Two years ago after a six year improvement effort which included cuting down Brazilian pepper shrub, the City of Clearwater finally announced that Cooper's Point, a mangrove swamp in Pinellas County, would be ready to open to small groups. Since Sixth Circuit Judge George W. Greer is currently in the running for the chief justice of the Sixth Circuit, it is probably worth re-telling his small, but significant role in aiding the Sembler family in lifting $1 million from the Pinellas County taxpayers. In 1986 Michael Kenton, then the environmental management director for the city of Clearwater, Florida, passed up a chance to buy Coopers Point for the city. Instead, he and his attorney Jarrell Murchison, on the advice of another attorney, formed a land trust to buy the property. Kenton put up $15,000 of his own money and the two approached Greg Sembler. Greg and Steve Sembler agreed to finance the remaining $985,000. Kenton was to get $200,000 consultant fees in return for lobying the city to buy the property. Sembler's hired Clearwater attorney Timothy A. Johnson, Jr. to represent him in the buy. Today Tim Johnson is the principal partner of the Clearwater law firm Johnson Blakely Pope Bokor Ruppel & Burns. It is not unusual
for the Semblers to use local city officials like Kenton as consultants.
In June of 1988 Steve Sembler formed Summer
Properties with Pickens C. "Pick" Talley, II then a sitting
commissioner on the Hillsborough County Commission. Summer's office was
in the Sembler office building on Central Ave. Two early projects Summer
was involved in dealt with golf courses in Pinellas and Pasco County.
Talley left office in November saying he would pursue ventures in Hillsborough
and would represent Summer before the Hillsborough Commissioners when
the opportunity arose. Almost overnight the Sembler/Kenton trust was negotiating with the city of Clearwater to sell their newfound swamp. The asking price? $ 2.65 million--a cool $1.65 million profit! But then the St. Petersburg Times caught whiff of the deal. On Aug 20, 1987 the Times wrote an editorial titled, "Something's rotten in the Cooper's Point land deal" in which it stated, "The Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney's Office is supposed to be investigating that bizarre turn of events." On August 22 the Times re-ran that editorial under the name "Deal is rotten." And again on August 24 the Times ran its their editorial under the title, "Cooper's Point deal is rotten". State Attorney James T. Russell must have been beside himself. Unlike four years previous when he was suppose to be investigating Melvin Sembler (Greg and Steve's father) over alleged felony child abuse at his Straight program, this time James T. Russell had to answer to the people. Before learning what Russell decided to do with the Sembler boys in 1988, we need first to see what he did with the old man in 1983. We need to do this because, coincidently, there is a link, however weak, between the two cases. According to the Saint Petersburg Times[1] in January 1983 Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) official Terry Harper acknowledged that over the last three years he had sent "three or four packets" of complaints involving allegations of criminal child abuse at Straight to Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney James T. Russell, but Russell had never bothered to respond to any of the complaints. He said that the last package he sent had been in June of 1982 on behalf of a criminal complaint he had received from John C. Emmons of Clearwater, Florida. Mr. Emmons had withdrawn his stepdaughter Georgia from Straight-St. Petersburg after her sister Ann had escaped. From Ann and Georgia Harper recorded allegations of instances of keeping clients awake for 72 hours, peanut-butter sandwich diets, and clients sitting on other clients for hours at a time while pinching them. Georgia told Harper of witnessing Miller Newton (Straight's national clinical director) throwing Leigh Bright by her hair. She said she had been called upon to be one of the clients responsible for keeping Ms. Bright awake for 72 hours. Read Leigh Bright's declaration of torture. [Unfortunately Ms. Bright was not the only person tortured at Straight and its associated programs. Read the torture of Marcie Sizemore. The torture of Bobby Ruggles. The torture of a boy named Donald.] Harper said that he sent the latest packet to Russell with copies to Bright's mother and to Emmons, but that neither he nor Emmons nor Ms. Bright had ever heard back from Russell's office. Milo Geyelin of the Times called Russell on Thursday (Jan. 27), Friday and Saturday but could not reach him for comment so he talked to Assistant State Attorney Louis Kwall who ran the Office of Consumer Affairs for the State Attorneys Office and who "frequently investigates HRS complaints," but Kwall declined comment. Later Kwall left the State Attorney's Office and went into private practice with attorney Raymond O. Gross. In 1988 Kwall ran the successful campaign for Republican candidate Everett Rice for county Sheriff and his wife became Rice's official attorney. From 1992 - 1994 Kwall was chairman of the Pinellas County Republican Party while Mel Sembler was treasurer for the state Republican Party. Many feel that Louis Kwall should have recommended in 1983 that Russell indict Mel and Betty Sembler for their roles in Straight. But neither Kwall or Russell did anything. Which brings us up to 1988 when Kwall was back in private practice. With the hometown newspaper screaming for an investigation, Russell could not ignore the Semblers this time. Would he indict Michael Kenton, Jarrell Murchison, Gregg Sembler and Steve Sembler for some sort of conspiracy to defraud taxpayers? Would anyone go to prison? That's when Michael Kenton hired former assistant states attorney Louis Kwall! In the end Russell decided that since Kenton had been a city employee he should be judged by the state Ethics Commission. And since Murchison and the Sembler boys were not city employees, just opportunists trying to make a quick buck, he would do nothing to them. Just as he elected to do nothing to Mel and Betty Sembler in 1983. The Semblers had escaped prosecution but they still had a swamp to unload. Turns out the City of Clearwater could only come up with $650,000. A few years before Pinellas County and the state of Florida had tried to purchase Cooper's Point but the deal had fallen through. The county had set aside $900,000 for the purchase which had grown to $1.3 million by 1988 and the Semblers wanted it. So Steve Sembler turned to Tim Johnson to lobby their case before the Pinellas County Commission. Tim Johnson was a good friend to and had been the campaign aid of County Commissioner George Greer. Besides that Tim Johnson contributed $1,000 each to the campaign of George Greer and fellow commissioner Barbara Sheen Todd in their reelection bids in 1988. George Greer became a 6th Circuit judge in 1992 and when he ran for reelection in 1998 Steve Sembler donated $250 to his campaign. The Sembler Company has a modus operandi of hiring friends of commissioners to get its way. In 1988 Sembler tried to build a shopping center in St. Petersburg around 38th and Park Street but the local citizens were so upset they signed a petition to stop it. The city planning commission agreed with its citizens, recommending against zoning the area commercial because of existing traffic problems. So Sembler hired attorney Roy Harrell who was best friends with city council member Ron Mason. Roy Harrell or one of the Semblers met with each of the nine council members and the council voted 9-0 for a shopping center that nobody wanted! And so it came to pass that George Greer, Barbara Sheen Todd and other county commissioners voted to front its $1.3 million to supplement city's $650,000, and the two bought Cooper's Point for $1.95 million. Clearwater got the deed and Sembler made a cool $1 million in seven months. Mike Kenton had to turn over his earnings to pay for the fine the ethics commission put on him. According to the St Petersburg Times of 12-5-89, Clearwater Commissioner Bill Nunamaker stated, "I still think we've gone after the little cog in the big wheel." To which Clearwater Mayor Rita Garvey replied, "The difference is that they [the Semblers] didn't work for the city." When Nunamaker asked city attorney Milton A. Galbraith Jr. to see whether there was some way to get some repayment from the Semblers Galbraith had replied, "I don't know that I could come up with a good rationale to support an action like that." Epilogue. The Semblers made their money but their hometown newspaper ran three editorials about the Semblers and the others which used the word "foul" in the title. Few of us will ever be headlined with the word "foul" in the title, but it happened with the Semblers a fourth time. In 1993 The St. Petersburg Times ran an editorial titled, "A persistent foul odor." This one deals with Mel Sembler's apparent effort to shut down a state health department attempt to close Straight in 1989 for its reputation of child abuse. [See The Clary Report.] But it doesn't stop there. Today Mel Sembler is the US ambassador to Italy. A $123,000 a year job with a castle and car and all the rest. In 2004 Ambassador Sembler met with Congressman C.W. "Bill" Young, chairman of the House Appropriation Committee, and talked him into including a last minute line-item for $10 million to fund an Italian project for an AIDS vaccine that US health authorities are so skeptical of that one health official said of the deal, "it doesn't smell good." And Miller Newton, the man who threw Leight Bright by the hair, Reverend Doctor Newton fled Florida under mounting charges of child abuse, set up his own national chain of abusive juvenile rehab programs based in New Jersey, returned to Florida after paying out over $11 million for fraud and child abuse. Today he is a member of the International Scientific and Medical Forum on Drug Abuse--a subsidiary of Drug Free America Foundation (formerly known as Straight Foundation). The city and county were so anxious to buy the swamp in 1987 but it was not until 2002 and $372,406 worth of improvements that the city finally opened the park--and that was for limited use only by groups like schools and bird watchers. Additional improvements are planned 16 years from now. Wesley Fager Related articles: What professionals have to say about Straight: The Unauthorized Biography of Melvin Sembler: See Coopers
Point Partners, LTD FOOTNOTES: 1. The Saint Petersburg
Times, 1-30-83, p. 1B. |