RSM Councilwoman Gamble Responds To FPPC Complaint

I recently wrote about the FPPC investigation into RSM City Councilwoman Carol Gamble and detailed the complaint and provided a copy of the response from the FPPC. They are investigating, that doesn’t mean wrongdoing occurred, but it does mean that her response was not adequate to throw out the complaint. I will snapshot each bit and address it, this is only informational to the public to illustrate the tactics used by Gamble, the FPPC does not require a response from me as I’m not the one who is under investigation.

So let’s consider this for a moment. She uses her first two exhibits to show the vote totals from two elections that I did not win. How is that in any way related to the complaint that was filed, which was to provide receipts for the expense on her disclosures? It isn’t in any way relevant, and as I’ve stated, I’m not running in 2020, you can take that to the bank. Yes, I’ve filed Public Record Act Requests (PRA), I believe 6 so far this year, which is hardly excessive, and is there something wrong with the public looking at PUBLIC records? If they were all online, I could search them up myself, but the city forces you to file a request to see them. She uses the plural form on the FPPC complaint, I’ve filed one complaint, this one, and I told her I was going to file it and I gave her 5 months to respond to my simple request. Nothing she says here is relevant to the complaint, it is simply her standard deflection tactic.

Well, I was wrong, I thought Tony was her Planning Commissioner all these years and when she left office in 2004 for “personal reasons” and Tony was appointed to the council, it was for that reason. This information is not on the city website that I can find, which would require a PRA to find out, but as we saw in the prior statement, she doesn’t like people to file PRA’s, it makes them invalid for some reason. This is also not relevant to the FPPC complaint, I was simply trying to provide some background of the city as I’d never filed an FPPC complaint before and was not familiar with what should be included.

It’s not an evasion, it’s not relevant to the complaint, again, I was trying to provide some background to the complaint I was filing in terms of the finances used in the election. The person they ran against could have been anyone.

I stated it was my belief based on information available to me, I never said I’d spoken to her or that she’d made a public announcement, so this is mostly deflection.

Well, if she’d answered my email about the trip, then we wouldn’t have gotten to this point. It seems weird that campaign funds can be used for club membership (Lincoln Club) and a weeklong trip to Washington DC. Considering that sum is nearly half what she would pay for an election campaign and spending the money drained her reserves significantly, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that she wasn’t planning to run again and just wanted to use the money. You can do some decent networking in DC for a week. Had Gamble emailed me back when I asked, then I would have dropped it, but she proceeds to say this:

Gamble makes a number of assertions here, so let’s break those down. First of all, anyone can file a PRA with the city and get copies of the emails I’ve sent and you can see that I don’t regularly email or harass them, here is the timeline of emails I’ve sent to Gamble in 2019:

• 1 topic in February about communication with Raintree Investment Corporation with 1 follow up
• 1 topic in April about the campaign finance question that the FPPC complaint is based on with 2 follow-ups over the course of 3 months
• 1 email at the beginning of August about an incident with her
• 6 emails to each member of the city council and city manager at the end of August after I spoke to the city council, which provided evidence for each topic I brought up when I spoke. They wanted proof, so I provided proof.

I have never manipulated any response from her and never used her emails in an article until the FPPC one, but her closing statement is what is very telling. She seems to believe that she is not a Public SERVANT but a Public MASTER. She chooses what she thinks is worth her notice, she ignored my 2nd email of the year in April because she didn’t want to answer the question. I told her in late August I was going to file an FPPC complaint on the topic and she still ignored it. She feels that residents filing PRA’s is an abuse, and asking their representative’s reasonable questions is beneath her notice. The level of hubris and ego associated with her response is truly beyond the pale. The fact that she has to constantly attack and attempt to belittle any person who attempts to question her just illustrates how unfit she is for public office. I’m not the first private citizen she has done this to and as long as people are asking questions, I won’t be the last.