<<< FROM PREVIOUS pool in the small backyard, but it’s the aboveground kind. Lee explains how living small and working hard earned him freedom. “Although I have taken a daring position here,” he says of his pension crusade, “part of the reason I can do so is because I have saved my pennies and been fiscally sensible.” His one extravagance? He’s spent more than $180,000 of his own money on lawsuits. He will recoup the outlay by winning, he explains. “If I had lost every penny, I’d point out that we would not have gone starving,” he says. “With my head sticking out of this neosaurus costume, I might not appear like an ordinary, run-of-the-mill crimefighter.” — Batman For most people, one bruising round of whistleblowing is enough. Remember, however, Lee works harder. This isn’t the first time he’s battled wrong; doubt it will be the last. The March 2006 issue of The Economist told the story. It featured Lee as an example of the fate of a typical whistleblower. Title: “Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power.” The magazine recapped the consequences of Lee’s decision in 1999 to turn in the top three executives at National Fuel to the Securities and Exchange Commission. They broke the law, he said. According to news accounts and court documents, Lee alleged the men illegally backdated stock options. Dating a stock transfer back to a day when the dollar value was low can greatly maximize earnings as the stock jumps in value. In one of the years he documented, the Buffalo News reported, Lee alleged each executive earned an extra $100,000. But National Fuel turned the tables. The company sued him for divulging secrets he’d been privy to as company attorney. And won. A judge ordered Lee to return company records, which also happened to be his evidence of the stock deception. He lost his house. He lost his job. A judge ordered him to see a psychiatrist and forbid him to discuss National Fuel unless it related to his utility bill. National Fuel hired an investigator to follow him. Alerting reporters and law enforcement of the deception, Lee violated the order 83 times. For his efforts, at one point, Lee faced more than $500,000 in fines. While the gag on his free speech was later deemed a civil rights violation and the ordered psychiatric visits were thrown out, Lee volunteered to give up his law license and retire at 44 years old to put an end to it. He tells Folio Weekly that both Bob and his parents were sick. When a Buffalo News reporter asked Lee if he’d take the same course of action knowing it would be career suicide, Lee laughed. “I would because I had to,” Lee said. “Based on my values, I felt I had to do it.” “It sounds like something I would have said,” Lee tells Folio Weekly. “Some things are just wrong.” “Good grammar is essential, Robin.” — Batman Despite his full-tilt investigation and the stacks of public records — some two feet 14 | FOLIOWEEKLY.com | JUNE 17-23, 2015
“I will continue to be involved on these issues, even if you and your staff continue to treat me with what I call ‘begrudging tolerance colored by disdain.’” tall — lining the walls of his home office, Lee insists the PFPF doesn’t consume him. Like Bruce Wayne, he has a life. He and Bob travel frequently, he says. They go out once a week to see a movie in a theater. Lee also enjoys a weekly trouncing of opponents at the Jacksonville Scrabble Club. He’s the highest-ranked Scrabble player in Duval County, and ranked 17th in the state of Florida by the North American Scrabble Players Association. But he’s neglected some mundane duties to answer Gotham’s call. As Lee sips coffee from a Superheroes mug, spiky seed heads in the backyard wiggle in the slight breeze. “I’ll get to it,” he jokes with a wave of his hand, “eventually.” In the meantime, the guy has a city to save. “You’re much stronger than you think. You are. Trust me.” — Superman On the conference room table at the downtown offices of the PFPF were the stacks of public records Lee had requested. Lee says Executive Director John Keane told him before he could look at them, he’d have to pay $326.40 to cover the salary of the senior staffer who assembled the documents. (Florida public records law allows a government to charge for the time it takes an employee to fulfill a records request if it involves an “extensive” amount of time, but the charge must be reasonable.) Keane also said Lee would be charged $27 an hour to pay for a secretary to make copies and $35 an hour for
an employee to sit with him to protect the records while he reviewed them. Lee was outraged. Keane was now the Joker to this Batman. “I came away with the conclusion John Keane was a little bit underhanded,” Lee told Folio Weekly, recalling his visit to the PFPF on Dec. 19, 2010. “He was really deceptive and he really didn’t want me looking into their business.” Lee filed a lawsuit. Lee triumphed, eventually, but he’s still battling for attorney’s fees. The case was heard before the Florida Supreme Court in February. The PFPF says it shouldn’t have to pay Lee’s fees because it didn’t intentionally violate the law. That’s what the first judge ruled. It’s an argument with big implications for Florida’s public records law. Most people can’t afford to fork over $180,000 in legal fees. An attorney takes a case because he or she can recoup costs by winning. Because of that lawsuit, the Miami Herald named Lee one of its five “Sunshine Citizens” last year. Lee also filed a public records case against State Attorney Angela Corey. In his investigations into the PFPF Board of Trustees, Lee discovered longtime trustee Peter Sleiman hadn’t lived in Duval County since 2006. He forced Sleiman to resign in December 2010, though Lee’s Penguin didn’t actually step down until City Council appointed a replacement in August 2012. Lee wanted Corey to prosecute Sleiman. He hectored Corey, as is his modus operandi. “I don’t like being ignored and I don’t like the appearance that powerful public officials can violate the law willy-nilly,” Lee wrote in one letter to Corey.
“Forgive my contempt for your office, but your office richly deserves contempt,” he wrote in another dated Jan. 25, 2011. His badgering of our prickly state attorney didn’t inspire action. But it did lead to what has to be one of the most bizarre interludes in Lee’s pension crusade. On Feb. 23, 2011, two investigators from Corey’s office showed up at Lee’s home around 10 a.m. One of them was wearing a gun, according to a statement Lee and his partner wrote shortly after the visit. Lee also recounts his version in a complaint he sent to Corey on Feb. 27, 2011. State attorney investigator John Zipperer asked Lee why he cared so much about Sleiman and the Police & Fire Pension Fund, Lee recounts. Zipperer explained Lee’s telephone calls and letters might be construed as “veiled threats.” He should stop, Zipperer advised. Lee’s lawsuit, filed on April 3, 2012, questioned a stipulation of Corey that public records be paid for either in cash or by money order. Circuit Court Judge Karen Cole agreed the requirement violated state public records laws. Cole also eviscerated Corey on the home visit. “Plainly, a visit by two SAO investigators to a citizen only days after citizen had made a public records request directed to the SAO, coupled with the advice the citizen should ‘stop calling the SAO’ would have a chilling effect of the willingness of the citizen (or most citizens) to pursue production of the public records to which he or she is entitled under Florida law,” Judge Cole wrote. (See Folio Weekly, “Sunshine Law: 1, Angela Corey: 0,” in blog post published Aug. 6, 2014, at http://bit.ly/1FK96Dt)