A month from retirement after a career spanning four decades as county attorney for Flagler County government, Al Hadeed on Thursday received the Gordon Johnson Award “for his distinguished service to Flagler County and outstanding contributions to local government law in the State of Florida.”
Hadeed received the award during the Florida Association of County Attorneys’ annual two-day continuing legal education seminar, an event featuring panels with such titles as “Grand Juries: Oh What Fun!,” “Attorney Wellness & How to Stay That Way!,” “Navigating the Digital Landscape: Social Media and Public Employees,” and “Live Local Act: Two Years Later.”
“I was very humbled to receive it,” Hadeed said by phone from the Hilton Orlando, though it was Jewel White, the Pinellas County attorney and the association’s president, who said what Hadeed would not: “He’s just done great work. I can tell you, half the people on my staff know Al, because he’s a great resource. We call him. He’s always got information for us. He reaches out to help us on things that we don’t even know.”
Service on the association helped Flagler County give “access to the specialized knowledge that existed in other counties where they ran into situations where they had to come up with work arounds or special remedies to deal with the issues that confronted them,” Hadeed said. That worked both ways: other counties drew on Hadeed’s experience, as one of the state’s longest-serving county attorneys.
Two examples stand out during his tenure: One was the 2015 ordinance he crafted and the County Commission approved, regulating short-term or vacation rentals. That ordinance became a template for numerous local governments around the state. “Probably more copied our vacation rental ordinance than any others that we’ve developed,” Hadeed said. Palm Coast adopted a similar ordinance just this year. Flagler County’s ordinance withstood a challenge at the Fifth District Court of Appeal (the county was sued two weeks after enacting the ordinance.).
The other example Hadeed spoke of–one he cherishes especially of his affinities for environmental protection and public access to natural resources–is the 2018 ordinance securing “customary” public access to Flagler County’s 18 miles of shoreline, whether on private property or not. The ordinance preempted a law enacted that year that closed off such access in many counties.
“We promote the beaches to bring tourists, right? Not not just a little county, but the whole state does that,” Hadeed said. “So it was odious to that objective, and when that thing passed, and the information about what it was doing, the public just rose up all around.”
The Legislature repealed the law this year after an outcry, and the governor enacted the repeal a few days ago.
Hadeed said he’d relied on Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan’s research, “his evidentiary planning and drafting, and his work with Beverly Beach and Flagler Beach in getting them to join the county’s efforts with the customary use ordinance. He would similarly rely on him to secure the scores of easements necessary to make last year’s Army Corps of Engineers’ beach renourishment project possible in Flagler Beach (an arduous, three-year process.)
White, the county attorney association president, spoke of two qualities Hadeed brought to bear: his mentorship of younger attorneys and his institutional memory. Hadeed, a past president of the Flagler County Historical Society, was county attorney from 1990 to 1998, was interim county attorney and special counsel in 2001, and was again rehired as county attorney in February 2007, in essence working the job 27 of the last 35 years.
“Institutional memory is huge,” White said. “We can remember litigation that might have happened, or we’re doing it this way, that might seem a little off, but it’s because this happened 10 years ago, so it’s extremely important. And I can tell you–hopefully Al is doing this on his staff, since I know he’s retiring soon–but in Pinellas County, we really make a big point of trying to pass that institutional memory on, because it’s just that important.”
He is doing it: Hadeed has been preparing Moylan for the job. Moylan (who graduated from Flagler Palm Coast High School in 1994, got a an undergraduate degree from Columbia, a master’s in education from the University of Florida and a law degree from Florida A&M) has been deputy county attorney for 11 years. He has the confidence of at least two county commissioners to take over the job, but other commissioners have been resistant.
“I think all of you know, I’ve been around the block for a long time,” Hadeed told the County Commission at a meeting on June 16. “I started thinking about retirement, not yesterday, no, a number of years ago. And so I’m very active among the county attorneys. You all know that. So I was looking for all of those young lawyers and watching them, watching them perform, watching them present issues, hearing how they spoke, and I am evaluating them. Is this the person potentially that can succeed me?”
That started about two years ago. He was disappointed. “I went to Sean, and I said, Sean, I’m so sorry. I have been looking and looking and looking, and I haven’t found anybody that really interests me, that I think can do this job in the way I believe it should be done for this county.” But Moylan got his endorsement. “He understands how I approach these issues,” Hadeed said. (Moylan was also in Orlando for the conference.)
Hadeed has been on the board of the association since 2012, chairing its finance and tax committee until last year, and has been a member of its Amicus Curiae Committee, which reviews and decides what cases should be argued before the Florida Supreme Court, and what role the association should take in that effort on behalf of local governments. He will have to step down when he retires on Aug. 2.
