Still Barking: A Watchdog at 25

Despite failing health and a shoestring budget, citizen journalist and Grove resident Dan Ricker has spent a quarter-century holding local government accountable, one meeting at a time. 

For nearly 25 years, Dan Ricker has doggedly pursued his calling as citizen journalist, resolutely focused on local government and the politicians and bureaucrats who wield power over our lives.   

As it says on his business card for the Watchdog Report, of which he is the founder and publisher, “I go when you cannot.”  

What that means is that for a quarter of a century, Ricker – dressed in a suit, wearing a tie – has shown up for brain-numbing City of Miami budget hearings; zoning disputes before the Miami-Dade County Commission that drone on for hours; school board meetings that routinely stretch into the night; and countless discussions of the Public Health Trust purchasing subcommittee on the cost of everything from stethoscopes to bed pans.    

Ricker not only sat through these meetings – indeed, thousands and thousands of meetings that would induce a stupefied glaze over the eyes of most journalists – but he paid attention.    

He recorded what was said at the meetings.  He took notes.  He interviewed participants. He wrote about what he saw and heard in the Watchdog Report and then distributed his newsletter to thousands of loyal followers. For free.  

 “Dan is one of the most unrecognized people in our community,” says lobbyist Ron Book, who chairs the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust. “He is a man of integrity, honesty, decency, with a deep sense of fairness and responsibility.”   

Former federal public defender Celeste Higgins, a fellow Coconut Grove resident who has known Ricker for 27 years, calls her friend “courageous to take on what he did.  He decided to keep public officials honest.  He was not afraid.  He was a force. I can’t speak highly enough of him.”  

With the silver jubilee of the Watchdog Report approaching – edition number one came out May 5, 2000 — Ricker, 73, is struggling with a host of issues, including a chronic lack of funding for his journalistic mission and health woes that make it difficult to get around. 

In 2009 he nearly died of sepsis caused by diverticulitis. He had a stroke in 2013. He broke his femur five years ago in a fall that put him in a nursing home and rehab facility for a month. He has painful neuropathy that has him using a walker or a cane.  

Ricker quit drinking five years ago and had his last cigarette in September. On his cluttered coffee table is a Marlboro box that contains one last smoke. He says he will never light it.  

Although it has been a while since Ricker has attended a meeting in person, televised coverage of most governmental gatherings allows him to keep working.  And the Watchdog keeps coming out.   

“Most people are too busy to go to these important meetings,” he explained recently during an interview in his rented South Grove cottage as he sat in front of the TV monitoring a county commission meeting and popping tabs of Nicorette gum.

“But my job is to sound the alarm, to make the government more responsive. I can do this because I’m single and have no kids.  Everyone else has what I call a normal life.  Someone needed to do it.”  

Since Ricker does not charge for the Watchdog, and has no subscription list, it is hard to measure the newsletter’s influence or reach. Asked how many readers he has, Ricker replies, “Enough.”  

But Ricker does claim some notable successes: helping save $20 million county officials were poised to over-pay for medical devices; advocating for $8 million in funding for clean-up of the Miami River; and, by example, reminding other reporters that under Florida’s Sunshine Law, many employment and financial records of public officials are open for examination. 

“Dan Ricker has an unwavering dedication to transparency and good government,” said Esther Caravia, chief of staff to the Public Health Trust’s CEO Carlos Migoya. “At times I didn’t like what he wrote, but he always did his research and reported the facts.”   

Says Grove developer and friend Andy Parrish: “He is a very unusual person, a true civic-minded citizen who cares about the community. He’s a journalist at heart.  I thoroughly admire him.”  

Ricker was born and raised in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where his father was a prominent physician and his mother served as president of the school board.  Dan and his four siblings were brought up in the Quaker tradition and he still considers himself faithful to the Religious Society of Friends’ tenets of simplicity, peace, equality, and service. “God is in each of us,” he says.    

After earning a degree in Chinese studies from the Institute for Sino-Soviet Studies at George Washington University in 1974, Ricker went to work for Cordis selling medical devices.  He lived for years in Australia and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Asia, making a comfortable living.  He first landed in Miami in the late 1970s, but continued to travel internationally for Cordis. In the 1980s and 1990s he flew from Miami to Tokyo or Sydney at least 80 times, he says.   

The impetus for Ricker’s role as advocate stemmed from concerns over what he saw while monitoring City of Miami commission meetings at City Hall on Coconut Grove’s Dinner Key.  After he joined other Grove residents in demanding more transparent representation, Ricker says powerful lobbyist Philip Hammersmith – who died in 1999 – said to him, “You f…ing little people – we’re going to crush you.”  

Soon after that encounter, Ricker launched the Watchdog Report, a project that at once seemed both quixotic and essential.  Ricker burned through a couple hundred thousand dollars of savings to fund it in its early years.  He later secured a continuing grant from the Knight Foundation and is sustained by contributions from readers.  

His work attracted attention. Ricker was profiled by the Orlando Sentinel and Miami New Times, and was named Best Citizen by New Times in 2003.  He was a frequent guest on Miami’s public radio and television talk shows. Beginning in 1999, he wrote scores of Monday columns for the Miami Herald.  Under his headshot was his byline and the tagline “Public Citizen.”    

In addition to covering every meeting he could, Ricker also made it a part of his job to keep track of pols and officials where they hung out at night.  While having a vodka and tonic with friends at the Taurus or Berries in the Grove, he was also making note of who was meeting up with whom. Some of his reporting led to threats of physical harm, he says.  He still sleeps with a shotgun by his bed.  

 Married and divorced three times, Ricker has no children. But he does have a cadre of loyal friends and admirers. “He has been a stalwart, a very unbiased person who tells it like it is,” said Phillis Oeters, former vice president for government and community relations at Baptist Health.  “I remember once, when lobbying at the Public Health Trust, the chair tried to show me out.  But Dan stood up for me, at a public meeting, and said, ‘You can’t do that.’  I did not leave.”  

The years have taken a toll. In recent editions of the Watchdog, Ricker has mentioned his poor health several times.  But he is not done.  While recent editions of the Watchdog Report seem clogged with rambling reminiscence and repetition, occasional mistakes and pleas for financial support, he vows to continue his work.

Ricker says his days in China made him appreciate democracy.  He carries a copy of the U.S. Constitution in his pocket.  Under the Trump administration, he says, the Constitution is in danger.  

 As a teenager, Ricker strived to become an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in scouting.  He fell short by one merit badge: community service to the nation.  

Asked if his work with the Watchdog Report was an effort to make up for failing to reach that goal, Ricker said, “I never thought of it that way.”   

You think you did enough for that merit badge by now?  “Yeah, probably.”  To subscribe to the Watchdog Report, email Dan Ricker at [email protected]. You can also view it here.