BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Bob Milner, former president of the Bradford County Fair Association and a related nonprofit, is finally responding to reports of an investigation launched against him, former fair manager Dale Woodruff and the board they worked with.
In May, Sheriff Gordon Smith leveled allegations with the realization that in the final days of their leadership, assets including land and money were transferred from the fair association to the Friends of the Bradford Agricultural Fair and Youth Shows, a nonprofit set up to support livestock organizations and offer scholarships. In doing so, the former fair board allegedly deprived the county of those assets, which was settling the organization’s more than $1.7 million debt in exchange for fairgrounds ownership, assuring the land and facilities would not go up for sale.
At the time Smith called it a scheme to defraud the county. “They set out to pull a fast one on y’all. They didn’t tell us in negotiations they were planning on cutting out eight acres of property and taking equipment and possibly cash,” he said. The sheriff said information they were collecting would be turned over to the state agriculture commissioner and Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
On Aug. 25, Milner, who has since retired from leadership of both fair-related boards, reached out to the Telegraph, saying FDLE had never launched an investigation into the allegations presented to the county commission and providing the name of an agent to contact. That agent pointed the Telegraph to the agency’s public information office. To date, there has been no response to a request for information about the investigation.
Asked this week what he knew about the status of the investigation, Sheriff Smith said it is ongoing, with his office doing the legwork and feeding information to FDLE.
“FDLE is giving us some assistance, but they have been swamped out of our region with all of this stuff going on,” he said, which, according to him, included undocumented immigrants. They have also recently met with the state attorney, who has requested additional documentation. The sheriff said minutes from the fair board meetings have not been turned over, repeating claims they operated out of the sunshine and outside the requirements of the fair association’s charter.
“Whether it’s unlawful or not, it’s still awful,” said Smith, who added that he has encouraged the commission to pursue a civil case.
“Civilly, I think it’s pretty cut and dry as a case to win civilly, but we’re just making sure there’s no criminal acts in regard to it,” Smith said. “FDLE didn’t open an investigation yet until we get what we think may be there, and if it’s not, it’s not. We’re not going to make something up.”
Milner said it’s not there, speaking out about what has been said publicly and the lack of due diligence by those “investigating.” He called out the unnecessary subpoenas issued for records from himself, Woodruff and former fair treasurer Chuck Kramer. These would have been provided willingly and, according to him, were already available on a computer seized from the fair office. He said the same was true of bank records, but even if not, the sheriff’s office could have gotten the records by subpoenaing the bank instead of freezing an account. Milner said this last action placed a board member in danger of a civil suit when a check written to a Splash Bash vendor could not be cashed. It took a meeting between an attorney and the sheriff to get that straightened out, he said.
“I have no idea why they felt it necessary, other than I think it was a form of intimidation,” Milner said. “Number two, I think it was saving face for certain personnel in the county, including the sheriff and sheriff’s office, just to show that they could subpoena, that they had subpoena power. The problem with it is, there’s nothing there. They have absolutely nothing criminal. Never was, never will be. Nothing illegal, immoral or unethical.”
“The fact is, the county, some officials within county, to include the sheriff and a couple of commissioners, still can’t get over the fact they didn’t get that additional eight acres across Market Road, which was never included in the Gissy note,” Milner said. (James Gissy was the private benefactor who saved the fairgrounds from foreclosure the first time.)
The county and its attorneys “weren’t smart enough” to figure this out on their own, he said. The attorney who represented the fair association during that time had to clear it up when the county demanded the eight acres be signed back over to the fair association.
“We said, no, no, no, no, no, and had to point out what they either knew or should have known if they had done their homework,” Milner said.
He said the fact is, unlike what was stated in a public meeting, the fair association never ceased to exist. The previous board was intact when they met and voted to transfer the assets to the Friends nonprofit. They continued meeting until early May, taking care of minor business like paying the bills. Its incorporation remained active with the state and the former board members are still listed as officers.
Milner also denied they had violated the charter by having a board of fewer than 20 members, as Smith told the commission. The board had eight officers and directors of the eight to 12 required by the bylaws, which were rewritten years ago, Milner said. Fair association “members” are not board members but anyone who pays the annual dues and in exchange receives a pass to the fair and other events, he said.
“But Gordon gave bad information, unfortunately, the (commission) bought it without doing any research. And that’s when they began scrambling and saying we can’t appoint five members like we agreed to do initially. We’ve got to appoint up to 20, which, of course, is ludicrous,” Milner said.
“It’s a shame. None of this should have ever happened. I honestly feel the seizing of the bank account, the requiring of us by subpoenas to turn in information that was already available to them for free — all of that was unnecessary. I just believe it’s a bit of a witch hunt on the part of certain county officials, personnel, because they got to find something that the fair did wrong. Well, they’re not going to just because they didn’t like our decisions to donate the money to the 501c3, and they didn’t like the fact that they were not smart enough to realize the Gissy mortgage did not include the eight acres.”
Milner was angry that FDLE never shared what he was told: that a criminal case was never opened.
“That’s exactly what the agent in charge told me flat out, that they never even opened it. They reviewed the information sent to them by the sheriff’s office, determined there was nothing of criminal nature that they could see, and they sent it back to the sheriff and told him that. And they told my (unnamed) attorney the same thing,” he said.
“Gordon didn’t get his facts straight, and so they’re trying to dig up facts to see if they can find something to support the inferences and accusations made that day, and the unfortunate thing is, they’re not there. They’re just flat not there, and it’s going to be embarrassing to the sheriff’s office if they go much further with it,” Milner said.
If they continue pursuing it, he said the next step will be a case-in-chief where they have the burden of proof, presenting everything they have to a judge and showing cause why the case should not be dismissed altogether.
“That’s the next step if they continue pursuing, and the sheriff has been advised of this. Not that he’s scared of it, but listen, if you want to be embarrassed publicly, that’s going to do it,” Milner said. A good investigator or law enforcement officer should have realized this shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of weeks, he said, but this has gone on for months.
As for a possible civil case, Milner said, “I’m not worried about it one bit. I’ll be glad to let a court of competent jurisdiction decide if there was anything civilly or criminally wrong the fair board did, because I know for a fact we didn’t.”
