Manatee County officials have good reasons not to want to hear what you think

On Tuesday, interim Deputy County Administrator Stephanie Garrison told commissioners that the county had delayed a ham-fisted plan to eliminate the public’s ability to comment on BOCC meeting live streams until after the primary elections because staff knew it would be “unpopular” with the public and presumably didn’t want them taking out their frustrations at the ballot box. Top members of the administration were said to have been sweating bullets over the fate of their employment until the developer darlings carried the day.

As TBT’s Dawn Kitterman reported, Garrison’s explanation “drew audible shock and laughter from citizens seated in the chambers.” Chair Tal Siddique immediately threatened to “vacate the chambers,” probably because the laughter seemed to come from nearly everyone in attendance, making it impossible to identify individual offenders. Also, come on, Tal, there’s a difference between being disrespectful and having a genuinely spontaneous response, like when a fart embarrassingly sneaks out in a public setting, rather than being crudely ripped by some boorish lout. This laughter was definitely spontaneous.

Garrison’s explanation was hilarious precisely because public officials rarely say the quiet part out loud. In Garrison’s defense, despite her ascendant role in MCG, she has very little experience in the public sector. When she was hired last year into the newly created role of Director of Government Relations, then-Deputy Administrator Courtney De Pol told commissioners, “Ms. Garrison brings a wealth of experience in legislative affairs, strategic communications, and community engagement,” having “honed her skills in policy development and stakeholder relations” in her previous position as senior legislative aide to State Senator and current RNC Chair Joe Gruters.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Garrison worked at Gruters' office for a whopping two months, following 14 years at Apple and a stint opening a bike shop and triathlon store in Sarasota. Despite already having a vastly expanded communications department and an expensive lobbying contract with Ballard Partners, the MCG brain trust nevertheless insisted that those policy development and stakeholder relations skills she had honed were worth $160,000 a year and seemed to create a position just in time to coincide with Gruters' departure from the Florida Senate. Fortuitous timing, indeed. Despite so many taxpayer resources dedicated to cultivating fruitful relations with Tallahassee, Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed much of the funding headed Manatee County's way that year. 

At Tuesday’s meeting, the administration is poised to ask the board a second time to elevate Garrison to the full-time Deputy Administrator role. If this is all seeming a bit convoluted, let’s rewind. I’ve already done a brief history of our county government's brain drain up to the hiring of County Administrator Charlie Bishop; you can find it here. But let’s take a look at what’s happened since.

When Bishop was made the permanent county administrator in September of 2023, he inherited Courtney De Pol as deputy administrator. He wasted no time in expanding his cabinet, however. He bumped utilities director Evan Pilachowski to deputy and recruited a third deputy, Bryan Parnell, a retired Naval officer. He then created a “Chief of Staff” position, which wasn’t meaningfully distinguishable from having a fourth deputy. That job was given to another retired Navy man, Andrew Butterfield, who had finished first in the board’s search for a new administrator, only to have commissioners suffer the epiphany that the right man for the job had been holding it down as interim when they elevated Bishop.

Parnell, Butterfield, and Pilachowski were given base salaries of $191k, while De Pol pulled down $196k. It’s worth mentioning that all of those salaries are higher than what former county administrator Cheri Coryea was earning when developers saw to it that she was canned, setting this whole game of musical chairs in motion. After a year on the job, Butterfield popped smoke, and his chief of staff position was reclassified to the director of government relations role that was given to Garrison.

Pilachowski managed to last 20 months in his deputy role (he literally looked like his soul was dying whenever he had to participate in public meetings), calling it quits in June of last year when he headed off for greener pastures. The county managed to land Corey Stutte, a former senior intelligence analyst for U.S. Pacific Command who had served two terms as Mayor of Hastings, Nebraska, and holds a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from the University of Central Florida. Stutte lasted 15 months, having given his notice a few weeks ago.

De Pol resigned in April, taking a gig as Chief Revenue Officer of CIP Solutions (more on that later). It was rumored that she had expected to be named county administrator when Bishop retired, only to make it known that he wanted to stay on after his contract expired in August. The plan seems to have been to elevate Garrison to De Pol’s role, as most of the latter’s direct reports began reporting to the former. However, several commissioners made it clear that they felt Bishop should be able to manage with two deputies, as his predecessors had.

With Stutte’s departure, a deputy position is now open, and Bishop is expected to seek Garrison’s confirmation at Tuesday’s meeting. It is expected that a raise of a little more than $30k would come with the bump. But if that doesn’t seem a bit sketchy already, read Kitterman’s reporting about the proposed agreement with CIP Solutions that is also on Tuesday’s agenda. This is a public policy atrocity the likes of which I’ve rarely seen in my coverage of governments.

Under “Attorney Review,” where the county attorney’s office typically signs off, it explains that the agreement the CAO received "was not legally sufficient," noting that "Staff has declined to follow the office’s request that the documents be resubmitted for additional legal review prior to presenting same to the board for consideration." Garrison, who oversees the department that submitted it, apparently still thought it was a good idea to move forward.

This isn’t the first time that De Pol’s new company has brought a highly questionable proposal before the board since she was hired. In June, TBT reported on a consent agenda item related to the ongoing closure of the former phosphate processing site at Piney Point that almost slipped through unnoticed. It would have amended an existing contract with the company at the former phosphate processing facility, putting taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars at a polluted site the county does not own. The agenda items did not include the existing contract or fee schedule, had not gone through procurement, and did not have a legal review by the county attorney's office. The vote ended in a 3-3 tie, and a scaled-down version of the agreement later passed.

So, here we are with another highly questionable contract that has not gone through procurement, failed its legal review, and is nevertheless being presented to the board for a vote. What are we doing? And why can’t Manatee County seem to hold on to any of the talent it has always been able to draw? I keep hearing that Charlie Bishop’s chief value lies in his institutional knowledge. I guess so. Everyone with valuable experience was fired, and no one they hire seems interested in sticking around. If I were helming such an unseaworthy ship, I suppose I’d also want to hear as little from the public as possible.

Dennis "Mitch" Maley is an editor and columnist for The Bradenton Times and the host of our weekly podcast. With over two decades of experience as a journalist, he has covered Manatee County government since 2010. He is a graduate of Shippensburg University and later served as a Captain in the U.S. Army. Click here for his bio. Mitch's new novel, Fish Kill, is currently available here, along with his previous books. He can be reached at editor@thebradentontimes.com.