Founder’s Forge | Episode 4 | A Security Against Corruption

Welcome to Founder’s Forge. I am Ivette Palomo. This week, we’re telling the story of a man who fought for 22 years, won a verdict, but never saw the victory.

In 1994, Coy Koontz Sr. wanted to develop 3.7 acres of his property on State Road 50 in Orange County, Florida. He applied for stormwater and wetlands permits. To mitigate environmental impacts, he offered to deed a conservation easement on 11 acres of his land to the St. Johns River Water Management District. The District rejected his offer. They said the 11-acre easement was inadequate.

Instead, they demanded one of two concessions: First, reduce his development to 1 acre and deed a conservation easement on the remaining 13.9 acres. Or, proceed with the 3.7-acre development but pay for improvements—replacing culverts, filling ditches, or installing equivalent offsite projects—to 50 acres of District-owned land situated miles away. Koontz refused. They denied his permit.

Koontz filed a lawsuit. He won at a Florida trial court, but the Florida Supreme Court reversed that ruling. Koontz took his fight to a higher court, and finally, on June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in his favor. But the 19-year battle saw Koontz Sr. pass away before the case was finalized. His son, Coy Koontz Jr., carried the legal battle through to the end. In March 2016, the district paid over $600,000 for the temporary taking of Koontz’ property rights. This is an American Kitchen Table victory for a battle that should never have been required. That is not governance. That is a drought of justice.

Alexander Hamilton knew this tyranny. In Federalist No. 83, he warned of the danger of standing magistrates. He proposed the jury trial as the structural defense, writing that: “The strongest argument in its favor is, that it is a security against corruption, as there is always more time and better opportunity to tamper with a standing body of magistrates than with a jury summoned for the occasion, there is room to suppose that a corrupt influence would more easily find its way to the former than to the latter…”

Hamilton’s warning is our present reality. That “standing body of magistrates” is now the administrative state. The aggressors are agencies like the EPA, the Army Corps, and Florida’s Water Management Districts. The victims are the family farmer, who opens a letter declaring his pasture a federal wetland and the rancher, who is denied a water permit while his land turns to dust. But this is not just the family farmer without a jury trial. It’s not just the rancher. It’s not just Koontz.

This is Mike Colosi, a tech entrepreneur in Punta Gorda, who bought a 5-acre lot in 2024 to build a home. The County demanded nearly $120,000 in fees simply because a scrub jay might nest on his land. He refused. They denied his permit.

This is Natural Lands, LLC in Boca Raton. They spent eight years fighting a City Council, whose own biases prevented them from recusing themselves. Natural Lands had a vested right to build, yet they were denied a variance. A federal court ruled the process was tainted. But the Eleventh Circuit reversed that ruling. Now they’re petitioning the Supreme Court.

This is Carol Edwards in Altamonte Springs, who spent years repairing her dock after Hurricane Irma. The City claimed she had not received approval and, without a jury trial, imposed fines totaling $250,000. Even after she won in state court proving the dock repairs were approved decades ago, the City refused to drop the allegations. She is now fighting for her constitutional right to due process.

The methodological failure across these cases is the Star Chamber model: a system where these government agencies act as prosecutor, judge, and jury, directly violating the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury. For fifteen years, Daniel Webster, our current representative in Florida’s 11th District, has presided over this confiscation that takes years to overturn, offering only oversight hearings that beg the very agencies doing the seizing to be reasonable. He waters the leaves while the root rot consumes our foundation.

That is not governance. It is dereliction.

Yet the founder’s mandate is clear: we must restore the “valuable privilege” of a trial by a jury of our countrymen. The American Kitchen Table strike against the derelictions is the Administrative Independence Act. This Act will abolish the internal courts of agencies like the EPA and the Army Corps. It will force every dispute—every WOTUS designation, every wetlands fine, every permit denial—into a neutral, Article III federal court, with a jury of your peers. By restoring our right to a real day in court, we simultaneously protect our water, our land, and our inheritance.

The contrast is absolute: between the illusion of representation and the reality of a republic restored; between a system where your land can be taken by decree, and a system where that agency must face you in a court of law. The drought of justice ends when we restore the jury box. This is not about politics. It is about your right to keep your land, your water, your future.

This philosophical truth is our foundation, but it demands a practical application. How does this single structural strike solve our water crisis? How does it empower you to steward your own land? At the American Kitchen Table on Substack, we lay out the battle plan to secure our inheritance. Join me this week to read the plan.

Stand with us next week as we continue to defend the family. We will strike at the root of another great assault on the American Kitchen Table—the systematic pricing out of the very people who hold our communities together. When the teachers, nurses, and first responders who safeguard our neighborhoods can no longer afford to live in them, the American Dream becomes a hollow promise. Join me then as we deliver our plan towards economic security.

I am Ivette Palomo, your congressional candidate for Florida’s 11th district. Until next week at the Founder’s Forge . . . Strike the root. Secure the table.