From the start, it was also clear Hiaasen would not allow himself to be bullied. In 1987, when a city commissioner objected to funding the Sister Cities convention because representatives from communist countries might attend, Hiaasen called his antics "boneheaded." By certified mail, the commission sent a formal, albeit unintelligible, resolution demanding that the Herald retract or clarify Hiaasen's "false and misleading statement," to which Hiaasen replied that since his original column was neither false nor misleading, he couldn't add even "a cheerfully instructive footnote." He did, however, formulate a resolution of his own, which reads, in part:

"Be it resolved: It is hereby demanded that the Miami City Commission quit wasting time on dumb, self-serving resolutions when there are so many more important issues facing the community.

"Regarding the Sister Cities International convention and the alleged Communist menace therein, it is hereby demanded that city commissioners halt such reactionary nonsense immediately, since it exposes all South Florida to national scorn and ridicule. It is further demanded that if the commissioners choose to make fools of themselves, that they do so in the privacy of their homes and not in a public forum."

Now, much of Miami has come to expect a no-holds-barred Hiaasen column that synthesizes news stories and corruption scandals, and makes sense of issues in its own "brilliant fashion, with humor that skewers," according to Jim Savage, head of the Herald's investigations team, who worked with Hiaasen in the mid-1980s on uncovering and ultimately stopping Port Bougainville, one of several illegally sited developments that would have added altogether some 60,000 people to North Key Largo.