Ethics Commission Tosses Yet Another Complaint Against Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin, This One from Familiar Name

For the third time in six months, the Florida Ethics Commission has dismissed a complaint filed against Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin, finding it legally insufficient.

The complaint was filed by Jeani Duarte, who in September twice filed suit in Flagler County Circuit Court in an attempt to stop the city’s referendum on a charter amendment that would remove borrowing limits on the city. Both times, Circuit Judge Chris France called Duarte’s pleadings legally insufficient, but also calling them “nonsensical.” She had also filed similar paperwork with the city, some of it called a “demand letter.”




The complaint against Alfin appears to follow the same pattern. Duarte filed it on Sept. 21, four days before her filing in court. She claims she saw Alfin at the Palm Coast Post Office the afternoon of Sept. 12 attempting to “intercept mail from an address he does not reside at.” The postal worker, whom Duarte identifies as “Kecia,” reportedly would not let Alfin claim the mail.

Alfin, Duarte claims, then said: “Well, I control the city of Palm Coast,” to which the postal worker allegedly said, in Duarte’s transcription: “Well, your gonna have to bring proof that you are who you say you are and evidence like a death certificate.”

Alfin said in an interview he had “no conversation regarding a subject like this of any kind. That’s just weird.” Whoever was reporting the claim–Alfin did not know who had done so at that point in the interview–“either misunderstood me, misplaced me or who knows.”




He said he had been at the post office some weeks ago as the manager of an estate in a probate matter. He was doing a change of address for a deceased resident, and “forwarding the deceased person’s mail to my address,” he said. “I retrieved the held mail, correct, because I have a court order from the judge to manage the probate.” The postal worker reviewed his documentation from the court, he said. “My position with the city was never discussed, nor was my position as mayor nor any such thing, and I can back that up because the concept is so opposite to anything I think, it’s just not possible.”

He called the accusation “freaky.”

Duarte alleged “misuse of power.” She then added to her ethics complaint parts of the demand letter she sent the city, accusing the city of “knowingly and willingly” placing deceptive language in the proposed amendment. Most of the 23 pages included in the ethics complaint are almost identical to the cobble of documents incoherently collated and made up of a mixture of city documents and Duarte’s own pleadings, including the “motion for injunctive relief” she filed in court.

The ethics complaint never got to the point where the commission evaluated its factual validity. There was no investigation, because there was no jurisdiction: nothing Alfin is alleged to have done would have allowed him to profit materially from his action, so there was no issue of corruption or misuse of his position, the commission found, and therefore no need to go further.




The commission’s role is often misunderstood by those who file complaints: that role is limited to instances where an official may have used the official’s position to profit from it personally. Mere bad behavior, misjudgments, or controversial votes or decisions–such as the wording of referendums–are not within the scope of the ethics commission. Nevertheless, people often file frivolous complaints, and at times knowingly frivolous complaints, in an attempt to embarrass the official, knowing that the complaints are eventually made public. The two complaints against Alfin this year were in a similar vein, and were timed with his re-election campaign. (He lost.)

Alfin himself appears not to have known the Duarte complaint was filed when he was interviewed about it this morning. While the commission had no jurisdiction, the allegation Duarte made about Alfin claiming to control Palm Coast recalled a similar instance more than two years ago when Joe Mullins, then a county commissioner, made a similar claim to a Florida Highway Patrol trooper in an attempt to get out of being ticketed, saying he ran Flagler County. But that interaction was captured on the trooper’s dashcam video. (Mullins lost his re-election bid in a landslide.) No such evidence was turned in with Duarte’s allegation.

In late August and early September, Palm Coast City Council member Ed Danko and Duarte had numerous interactions as Duarte was looking to sue the city over the referendum issue, and Danko was attempting to recruit her to be the named plaintiff. It did not work out as Duarte did not want to be “controlled.” She filed on her own, while Danko’s friend, Alan Lowe (the former candidate for mayor against Alfin) filed the lawsuit against the city over the referendum. That lawsuit is getting its first hearing Friday.