Mayor Norris Files for Rehearing in Lawsuit He Lost Over Gambaro Appointment and Distorts Ethics Decision

Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris through his attorney on Thursday filed a motion for rehearing of his lawsuit against the city and Council member Charles Gambaro, who Norris still claims was illegally appointed despite a court order to the contrary. 

Separately, Norris, in a truculent social media posting replete with errors and mischaracterizations late Friday, crowed that the Florida Commission on Ethics “has officially dismissed” the complaint the City Council filed against him, and did so “due to insufficient legal standing.” 

The two issues are not related but stem from the same fount of political animus that has defined Norris’s tenure since his election in November. Norris has waged a one-man war against the council and the administration over unsubstantiated claims of corruption and charter violations while himself being found by an independent investigation to have violated the charter, repeatedly behaved offensively and created a hostile environment at City Hall. 

He filed the lawsuit against the city two weeks after the council censured him for his violations and misbehavior and sent a complaint about those violations to the Ethics Commission. 

Circuit Judge Chris France on July 3 ruled that Norris had no standing to bring the lawsuit. Even if he had standing, the council acted within the city charter to appoint Gambaro to the District 4 seat for the more than two years remaining in that term. Council member Cathy Heighter resigned last August, prompting the appointment. France said “essential election deadlines” had lapsed, creating a “logistical impossibility” of holding an election for the seat that Nov. 5. 

The two-page motion for rehearing argues that the judge relied too exclusively on one legal avenue (referred to by its Latin phrase, quo warranto, or “by what authority”) while overlooking another. France ruled that only the Attorney General or someone who was contesting the Disrict 4 seat could have had standing. Norris was neither. The order cited half a dozen precedents. Sabatini cites one precedent–a ruling dismissing a lawsuit over education funding, not elections–to support the claim that the judge should have considered Norris’s standing under a different portion of Florida law, the Declaratory Judgment Act. 

It’ll be up to France to decide whether that amounts to a legal error or not. Until then, the motion for a rehearing suggests that Norris is considering an appeal. Such appeals must first be preceded by a rehearing motion. The argument, however, is “completely without merit,” says City Council member Theresa Pontieri, an attorney. 

The city does not have to file a response. It may. It may also file a motion for sanctions and attorneys’ fees, what’s commonly referred to as a 57.105 motion, after its designation in state law. The court may rule in favor of the motion if it finds that a lawsuit was frivolous or unsupported by evidence. The council asked Norris to pay some or all the $30,000 the city incurred fighting his lawsuit. He said he would not, and said he did not care if he “cost the city $1 million.” The city’s motion would have to be filed within 21 days of the motion for rehearing. 

Norris typically responds to criticism or setbacks with deflections. He did so after the investigative report about his misconduct and his first censure vote, when he raised the bizarre and still unsubstantiated if defaming claims of a quid pro quo involving a developer. He did so after France’s ruling, when he claimed he’d never been told by the city attorneys that he had no standing to sue. He appears to be doing it again, after the Council’s second censure vote and its decision to ask the governor to remove Norris. 

The deflection was in the form of the Friday social media post about the Ethics Commission’s decision, in his interpretation, to toss out the city’s complaint. 

For all his past fabrications, there is no reason to think Norris is making that up: the Ethics Commission likely found no “legal sufficiency” to the Palm Coast complaint. That will be confirmed Wednesday, when the commission announces decisions reached at last Friday’s closed session of he commission. 

Whenever the Ethics Commission meets, it holds a closed-door session to review complaints for legal sufficiency. Most are tossed. A few are approved for investigation. The commission’s decisions are not announced until the following Wednesday, when orders are also issued regarding each complaint. 

Plaintiffs, respondents and their attorneys (meaning those who file an ethics complaint and those who are targeted by one) have the right to be in the closed session. It appears that either Norris or a Norris representative was in the closed session, enabling him to conclude that the city’s complaint against him was tossed, if inaccurately in the details. 

Norris claimed the complaint was “filed by the Vice Mayor,” a reference to Pontieri. It was not. It was filed collectively by the City Council, with Pointieri’s signature among four. 

Norris claimed the complaint was tossed “due to insufficient legal standing.” He was conflating language in the lawsuit he lost with the Ethics Commission’s intentions. The commission is very clear every month when it announces what complaints it reviews. It uses the same language every month, when it issues the decisions: “These reviews are limited to questions of jurisdiction and determinations as to whether the contents of the complaint are adequate to allege a violation of the Code of Ethics or other laws within the Commission’s jurisdiction, and are based on personal knowledge or information other than hearsay,” the commission states. “As no factual investigation precedes the reviews, the Commission’s conclusions do not reflect on the accuracy of the allegations made in these complaints.” (Emphasis added.) 

The commission routinely tosses complaints that may be valid, but are not in the commission’s purview. There was always a question as to the right venue for the council’s complaint: the Ethics Commission investigates violations of the state’s ethics code, specifically cases where public officials misuse their office for private ends or put their public duties in conflict with their private business. Norris has never been accused of doing that, nor is the complaint against him making any such allegations. 

In the same social media post, Norris refers to “a letter, reportedly from the city council,” being “circulated to Governor DeSantis in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to remove a duly elected mayor.” The letter is not “reportedly” being “circulated.” The council voted 4-1, with Norris in dissent, to have it drafted and signed by the four approving council members. It was sent last week. 

Norris claimed in the same post that “over 60% of voters in Palm Coast chose me to fix this city, and I will not be intimidated or distracted by political games.” While a common error among the elected, Norris is misrepresenting his election win. He won 63 percent of the vote in his runoff against Cornelia Manfre (and 31 percent of the vote in the primary, sending him to the runoff).

 But to use his formula, only 46 percent of voters in Palm Coast chose him. In other words, the 33,578 votes in his favor represent 46 percent of the 72,932 Palm Coast voters registered at the time of that election. He is not quite a majority mayor. But that’s not unusual in Palm Coast history, and he’s well ahead of the 5.7 percent of the electorate that Jon Netts won in 2011 in his re-election. 

Norris claims the letter to the governor is “filled with misinformation and false claims,” though the letter’s claims are well documented. He says he will “continue fighting every day to bring integrity, transparency and real leadership to our city.” He has in fact, abandoned almost all his mayoral responsibilities, refusing to meet with city staff to be briefed on city issues, refusing to sit on all but one committee or advisory council where the city is represented, refusing to hold city-sponsored town halls (he is holding one at the VFW this evening and stressing that it is not sponsored by the city), refusing to hold any of the 100-some community meetings a year his predecessors held, and refusing to act as the mayor at ceremonial city occasions.