- April 25, 2024
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In a Facebook Live video posted publicly on July 7, Palm Coast City Councilman Victor Barbosa rejected an ethics complaint that had been filed against him in June.
The complaint states that Barbosa and Councilman Ed Danko appeared to be sending text messages to one another during the Jan. 5 and Jan. 19 City Council meetings. A similar complaint was filed against Danko.
The existence of an ethics complaint against a public official is not evidence of wrongdoing: Anyone can file one, and the Florida Commission on Ethics is obligated to look into it.
If the complaints against Danko and Barbosa are true, the men's conduct would be a violation of the state's open records law. But the complaints rely entirely on timing: That one man would tap something on his phone and then set the phone down, and then, shortly after, the other would pick his phone up and tap on it, and so on.
Barbosa, in his Facebook video, cast doubt on whether the complainant, Fernando Melendez, would have been able to see what the men were doing from the audience section of the council chambers, and questioned how Melendez would have been able to determine exact times. The time stamps in the complaints refer to the city's official videos of the meetings, shot from above (the Jan. 5 one is here, and the Jan. 19 one is available here).
"Why is this coming up only now? Why was this only given to me now — because of the election?" Barbosa said in the video. "Because you're trying to hurt Alan Lowe? This is the bull c--- you come up with? ... Your lies are disgusting."
Melendez is associated with the campaign of Palm Coast mayoral candidate David Alfin, while Danko and Barbosa have backed Alfin's rival, Alan Lowe. Barbosa noted the political context during his Facebook video, suggesting that the ethics complaints were politically motivated.
Danko, a campaign adviser for Lowe, called the complaints a "typical political smear" from the Alfin campaign.
"I would be happy to give someone access my cell phone records because I never call Victor and I never text Victor," he said.
Danko said Observer publisher John Walsh is using the newspaper in a political smear on behalf of the Alfin campaign. (Walsh has endorsed Alfin.)
Danko and Barbosa referred to Melendez as Alfin's current or former campaign manager. Alfin, asked about Melendez's relationship to his campaign, said Melendez is a volunteer campaign associate and had never been his campaign manager, and that Alfin hadn't known about Melendez's complaints.
Melendez's Ethics Commission complaints are dated June 11.
Melendez had emailed the Palm Coast Observer both complaints on June 20, stating in the email that he attends council meetings as often as he can and had initially just been bothered by the fact that Danko and Barbosa were using their phones at the dais, rather than focusing fully on the agenda.
"But then, I realized there was a pattern where when one put the phone down the other picked the phone up," Melendez wrote. "After going back to the January meetings, I documented the pattern and included it in my complaint. ... The evidence is clear to me and warrants further investigation."
The Ethics Commission does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation until some form of determination has been made.
Following that policy, a commission spokeswoman would not comment on any investigation into Danko or Barbosa, or confirm if there was one, when contacted last month by an Observer reporter.
When the Observer filed a records request with the city government for any cell phone text communication between Danko and Barbosa during the time frame of the Jan. 5 and Jan. 19 council meetings, the city's clerk said in a June 22 message that there were no such records.
The city's process for checking for such records relies on the council members following city policy that requires them to forward city-related messages to the clerk's department for archiving.
"I searched under both cell phone numbers in our email archiver as a sender and there were no messages forwarded by either Council Member, and both Council Members have confirmed there are no text messages relating to City business on their cell phone for those dates," City Clerk Virginia Smith wrote in a June 22 response to the records request.
The Ethics Commission releases its findings on complaints at the meeting held after its investigators make a determination. There is not a set time frame for Ethics Commission investigations.
