GUEST COMMENTARY

Did Court Clerk Kolhage Change Website to Try to Help Incumbent State Attorney?

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.

Return to Main Page

Comments

[Mark]

Good thing you a had a good boss. Kolhage is typical of many politicians. He has been a civil servant for so long he feels entitled and arrogant.I would not be surprised if they used their contacts and pulled up you personal information from your email account provider and found out who you were without a subpoena.

[InvestigativeReporter]

This is very well documented. Kohlage has managed to keep himself pretty clean through decades of service. Officials have come and gone, but Danny has [traditionally] appeared to play by the book.

It's sad, but eventually ALL elected officials come to feel that they are above the law. Voters recently showed a couple county commissioners and the State Attorney.

Look like it's time to start beating the bushes for a new Clerk.