Right Rudder Deposition List

Yesterday I teased this by showing the potential discovery list for the Right Rudder lawsuit, so today I will dive into that a bit.

If you are looking for an update to the Crystal River City Manager issue, I will have that soon. I am still waiting on documents and would rather put the full story out than do it piece by piece... if I have to wait much longer, I will do it in parts. Stay Tuned.

For for today... Right Rudder Lawsuit.

It has been awhile since I have talked in depth about this, but there has not been much movement on it. I kind of abandoned the whole behind the scenes issue when they voted to give Livewire the "Non-Commercial" Hangar. Why did I give up? Because I know pretty much what is going on. That does not mean that I am still not following it, but not as actively as I was.

Now, I can be pretty petty. I knew there was a push behind the scenes to bring Alonda McCarty and her business, Livewire Aviation, to Citrus County. I have written numerous things on this. This all culminated in the County agreeing to build a new hangar for her to lease.

But I noticed something in the lease that I do not think Commissioners noticed. Two of them that I spoke to about this were not aware that it was for non-commercial use. They thought it was so she could operate her business out of it. This lease ONL Y allows her to store her aircraft there and work on those aircraft only. It does not allow commercial use of the hangar space.

According to this, she cannot operate her business out of the airport location. Currently, her business is registered to a location in Homosassa, so maybe that was her plan all along... keep the operations there but store aircraft in Inverness. In any case, the commissioners have always talked this up as a business that will create jobs and operate out of the airport as part of the business park expansion... and maybe she gets a spot at the new building once those are built to do just that... Or maybe she gets more space if Right Rudder is forced out by the courts. We will see.

In any case, I did not point out the "non-commercial" aspect to the BOCC when they voted to approve this. Figured I would let them make that mistake if their intentions were to allow a commercial operation out of it because they were so gung-ho on making this happen.... See... petty.

Back to lawsuit.. All of that above is related as you will see.

On Monday, Nov 3, Right Rudder filed their disclosure list. This is a list of people they feel may have information related to their case and may be called for a deposition. It does not mean that they will be called, Right Rudder just feels that they may have information they desire for the trial. They also reserve the right to add more people if they learn throughout the process that others may have information as well... so the list may grow.

Here is the list.

I will spend a few moments going through these names and why they are of interest to Right Rudder. I have deep knowledge on this as I have over 10,000 documents related to the airport via public records requests. I have read every single one, so I feel I can know why these people are being called.

• Quincy Wylupek - He is the former airport manager. He helped negotiate the RR FBO contract and held countless meetings with the RR team. He was also the person who RR would direct issues to related to the airport (leases for instance).
• Bruce Register, David Pieklik and Frank Calascione - These are former economic directors for the county. Bruce was there for initial FBO contract and Frank came in during the FBO negotiations on extension as well as the Inverness business park moving forward. Frank, in particular, was involved in getting the "non-commercial" hangar that Livewire is getting. At the time, this hangar was brought to the county to give to RR to allow them to expand their operations. Somewhere along the line, Livewire, jumped in front.
• Walt Eastmond and Carlton Hall - Both of these are currently on staff and both work on construction projects. Both are involved with airport management and hangar construction, as it runs through their department. Carlton is the Public Works director and the boss of Walt and Todd, so provides direction to those individuals related to the airport.
• Todd Regan - he is the current project manager for the aviation division. He took over for Quincy. Todd has been the liason between the county and the airport FBOs. He also is the person involved in dealings with the new aviation attorney, Chris Wilson. Todd is the one who directed Chris to craft the default letters and ultimately the termination letter, although he likely did this with approval from Carlton and Steve Howard.. However.. none of that is indicated in the public documents that I have. Todd is also the one working with Alonda on the lease for the hangar. Todd is also the one who would be responsible for approving the leases that the county has said RR was in violation of.
• Mary Glancy - she is the former Risk Manager for the county. She would be responsible for reviewing leases and other legal documents for potential risk issues for the county, mainly from the insurance viewpoint of things. Leases would be forwarded to her to review from a risk standpoint. I believe she was also the one involved when a drunk driver crashed through a fence and drove on the runway after a charity event that took place at the airport.
• Gloria Bishop - I have not seen too much on her throughout all of this. My understanding is that she was involved in trying to get a partnership with RR and do a hangar at the Inverness airport for a training program of some sort through the school. Andy and Gloria approached the County with this partnership idea in hopes of the county approving the hangar space. I believe the ask was for a 50k sqft hangar in which Andy had funding in place for.
• Blue Water Aviation, INC - after RR was sent their default letter and ultimately the termination letter, Blue Water Aviation representatives met with Todd Regan in Inverness for lunch to discuss airport operations, based on emails that I have read. These largely centered on fueling, but apparently Todd asked them if they would be interested in taking over the FBO operations. Blue Water referenced the news regarding the termination of the RR lease and said that unless the county would do a 50 year lease (which they declined for RR), then they had no interest.
• Steve Howard - he is the mystery in all of this. I have often asked "Where is Steve" when going through these documents because he appears to not be involved in any of this. He was CC'd in emails and whatnot, but I do not see him giving any direction or even acknowledgement of most things that were happening. Sure, could have been at staff meetings or via phone, but it was just odd that he was non-existent and Todd appeared to be running things on his own. I doubt that was the case, so would be interesting to see what Steve has related to this.
• Commissioners: Janet Barek, Jeff Kinnard, Holly Davis - I assume these three were mentioned because of their roles as commissioners. Janet was not really on the board for much of this, but she did vote to terminate the contract. Jeff and Holly have been there for most, if not all of it, but I do not see them really involved. Jeff did reach out to Steve Howard once RR notified him of what was happening, but other than that, I do not see any involvement with these 3..
• Commissioner Diana Finegan - she raised an issue back in 2023 I believe about RR operating an airbnb on the airport property. This became an issue because someone reported health issues related to this rental and Diana got involved due to that. I do not see her involved in anything airport related aside from that.
• Commissioner Rebecca Bays - she was all into the airport issues. She questioned staff on a lot of things related to the airport. She was involved with trying to get Alonda the hangar to move her business here. There were numerous text messages between them related to airport issues, largely Alonda commenting about something and Rebecca then going to staff about those issues. She would also join Alonda in dinners with Daniel Elsea from ICE while the two were in Tampa on a couple of occasions. She worked with Alonda to create a presentation packet that was taken to Tallahassee, without approval of the BOCC (Daniel did the design work, including using the County seal without approval). She was also involved in the lease and checking on updates for Alonda.
  
  The main thing of interest here would be the text conversations between her and Alonda. I have messages going back into 2023 between them. They texted quite a bit about the airport, usually once or twice a week, but suddenly, between February and November 2023, they stopped texting about the airport. It was like radio silence.. Yet, Rebecca was still inquiring on issues at the airport. Then November 2023 to February 2024, they picked back up as if they had been talking all along... again texting once or twice a week related to the airport... Then February 2024 through November 2024... radio silence again. But during these times were the dinners, lease negotiations, etc that Rebecca was involved in... Then November 2024 throughout summer of 2025 (when I stopped asking for texts), they were texting every few days/weeks about the airport.
  
  I questioned these gaps in time as it appeared odd that they go from texting to not texting for months... TWICE... but was told everything was provided to me. So it will be interesting to see if anything turns up for those dates.
• Alonda McCarty - as mentioned previously, she is getting a "non-corporate" hangar to move her helicopters here. She was introduced to the county through former commissioner Ruthie Schlabach. Rebecca then took her under her wing so to speak and helped her get the hangar. This hangar was originally meant for RR, but she was given it due to her connection to the commissioners. The interesting thing here is that she would have information that would correlate to Rebecca, particularly the text messages. Could be interesting there.
• Former Commissioner Ruthie Schlabach - As mentioned, she introduced Alonda to Steve Howard back in 2022 I believe in an email. I do not have much information from Ruthie, other than what was in her BOCC email. I have asked for records from her, but have not received a response. I do recall getting an astronomical quote for her records, which I then questioned because according to state law, once someone leaves office, they are supposed to turn over ALL records in their possession. The county has admitted they do not have any from her that she has turned over. I largely dropped this because she would not have public records related to the current issues with the airport and now as a private citizen, would not be required to turn over texts/emails... however, a court can force that if they relate to the case at hand.
• ICE - This is the firm that is designing the Inverness Business Park at the airport. They are also designing the hangar for Alonda. The interesting thing here is that Daniel (one of the ICE Partners) has met with Alonda and Rebecca a couple of times for dinner while they were in Tampa for other events. Daniel also worked with Alonda to design the document that Rebecca took to Tallahassee with her.
• Denise Lyn - the current county attorney. She would have been involved in the contract process for the FBO. She has largely been out of the loop with current airport stuff because the county hired the aviation attorney. One interesting thing here is that she asked Todd to send her any documents that he would be sending out to people so she can have them.... he did not send her the default letter or the termination letters prior to them being sent to RR.

So there you have it. Those are people currently being eyed for depositions by Right Rudder. Who knows if all of them get called or not.

The thing of interest for me are the text messages. I cannot force anyone to provide text messages unless I file a public records lawsuit if I think they are being untruthful. Even then, I would have to prove I have reason to believe something is being withheld. The court would have to agree to that and then ask for the devices and go through a whole process. I certainly do not want to deal with all of that necessarily and deal with the expenses of all of that. I also have no way to get messages from private citizens as they are not required to disclose information.

However, these depositions would become public record after the hearings. I could then look through the depositions and see what information was provided. The court is able to compel the individuals to turn over their devices if they believe there are records pertinent to the case on them. They can do this for individuals who otherwise would not be subject to records disclosure as well.

So I will be interested to read those once this case is over and they become public record. Could be interesting!