel suit filed in another country.
"Because of the high standards set by the First
Amendment in the United States, it is highly unlikely that a libel
judgment obtained in some foreign country for Internet libel could ever be
enforced in the United States," Hicks wrote. . . .
"It reminds you of the days of the start-ups of the old
printing press," Gwinn said. "This is exactly the cause and
exactly the reason that freedom of the press is in the Constitution. It's
not to protect large news organizations that are very pervasive. It's
intended to protect the balance of information that people receive so that
no organization will have total control over it." |
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Legal
Learning Differences
Somebody on the Dallas City Council
skipped school the day they taught the U.S. Constitution
BY JIM SCHUTZE dallasobserver.com
| originally published: January 11,
2001 |
I
happen to be a lawyer fan. I like them. I actually enjoy watching them. So
I have some theories about them. This particular theory is about why very
smart lawyers sometimes do very dumb things.
. . . Case
in point: the decision last month by Dallas City Attorney Madeleine
Johnson to pay a federal civil litigation lawyer in Austin several grand
of our tax dollars to write an opinion about whether the Dallas City
Council can get out of obeying the United States Constitution.
. . .So at the end of last year, the City of Dallas paid $3,600 to Max
Renea Hicks, a civil lawyer in Austin, to come up with answers to the
question of what the council can do about Web sites that say bad things
about the council. This expenditure was not of the type or amount that
required approval by the full city council. Few council members even knew
about it. The
only reason you and I know about it is that council member Donna Blumer
eagle-eyed it on a list of everyday expenditures and demanded the details.
. . .In his report, Hicks explains at some length that the Constitution
actually applies to American citizens no matter where you sue them, as far
as American courts are concerned. And let's all think about this for a
minute. Let's say the Dallas City Council goes to court in Afghanistan and
gets a verdict ordering not only that the Web sites critical of the city
council be shut down but that their proprietors' right arms be hacked off
in front of City Hall. Do we see federal Judge Barefoot Sanders upholding
that one?
. . .No Web
sites are mentioned by name in Hicks' report to Johnson, but three in
particular are likely targets. One is Avi Adelman's muscular
community-activism site, Barkingdogs.org.
Another is Sharon Boyd's site, Dallasarena.com.
The third (in alphabetical order) is Fred Gwinn's Dallas.org.
Gwinn's site has been presenting an ongoing investigation of council
member Mary Poss' campaign finances.
. . .
Adelman's
site sometimes carries pictures of drunken louts on Lower Greenville
urinating on people's lawns--his way of making the point that the city and
the police are not adequately protecting the neighborhoods that abut the
Lower Greenville entertainment district.
. . .Sharon Boyd goes after everybody at City Hall. Lately she has been on
the warpath against Councilman Leo Chaney, who is a full-time employee of
the school district. Boyd thinks it's wrong for the school district to pay
somebody to work full time at City Hall.
. . . Poss
told me that she was one of "several council members and staff"
who had posed questions about the Internet sites to Johnson.
She said her concerns were technical issues related to "domain
names" and had nothing to do with libel.
. . . It's not a small matter. For one thing, this
may be somebody who will want to run for higher office one day.
And another thing the person who made this request might want to keep in
mind about the concept of a foreign end-run around the Constitution: In
some of those countries, very uncool things can happen to leaders who fall
suddenly from grace. . . . |
Granted, our sites have been very hard on that Former Mayor and Mayor PreTend
Poss, but there's this technicality called "Free Speech" under the 5th
Amendment that got in the way of their plan.
Avi and I got a little nervous during all the Free Speech days, but Allen Gwinn
was ready for bear or Ron Kirk or Mary Poss. Our side won the battle.
It's just and example of Poss' mentality. She's special and rules don't
apply to her. You know that concept "taxes are for the little
people"? Well, Poss takes it to "rules are for the little
people."
Allen Gwinn doesn't see it that way.
Allen is willing to stick his neck out. Allen puts his money where his
mouth is. Allen risks everything to do what he thinks is right -- expose
wrong doing. He doesn't just expose it, he acts to stop wrong
doing.
When our country was founded, there were almost as many citizens who were
willing to live under tyranny as second-class citizens than there were citizens
who would take up arms to free our country from the control of England.
Some citizens even joined forces with their masters (the oppressors) because
they wanted to protect their power base (limited though it was) and their
material possessions. It was only a handful of brave men who actually
started the revolution, who put their lives and their families' welfare at
risk. They could have all been caught early on and executed, and our World
today would be a different place. They evaded and eventually defeated the
British to establish our Republic. They did it through their integrity,
their tenacity and their intelligence.
Allen Gwinn and Avi Adelman would have been part of those revolutionaries.
They would never have lived under oppression regardless the risk.
Dallas is lucky to have watchdogs like Allen Gwinn and Avi Adelman. They
don't just sit around and whine. They get something done.
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