News Briefs

+ Kovach proffers televised workshop compromise
Televising the afternoon portion of Sarasota County School Board workshops has been a source of tension between members of the board for months.

Bridget Ziegler, who won her board seat in November, made it one of her top priorities during her campaign, bringing it before the school board and the Sarasota County Commission during their joint meeting Sept. 30. She was met with opposition from fellow board members.

Frank Kovach discussed the issue again at the board’s work session Tuesday.

Kovach offered a compromise: Some things need informal, frank discussion, he said, but any policy or potential issue that the board would later vote on should be allocated to the televised section of the meetings.

As chair of the board, if there were something on the agenda that needed to be discussed in the morning, when it would be televised, he would rearrange the agenda, Kovach said.

Ziegler, who championed televising both portions of the board’s meetings, said she was pleased with Kovach’s solution.

“It wasn’t a contentious issue finally,” she said. “Overall, I’m excited to see something I care about moving forward.”

+ Lourdes Ramirez files suit against Bob Waechter
Two years after Bob Waechter, former Sarasota GOP chairman, used Lourdes Ramirez’s name to make donations to Democratic candidates, he could be facing a civil lawsuit in federal court.

In 2012, Waechter made donations with a pre-paid debit card under Ramirez’s name to negatively affect her campaign as a Republican candidate for the Sarasota County Commission District 4 seat, according to prosecutors. Ramirez lost to Alan Maio in the primary in August.

Waechter accepted a plea deal in December 2013. Judge Donna Berlin sentenced him to two years of probation, a $5,000 fine and three months of house arrest.

But Ramirez has not finished with her end of the issue.

Ramirez is being represented by Merritt & Sanderson, a firm in Osprey. She is suing for appropriation, misrepresentation, libel, fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy.

Waechter directed comment to his attorney, Morgan Bentley of Bentley & Bruning. Bentley said it’s not unexpected that Ramirez filed the suit, but said it would be hard to prove she lost the race because of the fake contributions.

+ Sarasota County teen’s overdose leads to arrests
A teen is recovering from an overdose after using a hallucinogenic drug, and five men are in custody following a Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office investigation of the incident.

Deputies arrested four teens and a 25-year-year-old man last weekend on a variety of narcotics charges, including possession of 25i-NBOMe, a relatively new drug similar to LSD and MDMA, also known as molly. Officers seized 26 hits of 25i, 9.1 grams of molly, roughly 60 grams of marijuana and 5.3 grams of hash, according to a Sheriff’s Office news release.

The arrests came after surveillance and undercover drug purchases, according to probable cause affidavits.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classified 25i compounds as Schedule I illegal drugs last year, explaining that “the data suggest that extremely small amounts of these drugs can cause seizures, cardiac and respiratory arrest and death.”