VERO BEACH — If anyone needs to refresh his or her memory prior to next month’s referendum on the sale of Vero electric as to how we got to where we are today, Brian Heady has a book for you: “Liars, Cheats, & Thieves: A story of a Florida municipal electric provider, and electrifying choices.”
The self-published book, which has already sold 100 copies, chronicles the recent history of Vero electric and the City Council decision to sell it to Florida Power and Light, providing the insider’s view of a professional outsider who remarkably came to serve from 2009 to 2011 on the council.
The book names names, and some of those named say Heady got it pretty much right.
“As far as the facts, there isn’t anything I would take exception to,” said former Vero Mayor Pilar Turner.
Glenn Heran, a leader of the fight to sell Vero electric, called the book “an interesting read” and said he found it generally accurate.
“If Brian’s book reminds the people who are going into the voting booth on March 12 of the kind of people who were in charge of the city, and the kind of people who could someday again be running the city and the utility if we don’t sell it, then it’s a very useful book,” he said.
The book, which Heady categorizes as “creative nonfiction” because he took some liberties with dialogue, starts with the anger that bubbled up in the summer of 2009 when outrageous Vero electric rates catapulted him and fellow rabble-rouser Charlie Wilson into office to open talks with FPL about the sale.
The book tells how the previous year, no member of the then City Council had actually read a 20-year, $2 billion contract with the Orlando Utilities Commission before voting on it.
To complicate matters, the city’s consultants and attorneys had made no fewer than 115 changes to the contract before putting the signature page of the changed contract on then-Mayor Tom White’s desk to sign.
Eighty-two pages into the book, Heady recounts former City Manager Jim Gabbard flatly denying that the city was being investigated by State Attorney Bruce Colton’s office even as City Clerk Tammy Vock and a two-inch stack of records confirmed the city was being was being looked at for possible bid-rigging with regard to the OUC contract.
From Heady’s point of view, it’s an intriguing tale of rampant corruption, greed, abuse of power, misuse of Vero Beach Police resources, political malfeasance and maybe even fraud.
All these alleged wrongdoings have gone unpunished, Heady says, but now at least he’s recorded them in “Liars, Cheats, & Thieves.”
Turner admitted that revisiting the 2010 election, when Operation Clean Sweep ousted the old guard from the City Council and installed in office three proponents of the sale, was a bit exhausting – having lived the story.
“You relive all those things, and the frustration,” she said. “I admire him for at least putting it down on paper. I thought he was very careful in saying things that he could show were documented.”
All of the “characters” in Heady’s account are named except one, whom Heady refers to as Private Caller or PC.
“When he calls, he blocks his number and I still don’t know who he is, but he’s obviously someone with a great deal of inside information about the city and the electric utility,” Heady said.
Heran pops up throughout the book, along with Dr. Stephen Faherty, as two of the key players. Heran is best known for having devised an interactive spreadsheet called “the model” which showed that the community would be tens of millions of dollars better off each year after a sale to FPL.
But behind the scenes, Heran and Faherty served as advisors to city, county and Indian River Shores officials, shedding light on some of the more complex aspects of crafting a sale.
“The thing that Brian lays out in the book, if you’re paying attention, is what Steve and I have said all along: that government, and the City of Vero Beach in particular, has no business operating an electric utility,” Heran said.
