06/18/2026
The Gavel Is Not A Weapon.
On the morning of June 9, 2026, State Attorney Bill Gladson quietly closed one of the more embarrassing chapters in recent Citrus County civic history. In a formal decline-to-file memorandum, Gladson ruled that Josh Wooten — the Citrus County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO — would face no criminal charges for a brief, disputed physical contact during the May 12 Board of County Commissioners meeting. The incident began as Wooten, who said he thought the encounter was friendly at first, walked past the man and tapped him on the shoulder. The man got up and shoved Wooten whereupon it was immediately escalated by Commission Chair Diana Finegan as she yelled repeatedly for a law enforcement detention against Wooten. He had just criticized her for not allowing an Attorney to speak in response to a termination letter over a land deal that could have cost the county millions of dollars in damages and where the facts of the matter had never been heard before the board.
Gladson described the contact as "unfortunate" but explicitly found it did not rise to criminality. He went further, writing that the episode is "yet another example of the need for decorum and respect of others in public forums."
"While inappropriate and unprofessional, the contact by the suspect in this matter does not rise to the level of criminal prosecution. This unfortunate incident is yet another example of the need for decorum and respect of others in public forums."
— State Attorney Bill Gladson, Decline-to-File Memorandum, June 9, 2026
Notice what Gladson did not say. He did not say the chair was right or that the meeting was well-run. He said the room lacked decorum — and he said it to everyone. But here is the question Citrus County residents deserve to ask plainly: Who was responsible for keeping decorum in that room?
The chair. It is always the chair.
A Meeting That Never Had Control.
To understand why the State Attorney's memo matters, you have to understand how May 12 unraveled. It did not begin with a paper tap. It began long before Wooten ever touched a shoulder.
Chair Finegan opened that meeting already positioned as an adversary — not a neutral presiding officer. She had publicly characterized Commissioners Rebecca Bays and Holly Davis as "girls" being "ran" by Josh Wooten, a gendered dismissal of two elected women that would not pass unremarked in any professional setting. She used the dais — the official seat of government authority — to loudly accuse fellow commissioners of backdoor dealings and corruption without any evidence. She blocked Attorney Rob Batsel from presenting evidence on behalf of Bravo Land Group, a developer with due process rights at a proceeding that had every hallmark of a quasi-judicial matter. She participated in debate while holding the gavel, a direct violation of Robert's Rules of Order, the procedural framework Florida county commissions are obligated to follow.
And when Wooten — seated in the audience as a member of the public — attempted to remind Finegan that her meeting was out of order, specifically that she was refusing to allow attorney Rob Batsel to speak on behalf of the Betz Farm buyer despite a multimillion-dollar lawsuit hanging over the county, the crowd erupted. Audience members shouted that Wooten was a liar. Finegan did not call the room to order. She did not gavel down the outburst. She let it stand.
What Wooten was raising was not a personal complaint. It was a warning with legal and financial consequences for every taxpayer in this county. The Board had just voted to terminate the Betz Farm contract — a termination the County Attorney Denise Lyn failed to advise the Board that the buyer had been actively working on the deal with the County and that the County itself had caused the very delays they used to justify termination of their contract. In Florida and in Common Law Doctrine, you cannot enforce a contract deadline that you’ve caused the other party to miss. The core principle of the Doctrine of Prevention is that a party cannot benefit from a condition failing when that party's own conduct caused the failure. In Florida, courts have consistently applied this — if the seller's delays in clearing title or obtaining entitlements prevented the buyer from completing due diligence or satisfying contingencies, the seller can't then turn around and declare the buyer in default for missing those deadlines. Batsel wrote two letters requesting to present evidence on these matters at the May 12 meeting. But when his time came to present their case, Finegan repeatedly blocked him from sharing the evidence before the Board and the public, stating he did not have a letter on file. This was despite her awareness of his letters and despite knowing how much the County was risking by continuing to try to unlawfully terminate the contract. When Wooten called attention to her conduct, the crowd she had failed to control shouted out, they called him a liar — and she said nothing.
A chair who cannot extend the same basic procedural protection to a critic that she would extend to an ally had already stopped presiding. She was participating.
And she did all of this while the room heated up around her.
"A chair who uses the dais to attack her critics has already lost the room. What happened next was the predictable result."
— The Citrus Voice
Under those conditions — a chair publicly branding one commissioner's ally as a corrupting influence, then debating from the presiding seat, then allowing audience members aligned with her position to be heard while blocking critics — a physical confrontation was not a random event. It was a foreseeable consequence of a meeting that was never under control because the person holding the gavel had no interest in controlling it equally.
The Detention Call and What It Tells Us
After the physical altercation, Chair Finegan called for Wooten's detention. She stated she had seen Wooten strike the man with her own eyes. This is very notable because, by her own earlier account, she had initially described the interaction as "playful" and that she had thought the two men were friends. The Citrus County Sheriff's Office report confirms that witness accounts of the contact varied considerably on the question of whether it appeared hostile or friendly.
Wooten declined to press charges for being shoved. The man who received the paper tap attempted to press charges for it. The State Attorney reviewed the evidence and declined to prosecute.
Set those facts side by side. The person who was shoved — a physical act that is, by any standard, more significant than a paper tap — chose not to pursue it. The person who was paper tapped tried to make it a criminal matter. The State Attorney said no.
Meanwhile, Chair Finegan used the authority of her office — and the presence of uniformed law enforcement — to have a prominent community critic detained at a public meeting based on contradictory accounts of a disputed shoulder touch. Whether or not Wooten's conduct was ideal in that moment, the question of proportionality here is not a close one.
When the Dais Becomes a Cudgel
There is a particular kind of damage done when a presiding officer weaponizes the procedural authority she holds as the Chair against critics. It is not merely a matter of bad optics or a rough meeting. It is a corruption of the structure that makes representative government function.
The chair's role is to protect the integrity of the proceeding for everyone in that room — commissioners she agrees with and commissioners she doesn't, members of the public who support her and members of the public who oppose her. The moment she stops doing that, she isn't running a meeting. She's running interference.
At the May 12 BOCC meeting, a developer's attorney was silenced before he could present his client's evidence. A vote was taken without that evidence on the table. A chamber executive was detained on the Chair's call under circumstances the State Attorney has since declined to treat as criminal. And the Chair who presided over all of it has, as far as the public record shows, offered no accountability for any of it.
Gladson is right that the room needed more decorum. But decorum in a government proceeding is not a request you make of the audience. It is a standard you set and enforce from the Chair — consistently, neutrally, and without regard to whether the person out of order is your ally or your critic.
Our County Deserves Better
This is not a partisan argument. The question of whether a chair can run a meeting fairly is not a Democrat or Republican question. It is a basic governance question, and it is one Citrus County residents have every right to ask as they approach the August 18 primary.
Voters should ask: Do we want a Chair who riles a crowd and then uses law enforcement to quiet her critics? Do we want a presiding officer whose meetings produce State Attorney memoranda about the need for "decorum and respect"? Do we want someone who blocks evidence at a quasi-judicial proceeding, debates from the gavel, and then calls for detention — and calls it leadership?
The State Attorney did not exonerate the May 12 meeting. He closed a file. Those are different things. The bigger file — the one about what kind of leadership Citrus County wants at its commission table — is still very much open.
And voters will close it on August
https://www.citrusvoice.org/blog/tsj1weckwoog7ne1zraboogt3lyqhq-k4zf6
