- November 17, 2024
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When Canvassing Board members arrived at the Canvassing Board room for the Oct. 29 morning meeting, they were in for a surprise: Elections Supervisor Kimberle Weeks had hired a court reporter — who was sitting to the side of the board table with her stenotype machine when board members arrived — to transcribe the meeting’s proceedings.
County Commissioner and Canvassing Board alternate Barbara Revels, who stood in at the Oct. 29 meeting for County Commission Chairman and Canvassing Board member George Hanns, immediately asked who was paying for the court reporter.
Weeks replied that the money was coming out of her office’s budget.
The court reporter, Mary Graybosch, is not the first person Weeks has retained for Canvassing Board business without first receiving the board's formal assent. She earlier retained Orlando-area attorney Roberta Walton in an attempt to make Walton the Canvassing Board attorney in place of Canvassing Board Attorney Al Hadeed, who is also the county attorney.
“We’re all wondering where she’s going to get the money to pay for the attorney she’s hired," Hanns said in an nterview after the meeting, which he missed because of a doctor's appointment for an eye injury. "But at the same time, I don’t know anything about her hiring other people. At this point, she’s pulling out all the stops to defend herself, and there’s nothing to defend. Her actions have created this whole scenario," he added.
Weeks said Hadeed’s position as Canvassing Board attorney is a conflict of interest because current county commissioners are on the ballot.
Hadeed has been attending Canvassing Board meetings in the course of his job as county attorney. Weeks said she is paying Walton, who was present at the Oct. 29 meeting, from the Supervisor of Elections Office budget.
The court reporter’s hiring came after an Oct. 24 meeting in which Weeks again wrangled with the other board members over meeting minutes.
Weeks, who has prepared minutes in the past, has done so in an unusual format: instead of just recording motions and actions, she has transcribed large parts of board conversations that she recorded on her iPhone.
Fellow Canvassing Board members, concerned about the minutes’ accuracy, voted Sept. 12 to have more standard meeting minutes, and in an Oct. 24 meeting, approved minutes prepared by county staff over Weeks’ objections.
“As supervisor of elections, I’ve always done the minutes, I’m going to continue to do the minutes; I don’t need anybody doing the minutes for me,” she said at that meeting. “I won’t have another county office doing the minutes for this office that I am responsible for, so I reject these minutes,” she said.
She suggested the board hire a court reporter to transcribe meetings verbatim, but no one replied to the suggestion during the meeting and there was no formal action on Weeks' request.
Canvassing Board Chairwoman and County Judge Melissa Moore Stens said the minutes are the Canvassing Board’s, not Weeks', and the board at the Oct. 24 meeting approved minutes prepared by the county.
The board had 966 absentee ballots to canvass at its Oct. 29 meeting, for a total of about 7870 so far.
