Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 25

a Mil irnA 0 (Pnn a mimm ETROv-STATE TO CONTAQ US ABOUT NEWS: By phone: 893-8215 By fax: 893-8675 By e-mail: localsptimes.com SECTION MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1996 I Mmfeta found! slain aft nwSefl The Miami pastor, who was to preach at a St. Petersburg church Sunday, was shot in the head. Police had no suspects Sunday night. By LEA NORA MINAI Tinwt Staff Writof black, four-door Cadillac. "I'm all confused.

I don't know how something like this could happen," said Watkins, standing outside the motel, where a throng of parishioners gathered about noon. "He was a wonderful person. He preached the word of God." Sunday night, St. Petersburg police had no suspects in the killing. A motel manager, however, said police left the motel with a young man who had approached her about 5 p.m.

Sunday, asking for a wallet he had left in Richardson's room. Richardson's wife, Willie Mae, and daughters drove from Miami on Sunday. They were too distraught to talk. Motel manager Lisa Keough, 37, found Richardson early Sunday on her rounds. She was opening windows, airing out rooms for the day's arriving guests, when she noticed Richardson's door was cracked open.

She thought Please see MINISTER 5B J. yrfc ynnfririlinii'iinii mi I'lttijiMi'irtiMtftMffl'i'iliilillwiiii iiiiiwuMlli 1 Itoliw ST. PETERSBURG As 10 a.m. approached, the already antsy parishioners at Church of God In Unity sent the deacon to find out why their pastor was late. Deacon Henry Watkins drove to the Budget Inn on 34th Street where the Rev.

Arthur Richardson, 58, stayed each time he traveled from Miami to preach the gospel. Within minutes, Watkins learned Richardson was dead. Someone had shot him in the head early Sunday and driven away in the pastor's 1995 Tanes photo ANDREW INNEHAHTY The body of the Rev. Arthur Richardson, found shot in the head Sunday is removed from his room at the Budget Inn on 34th Street in St. Petersbyrg.

ine man irror, mirror at the mail mw "'P i m.j'wu trash is a police mm' i 101a mine Seizing trash is considered routine for some Tampa BaySj investigators, who consider ft clever policing. Defense lawJrs if say ine practice is an lnvasiorjpi privacy. ml By TIM ROCHE TIniM Wrttof JV Thtw photo ANDREW INNERARfTY LUCY MORGAN TALLAHASSEE BUREAU CHIEF such thing as lobbyist apathy You might think those who elect a new legislature are only looking at whether the candidates are Republicans or Democrats. You'd be wrong. That's only part of the story the part that's out front and most visible.

Beneath the surface, the battle lines are far deeper. In the world where money is raised and most of the decisions are made, interest groups plot strategies of their own to elect the candidate who would best serve their needs. It has little to do with party politics but a lot to do with the way each group wants legislators to vote. It also has a lot to do with the laws a legislature will pass or kill. One of the more interesting battles is between Associated Industries of Florida, the state's biggest business lobby, and the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers, the folks who represent lawyers who file big lawsuits against businesses.

The lobbyists for the state's major businesses spend a lot of time each year battling to put laws on the books that keep the hands of trial lawyers out of their pockets. Lobbyists for the trial lawyers spend an equal amount of time trying to put laws on the books that make it easier to sue big business. It is a struggle that permeates virtually every corner of the Legislature. Long before candidates start to qualify, representatives of both groups are out there, scouting around for the "right" people to run. In some races, the competing sides have spent more than a million dollars on campaigns to elect legislators to jobs that pay less than $25,000 a year.

Last week, Jon Shebel, president of Associated Industries, presided over an election night soiree that is becoming a tradition at AIF's palatial headquarters, near the governor's mansion. On a big screen upstairs and dozens of small screens all around the building, lobbyists watched the numbers come in from precincts from around the state as they sipped bourbon and scotch. Jodi Chase, an energetic AIF lobbyist often called "Chase In Your Face," was at the controls of one computer, displaying newly acquired computer skills. "Oh, noooooo," Chase moaned as she looked at returns from Broward County. Trial lawyer Walter "Skip" Campbell was handily defeating state Rep.

Steve Feren in the Democratic primary for a Senate seat in a 70 percent Democratic district. It's an open seat created by the departure of Sen. Peter Weinstein, D-Coral Springs, to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. It's not that Chase and AIF loved Feren all that much.

He is, after all, a trial lawyer. But Feren doesn't have a partner who is about to become president of the Florida Academy of Trial Lawyers, and he didn't refuse to accept campaign contributions from lobbyists and PACs. Campbell, who is also in the helicopter business, has declined all money from PACs and lobbyists because he doesn't want to be beholden to them. His law partner, Richard Roselli, is the incoming president of the academy. "I invest in big business," Campbell said late last week.

"But I think big business and PACs are controlling government, and we need to give government back to the people." We like to think legislators represent a broad spectrum of the state's population, but often the people elected turn out to be those selected by one interest group or another. But some were selected last week by very few people. Take the Broward County district that re-elected Rep. Steve Geller. Only 5,600 voters cast ballots in the race, out of a voting-age population of more than 1 10,000.

Geller got 4,196 votes in the Democratic primary and has no Republican opponent. So it didn't take a lot of people to elect a member. Until more people get interested and take the trouble to vote, Floridians are more likely to have legislators hand picked by special interests. No one should be surprised at the outcome when legislators pass laws. Lisa Robertson, who manages the "Mirrors" exhibit at Tyrone Square Mall in St.

Petersburg, is reflected and then some in one of the exhibit's giant kaleidoscopes Sunday. The display, from the collection of Great Explorations: The Hands-on Museum in St. Petersburg, runs through the end of the month at the mall. Exhibit admission is $2 per visitor or $5 per family. PINELLAS PARK Jerry Robertson was supposed to be dealing dope, but police in Pinellas Park had little more than a tip to prove it.

So investigators checked a few alternate sources. His electric bill was unusually high; he was using enough power to grow an indoor harvest of marijuana. But his trash was the most telling of all: eight marijuana stalks, each measuring at least 2 feet, and 25 trays of marijuana seedlings. With this discovery, police got a judge's warrant to search Robertson's town house in the Lake Forest development on 92nd Place N. They found generators, lamps and other wares of a suburban marijuana farmer.

It is a scenario that unfolds often these days: police digging in trash and then using what they find to justify search warrants. In the eight years since the practice was sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court, police have sought the garbage of suspected murderers, counterfeiters, nomographers and, most frequently, drug dealers. Robertson, naked when police barged into his Pinellas Park town house at night, was never arrested. The marijuana belonged to his late partner, who had HIV, he told police.

He was cleaning the house of memories when he threw out the marijuana plants, he said. What had been medicinal for an ailing man, what had given him an appetite in his final days, was mere garbage after his death, Robertson said. Officers caused about $500 in damage to the town house during the search, said Robertson, 38. But no matter. Inspectors team up on nursing homes The multiagency Operation Spot Check finds numerous violations during surprise visits to South Florida centers.

By CAROL MARBIN MILLER TWdos Staff Writer f3 'V designed to avoid. Also called the State Attorney's Facility Entry Team, or SAFETY, the task force consists of about a dozen state and local law enforcement officers and regulators. They never know what nursing or retirement home they're inspecting until the day of the visit; hence, the visits are always unannounced. While the visits have resulted in several actions taken by a number of agencies, Broward Assistant State Attorney Lee Jay Seidman said catching nursing homes violating the law isn't really the point. "We need to do more than just prosecute elderly abuse and neglect," Seidman said.

"We'd like to prevent some of it. "We didn't want to find horror stories; we wanted to prevent them." Please see INSPECTORS 5B Deputy Attorney General Peter Antonacci wants to expand the inspections statewide. FORT LAUDERDALE It used to be that only trial lawyers and state licensing officials took much interest in what went on inside nursing and retirement homes. But now, thanks to an ambitious program begun a year ago in Broward County, nursing homes there are drawing more attention than a million-dollar jury verdict. And that's exactly what Operation Spot Check was Please see TRASH 48 Judge vows to resolve DU1 charge Wetland restoration has new landscape edly demanded a blood test, generally regarded as more accurate.

"Do it! Do it! Right now!" he said, pointing to his arm. If the officers delayed, he said, his blood- The arresting officer's record and a videotape may be tools in Charles Cope's defense. VP By CRAIG PITTMAN Time Start Writer alcohol level would go up. Cope, 47, of Palm Harbor, was arrested while attending a judicial conference in Naples. The patrolman's report indicates Cope knew he was in a fix: "I messed up big-time.

This is going to cost me." Cope's DUI arrest is apparently unprecedented for the Pinellas-Pasco circuit, but not in Florida. In the past five Judge Cope INSIDE: Florida's transportation secretary earns high marks from people who work on environmental issues. 3B The money will go to the state's water management districts, where environmental experts will spend it to restore wetlands, buy conservation lands and battle exotic weeds. "It gets the highway engineer out of the wetland mitigation business and gives it to the water manager, who knows how the dollars should best be spent in terms of environmental restoration," said Chuck Allen, who handles intergovernmental relations for the DOT. DOT Secretary Ben Watts says the cost Please see WETLAND 5B By JULIE HAUSERMAN Time Staff Writer For years, Florida's road builders have wrangled with Florida's environmental regulators.

But a new law, passed without fanfare by the Florida Legislature this year, radically changes the way the state Department of Transportation offsets the environmental damage it causes when it covers a lily-filled wetland with asphalt. Officials trumpet the law as a money-saving measure and an example of new cooperation between the DOT and the Department of Environmental Protection. Instead of trying to re-create roadside wetlands, the DOT pays the DEP $75,000 for every wetland acre it destroys. NAPLES, Fla. The man facing the camera was clearly angry at being in jail.

He shouted and waved his hands. He accused the patrolman who had arrested him of lying. He refused to answer questions. He told the patrolman and a booking deputy that he couldn't fathom why thty had charged him with DUI. "I have respect for you guys," he said.

"I work for you guys. I do everything for you guys." But in the 20-minute videotape shot while he was being booked into the Collier County Jail, Charles Cope did not mention that he is a Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge. The patrolman said Cope invoked his title when he was stopped on the road, but at the jail Cope refused to even give his name. On the tape, Cope did not slur his words. He did not stumble.

He refused a breath test but repeat years, four judges have been convicted of DUI, according to the Judicial Qualifications Commission. Each was reprimanded by the Florida Supreme Court but not removed from the bench. Cope has made it clear he intends to fight the misdemeanor charge. He has pleaded innocent and hired a Naples attorney to defend him. Although he said last week that he cannot discuss specific issues before the trial, he said, "I'm trying to get the case resolved as quickly as Please see JUDGE 5B.