The four attorneys who censured Commissioner Krista Joseph for her political speech (Whitehurst, Dean, Alaimo and Arnold) have given the heave ho to their pricey Tallahassee attorney who advised them that Krista “likely violated the law.” They hired a new attorney (also at taxpayer expense), and as a result, have “backed away” from their previous attorney’s dubious legal opinion.   As a result, Joseph has dropped her court fight with the commissioners over whether she has a right to talk about voting them out of office. Score one for Freedom of Speech.  Full story in the Times Union here.

The four developer-funded commissioners targeted the only St. Johns County commissioner who does not accept developer funding and does not rubber-stamp developments. (Dean approved 120 out of 121 new developments during his first five years in office; Whitehurst said YES to 39 of the first 40 new developments he voted on; Alaimo approved 103 out of 105 new developments during his term on the Planning and Zoning Agency; and Arnold voted to bulldoze more acres of land than did any other SJC commissioner during her first five months in office. They are all supported by Senator/developer Hutson and have received large campaign donations and/or appointments influenced by him.

St. Johns County is almost fully controlled by developers. But if we exercise our freedom of speech as much as possible from now until the August 20th primary, and we spread the word that electing Ann Taylor and Ann-Marie Evans will give the people of St. Johns County a majority on the commission, we can take back our county from irresponsible growth and unbridled development. We can slow it down and let our schools and infrastructure catch up.  VoteAnnTaylor and ElectAnn-Marie (Commissioner Joseph has endorsed them both.) 

Krista Joseph deserves to have the same freedom of speech that Henry Dean has exercised on a regular basis in that same auditorium. He gave at least three election endorsements (scroll way down here)  for a sales tax referendum that was thankfully voted down in a landslide. Recently, he praised himself for two minutes straight, and when a resident said, “Did you just give a campaign speech?” he responded, “Maybe I did. Maybe we should call an attorney.”  This is the man who made the motion to censure Krista.  It’s political theater, and we don’t want an encore.  

You can count on the chaos to continue under the four developer-tied commissioners. They just terminated our county attorney for reasons they will not disclose to the public, but cost us dearly with his severance pay. That county attorney never stated that Krista violated any law, but Commissioner Whitehurst is still claiming that she did. There isn’t enough room on the internet to detail why Whitehurst should be voted out. 

We thank Commissioner Krista Joseph for standing strong against forces of censorship, intimidation, and just plain nastiness.  We’ll keep you posted if there are any more updates. In the meantime, will you help get some petitions signed for Ann and Ann-Marie? They could use your help to get on the ballot.