Citrus Chronicle
By: Terry Witt (terrywitt@chronicleonline.com)
Published: 13-Oct-2005

A motion filed in Tallahassee Circuit Court this week could reverse two years of state work on the Suncoast Parkway 2 environmental study.

Citrus County residents Teddi Bierly and Robert Roscow are asking Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to sanction the Florida Department of Transportation for allegedly failing to carry out a mediation agreement connected with a lawsuit they filed in 2003. The lawsuit concerned state Sunshine Law violations.

If the motion is granted, all the work done on the Project Development and Environment (PD&E) study since Jan. 7, 2003, through the date the mediation agreement was signed would be thrown out. In effect, DOT would lose two years of work on the PD&E study.

The lawsuit filed by Bierly and Roscow accused FDOT of violating the state’s Sunshine Law by allowing an advisory committee known as the Environmental Resource and Regulatory Agency Group (ERRAG) to meet privately about parkway issues. The Sunshine Law requires governmental bodies to conduct the public’s business in open meetings.

Leon County Circuit Judge Janet Ferris ruled in 2004 that ERRAG should have met publicly and she ordered state transportation officials to mediate the violations with Bierly and Roscow. Ferris, who has since been reassigned to family court, retained jurisdiction over the case after May 24, 2005. Lewis has taken her place.

The agreement called for FDOT and the other eight agencies on ERRAG to meet twice in open public meetings to explain in detail what they had discussed privately in their earlier meetings. The corrective meetings took place on June 25 and Aug. 29 this year, but some ERRAG agencies sent representatives who had not participated in the earlier meetings, while other agencies participated by telephone rather than in person, violating the agreement, according to the motion.

Bierly and Roscow said the agreement called for the most knowledgeable persons to give detailed presentations at the corrective meetings. The most knowledgeable would have been the person who actually attended the meetings and listened to the discussions, but they said some agencies sent substitutes to read brief statements that provided little insight into what ERRAG discussed.

The motion said FDOT failed to explain at the Aug. 29 corrective meeting how each ERRAG agency recommendation was incorporated into the PD&E study. The input from ERRAG apparently was used to narrow the number of potential routes for the toll road.

Bierly, who attended the corrective meetings, said most of the agency representatives said very little. Some simply recited their agency responsibilities as part of ERRAG.

“All those ERRAG meetings, if that was all that was said, that is ridiculous,” Bierly said Wednesday. “How could they have reached any conclusions?”

Agencies involved in ERRAG were FDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Florida Department of Agriculture, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Department of Community Affairs, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Southwest Florida Water Management District and Citrus County. Each was required by the mediation agreement to give in-depth presentations at the Aug. 29 meeting aimed at correcting the Sunshine Law violations.

In addition to asking the judge to throw out two years of work on the PD&E study, Bierly and Roscow want FDOT to conduct properly noticed public meetings of ERRAG to discuss the draft PD&E study as it existed Jan. 7, 2003.

Attempts to contact the toll road environmental manager, Raymond Ashe, were unsuccessful.