Woodson submits response to recall petition
Town of Fort Myers Beach Councilmember Karen Woodson has officially responded to a recall petition in which she denies allegations she accepted unreported gifts from those seeking land use approvals from the town, violated the Sunshine Law by working with Councilmember John King to attempt to replace former Town Attorney John Herin Jr. with another law firm, and violated the Sunshine Law by speaking with Vice Mayor Jim Atterholt about the destroyed Fort Myers Beach Pier.
In her response, Woodson said each claim was false.
The Town of Fort Myers Beach Clerk’s Office released a copy of Woodson’s response Monday evening. The petition response was sent to the town by the Sarasota-based commercial litigation firm of Bentley, Goodrich, Kison. The firm is also representing King. The Town of Fort Myers Beach Council voted last week to pay reasonable attorney fees for King and Woodson to defend themselves from the recall.
The defensive statement by Woodson, like a similar response provided through the firm for King, seeks to suspend the recall process by claiming each of the allegations are false. In her response, Woodson denies each allegation and said that if they were to have happened they should have been reported to the Florida Commission on Ethics.
In her defense statement, Woodson said an accusation that she received unreported gifts from those seeking land-use approvals “never happened.” Woodson said “the lack of a report and essential facts, including time, location, and amount, renders this allegation false.”
Woodson and King are both facing recall efforts by a citizens group headed by former Mayor Ray Murphy and former Councilmember Bill Veach. Murphy is carrying the petitions for Woodson while Veach is heading the recall for King.
The group collected signatures from 10% of the town’s registered voters in order to trigger the required responses from King and Woodson for the next step of the recall process. King has also denied the allegations against him. Two of the allegations are similar to the ones leveled against Woodson with the difference being that King’s third allegation is regarding his alleged involvement in the termination of town contract employees, a charge King denied.
The petitioners will now need to collect signatures from 15% of the registered voters in the town within the next 60 days in order to force an early election this year. The responses from King and Woodson will now be attached to the new petitions. The recall petitioners collected 422 validated signatures to recall King and 427 validated signatures to recall Woodson, exceeding the 337 signatures which were required. They will now need to collect approximately 456 signatures to get the recall process to the next round.
If the petitioners meet the 15% mark in the next round of signature collections, King and Woodson could either resign within five days or an early election would be scheduled by a judge before the end of the year.
If King or Woodson resigned, the town council could appoint someone to fill their seat through the next election in November of 2026.
King and Woodson were elected to four-year terms in November of 2022 in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. They defeated Murphy and Patrick Romcoe. In 2020, Fort Myers Beach voters decided in a referendum to extend the terms of councilmembers from three years to four years and changed the dates of elections from March to November.