From the Citrus Co. Chronicle
Offical: Airboat law unclear
By Terry Witt
Assistant County Attorney Michele Lieberman said Thursday she plans to drop misdemeanor criminal charges against two Inverness men cited by the sheriff’s office Dec. 30 for violating a nighttime airboat curfew that no longer exists.
Christopher Michael Frye, 34, of 701 S. Little John Ave., Inverness, and Aaron Richard Bergwerff, 22, of 749 Red Bud Terrace, Inverness, were stopped at 12 a.m. on the Withlacoochee River for operating airboats between the hours of 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. in violation of the county airboat curfew.
The pair was issued criminal citations and ordered to appear in court on Jan. 25, but Lieberman said the curfew is no longer valid and she has no choice but to drop the charges. She said if the sheriff’s office continues to cite people for the curfew in the future, those charges will also be dropped.
Frye and his passenger, Michael Allen Stork, 49, of 309 N. Citrus Ave., Inverness, won’t escape criminal prosecution completely. They face multiple wildlife violations for shooting a doe deer from their airboat on the same night, according to a sheriff’s report. It was the poaching that attracted the attention of sheriff’s deputies.
After deputies found the poaching suspects, officers in boats worked with deputies in the air (equipped with an infrared camera) to find the doe. The deer had died of multiple gunshot wounds. The wildlife violations were issued by officers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the report said.
As for the curfew, Lieberman said sheriff’s office General Counsel Richard Wesch was warned in a July 17 memo that the curfew ordinance was no longer valid and should not be enforced. She said a law passed by the Legislature in 2006 voided the county’s nighttime curfew for airboats.
“If the Legislature says we can no longer do it, it’s no longer effective,” she said.
An airboat curfew has existed in Citrus County since 1978, but was modified in 1989 and 2000, Lieberman said.
In 2006, she said the Legislature passed a law preventing local governments from discriminating against airboats except by a two-thirds vote of a governing body enacting an ordinance. She said the new state law voided Citrus County’s curfew.
She said the Citrus County Commission could re-enact the old curfew by a two-thirds vote or it could repeal the old law and pass a new one. But she said the old ordinance, in her view, became invalid on July 1 when Section 327.60 of state statutes was amended.
Lieberman is the chief assistant county attorney but also serves as a prosecutor for cases involving criminal violations of county ordinances. She said her interpretation of the new state statute was a conservative one, but that was because violations of the curfew can result in criminal arrests, which can be placed on the personal records of the person cited.
She wrote to Wesch on Jan. 12 reminding him of the July 17 memo he had received about the curfew ordinance being invalid and asked him to remind deputies the curfew was no longer on the books.
“The county’s position at that time, as the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office was informed, was that such ordinance should no longer be enforced unless and until the Board (of County Commissioners) chose to reenact such by a two-thirds vote. We are currently drafting an ordinance to address the issue,” Lieberman wrote.
Lieberman said she plans to present a new airboat ordinance to commissioners at one of their February meetings, but the board would need a two-thirds vote to approve it.
Wesch could not be reached for comment, but Sheriff Jeff Dawsy replied through his spokeswoman, Gail Tierney, that he would soon meet with Commissioner John Thrumston about the issue.
“He said we are aware of the whole curfew issues and he plans to meet with Commissioner Thrumston shortly,” Tierney said.
