Glenda-Gate: Carmody & Miorelli

It what may have been his first executive order, presumptive GOP Nominee John McCain shook hands with his runningmate's son-in-law. Sadly, Palin's daughter will not be making a televised studio appearance on the Maury Povich show...."you are not the father!"

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President Carmody on Glenda
Christian,

I briefly glanced at your blog and the Q&A regarding Glenda. While I am not on the ground, I will provide some comments.

Any suggestion that Glenda Frederick is inapprorpriately influencing Senate legislation or actions should be met with a high amount of suspicion from the accuser's motivation. Why? Simply, Glenda is a kind person who has continually gone out of her way to serve the students of UF in her capacity as Senate Secretary. As a former Senate President, I can say with confidence that the success of Senate usually is a result of a Senate that engages Glenda's expertise and institutional knowledge.

I noticed on your blogs a comment about Glenda's membership in FBK. Seriously? Do you think she attends the meetings? Is she in smoky room with the FBK President discussing whose bills will pass through judiciary? The GDI's or whoever are making these accusations need to get over themselves. Glenda has other things to worry about than what FBK wants of Senate.

If GDI's are worried that the Judiciary Committee leans too heavily on Glenda for advice, then they should win an election or pressure the current Senate President to shake up the committee membership. If it is not Glenda that the Judiciary Committee seeks advice from, then someone else will fill that gap. Senate is the training ground for the higher offices, and it should be no surprise that Senate members choose to seek the sage advice of Glenda. Afterall, she has served in her position longer than some of these Senators have been alive.

On one final note, and unrelated to Glenda. GDI's: grow up. If you fight for the sake of fighting, or blog for the sake of blogging, your voice stops sounding like the voice of reason and starts sounding like a cacophony of hoots, cackles and wails. As I said above, I am not on the ground. However, it sure sounds like this crop of GDI's have found it more interesting making noise than making progress.

Glenda is a good person. Sure, she doesn't like some Senators and she likes others. That is natural. However, unless you have concrete proof that Glenda has tanked a bill because she didn't like you, then stay quiet. She is a professional and would not insert herself into those kind of politics. Many Senate Presidents were elected before, during and after me that I am sure Glenda had reservations about. Yet, I don't think any of us will find that she got involved. Why? It is not her problem. So, to anyone that is making their issues Glenda's, just stop. Move on.

Take care,
Chris

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O&B President Sam Miorelli
On Glenda, Part II.
As to specific interactions, there are several (but in my opinion her involvement with Sheldongate was actually an example of her behaving properly, unlike how it is reported in your blog):

1) Open Government Act: One of the pieces of legislation which I have been working on since the Spring election is called the “Open Government Act.” It explicitly spells out new policies for SG to handle public records including expanded periods of document retention, specific training to SG officials on document retention policies, timelines for response to document requests, acceptable fees for documents, and penalties to SG officials for failures to comply. Most of the clauses in this proposal simply clarify SG’s internal procedures of adhering to existing Florida law on public records, however several require SG to hold itself to a somewhat more stringent standard than the most conservative readings of current law and AGO’s would require. Gator’s only leg to stand on against this was “well this would be inconvenient to us and we don’t want to have to be responsible for replying so quickly” or “well it’s unfair for elected SG officials to have to prepare these documents if office staff isn’t available to do it for us. We weren’t elected to respond to document requests!” Then Glenda stepped in and raised hell that it would make her job harder and require more filing cabinets to store the documents (despite most documents to be retained under the statute being electronic-only in nature). She pretty much single-handedly killed the proposal on Gator’s behalf.


2) Appointments: Glenda’s most egregious overstep in my experience so far was during the appointments process. Gator couldn’t seem to manage this summer to have any one of their hundreds of elected and appointed folks bother to sit down and read the damn rules about how appointments are to be handled and the time-line required therein. They tried to force the applicants down Senate’s throats the first Tuesday of the summer without sending the resumes before R&A (in violation of SBS) and we stopped them on the floor. Gator screamed bloody murder and even had Scott Cutshall lie to us after the meeting that “this is how it always happens, at the first meeting of the summer, and you guys knew it and are just obstructionist” (it turned out that appointments never have happened at the first meeting of the summer, at least in recent memory and records).

Then Gator tried to do it again a week later, but R&A spent too much time on Sunday night doing sham interviews for committee seats (it was obvious from the committee’s behavior that Gator had decided who got what long before the interviews were conducted) to get to the applications on their agenda. R&A conducted a second meeting Monday afternoon to discuss the committee appointments (which still had to be voted on among other things) and then consider the agenda and appointees. SBS requires R&A to set the agenda before Noon on Monday or it loses that power and the Pro-Tempore is allowed limited powers to set a more narrow agenda. Since the R&A meeting was after the deadline, the applications could not be heard the following day at Senate and were delayed another week.

When Cain and I pointed out this obvious point in statutes (which the Pro-Tempore should’ve known herself and avoided by putting the appointments before the sham interviews on Sunday night or by conducting the Monday meeting before noon), pandemonium ensued. Kellie turned white and called Reilly (who hung up on her in front of the whole R&A committee, and then one of Gator’s R&A members went and fetched Glenda from the room next door (I don’t remember who it was, either Kellie or MaryGrace I think). Glenda stormed into the room and came unglued. She literally stood in the doorway to the SG Conference Room and screamed red-faced at Cain and I calling us obstructionists among other choice words. Cain reminded her that the rules and statutes were clear on the matter and she continued her tirade before retiring to her office.

3) Miorelli v. Bracco et. al.: In June I filed an election complaint against Frank Bracco and Eric Wolf for campaigning for SBP & VP (presumably humorously, but they did have campaign logos taped to their shirts) during one of the Senate meetings. One of the primary purposes of this complaint was to compel Kevin to do his job and appoint an Elections Commission. Because the Election Commission did not meet for more than 2 weeks after I filed the complaint, I filed a complaint against the EC with the SG Supreme Court. When I delivered that complaint to the 3rd floor, Glenda was the only member of the SG office staff there at the time. When she received it she said to one of the SG IT staff members that “he does this because he has no life.” It was not jocular in tone and I believe she only felt comfortable saying it because nobody else was around to witness such unprofessional behavior.

There are other instances too, and of course some where Glenda went beyond the call of duty in blowing the whistle on corruption or putting in extra time to make sure things were accomplished properly. My problem with her is she plays favorites and does not seem to know the importance of restraint in a job such as hers. Truthfully I don’t think SG needs 3 staff members. Two would be sufficient and would stop the hundreds of folks in Cabinet and the paid students in the fancy offices from delegating every single task out so they have more time for Facebook and homework. Office hours should be used for getting real work done, not for eating your lunch in front of YouTube while staff does the heavy lifting you’re too lazy to do.

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Fmr. Sen. Duque Speaks
Both President Carmody & Senator Miorelli offer strong stances. One advocates the need to move ahead, to work on matters more pertinent to the student body. The other discusses leveling out the playing field behind the scenes and then moving towards the job at hand.

We're all discussing Student Government, college government, but to a certain degree both men are statesmen. Carmody's accomplishments are impressive (and like John Boyles would do years later), Chris made it to the Senate Presidency, was a presidential candidate in a nail-biter presidential election, and not only made into Florida Blue Key, but has become quite influential in that organization. Carmody was able to reach these goals without being Greek and without being a jerk or a sell out, again, his case is very rare. He's also one of the few Keys that's well liked on this blog. (Others include Fmr. Supreme Court Chief Justice Brian Aungst).

Orange & Blue Party President Sam Miorelli is another top level leader and friend of this blog. Miorelli, who like Chris I never knew personally, seems to possess all the attributes to make him not only a formidable presidential candidate, but a superior caliber Student Body President.

While Miorelli seems eager to engage Glenda Frederick and challenge her role in SG, Carmody stands ready to defend the 20yr veteran. But this isn't your ordinary System/GDI battle. Even calling Carmody "system" seems unfair (as he enjoyed the support of James Argento). In fact, the more system of the two that year was Nikki Fried (who ironically enjoyed the support of Ken Kerns & Nick Capezza).

But why am I deliberating over these irrelevant details? B/c they're not so irrelevant. Ken Kerns, founder of 'Glenda Day,' was the top GDI leader of his day - he, like Carmody sides with Glenda. But other independent figures, like former Pants Party Presidential Candidate Bruce Haupt seem to take a less sympathetic view to Glenda's role in student governance.

Interestingly, both Carmody & Miorelli seem to share common ground in that Glenda does in fact play favorites. Is that to be expected, per Carmody? Or is that unprofessional behavior, per Miorelli?

YOU DECIDE!