In an unprecedented motion in the city’s 25 years, the Palm Coast City Council today censured Council member Ed Danko in a 3-1 vote, in his absence, in a rebuke of his perceived role against the city in a lawsuit and of his loutish behavior in his years on the council.
Other than a censure vote by the Flagler Beach City Commission several years ago, it is the first time any local government or the school board has taken the extraordinary step of censuring a fellow member. Some members of the County Commission repeatedly tried to censure then-Commissioner Joe Mullins–who may not be mulling a run for the congressional seat Mike Waltz is vacating to join the Trump administration–over his bullying of fellow-commissioners (the public wanted him censured for his overt bigotry). But a majority of commissioners that included Mullins always stopped the move.
A censure is nothing more than a public rebuke. But it carries the weight of an elected public body defining the rules of the permissible among its members, who ostensibly each represents the city and all residents.
Council member Theresa Pontieri made the motion over what she termed Danko’s “disconcerting behavior with regards to trying to orchestrate a lawsuit being filed against the city for the referendum that we put on the ballot,” a reference to the ballot measure the council floated to end restraints on the city’s borrowing capacities.
Danko had attempted to recruit an opponent of the measure to file a lawsuit against the city. She filed two attempts on her own that were quickly dismissed. Danko’s friend, Alan Lowe, a former candidate for mayor, filed the lawsuit. A judge ruled against him days before the election. Lowe has since dropped the lawsuit since it’s moot: the referendum failed. (See: “Texts Show Ed Danko Seeking to Recruit Resident to File Lawsuit Against His Own Council’s Debt Referendum.”)
Pontieri took Danko to task for actively arguing against fighting the lawsuit when it was still a live matter, and doing so on the council and in a closed-door meeting where the council was discussing its response to Lowe.
“The conflict of interest in this regard is inexplicable,” Pontieri said. “The mental gymnastics that had to have been taking place, I can’t even imagine. I fear that if we don’t do something about this on this board, we are tacitly approving that behavior, and I refuse to do that.”
Danko was surprised as much by the motion as by its timing: today was the last meeting of this council, with three seats, including Danko’s, turning over to newly elected member next week. Danko had attended four-fifth of the nearly five-hour meeting, but had left about an hour before the censure motion. He said everyone had been cordial up until the time he had to leave for an appointment. He called Pontieri a “sore loser,” listing the referendum and other items that he said she was upset over (Pontieri had in fact predicted the referendum would fail and had herself been uneasy with its language.)
“This is her way of striking back. Where she doesn’t get her way, she gets mean,” Danko said, defending his actions about the lawsuit. “I didn’t set that woman up, Jeanie, other than recommend some attorneys to her, I didn’t offer to finance her lawsuit,” he said, nor had he financed Lowe’s lawsuit. “I was very surprised to hear that she did that. ‘I don’t want to infringe on your freedom of speech,’ then she infringed on my freedom of speech.”
Pontieri went further than references to the lawsuit, citing “several other things that Councilman Danko has done that I abhorrently disagree with,” such as disseminating social media memes that associated Mayor David Alfin with a donkey –including donkey sounds–and urging voters not to vote for “an ass” and what Danko has repeatedly called “Alfin bonds,” his terms for the referendum measure.
“When you’re in the political area,” Danko said in an interview, “you give up a lot of your rights, people can say a lot of things about you, it’s done all the time, that’s the price of being in the political arena, and if you don’t have a thick skin, my suggestion to you is don’t get in the ring.”
“I don’t want to impose on anybody’s freedom of speech, but we also have a certain level of decorum that we must conduct ourselves with, and decorum went out the window as soon as that gift hit social media,” Pontieri said. “That behavior should not be accepted by this council. The behaviors of threatening staff that I’ve heard about, threatening fellow council members that I’ve heard about, I just cannot continue to say that’s okay. And as we usher in a new board, three new members, I think we need to set a standard that that type of behavior cannot continue.”
Council member Charles Gambaro questioned the motion on two counts: he would have preferred that Danko was in the room to defend himself. And he was curious about whether any such precedent had been set, though itb wasn’t clear what relevance that had to the question on the table. Gamabaro appeared to be looking for a reason, any reason, not to join the vote for censure since he was on the council largely because Danko had championed his appointment a few weeks ago.
Alfin, who has been a recurring target of Danko’s attacks in and out of the council chamber, was “conflicted,” not wanting to appear as if he was retaliating against Danko. “Certainly, when I was elected, my first obligation I felt was to restore some level of decorum, if you’ll remember the days at that time was conflicted with everything but fisticuffs,” Alfin said, “so it’s certainly been a driving factor important to me from day one. I think we have worked towards decorum, but there have been episodes and incidents which certainly I’m not ok with.”
Council member Nick Klufas had seconded Pontieri with sharp language.
“I have two regrets over the last eight years, which are standing on my head,” Klufas said. “One is not standing up more against when Vice Mayor Danko is out there campaigning against our previous mayor, Melissa Holland, spreading lies door to door on Ring cameras. I thought that was absolutely astonishing.. Then number two, ever allowing him to have the title of vice mayor, hoping that he would become more of an adult and be able to understand the enormity of the situation and that title in itself. So for those reasons, I absolutely second your motion. I think it is long time that we establish the decorum that existed when I first started on this political journey, and I think that is a more successful path for our council, because really, our success as a function of how well we all can work together, and his behavior is unacceptable.”
A 2-2 vote, which looked possible after Alfin spoke, would have resulted in a failed motion. But when Alfin’s turn came to vote, after the other three had done so, Alfin joined the majority.
