Showing posts with label Broward Inspector General. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Broward Inspector General. Show all posts

Monday, November 6, 2023

re Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's office fighting a ruling on lobbying restrictions on Florida's elected officials: The cautionary tale of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons track record makes a reasonable person realize we NEED even stronger and more meaningful ethics laws in the Sunshine State



re Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody's office fighting a ruling on lobbying restrictions on Florida's elected officials: The cautionary tale of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons track record makes a reasonable person realize we NEED even stronger and more meaningful ethics laws in the Sunshine State 

As I have told most of you loyal readers of the blog via emails or in-person since before 2018 -some of you, in fact, SEVERAL TIMES!- I truly wish the Florida law mentioned last week in Florida Trend, below, had been a state law in effect back when: 

a.) Present-day Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller was a state senator, with a public office located at Hallandale Beach City Hall no less.
In theory if not practice, Geller was supposed to be representing the citizens and stakeholders of Hallandale Beach in the Florida state Senate in Tallahassee, yet at the time, was free to legally lobby AGAINST their interests -as well as those of HB's elected officials- on behalf of any of his lobbying clients, and,

b.) Joe Gibbons, the ex-Hallandale Beach City Commissioner and then-Florida state Representative -so, like Steve Geller above, in theory, representing the interests of citizens and small business owners of Hallandale Beach and West Park in the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee- yet, Gibbons was legally free to lobby AGAINST the interests of the city's residents, stakeholders and elected officials, on behalf of his other clients. And did.

Clients that Hallandale Beach citizens and stakeholders were completely unaware of, even if a particular project he was somehow financially involved in was being discussed on local TV newscasts or in the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun Sentinel, since unless his name is specifically mentioned, how would you know he was connected to it?
You wouldn't.

In one particular egregious case regarding Joe Gibbons WHILE he was a Florida state Representative, a case that I chronicled here on the blog MANY TIMES at the time, Gibbons was working FOR the interests of a large, well-heeled South Florida real estate development company involving a VERY UNPOPULAR development proposal on the beach. Specifically, one proposed for 2000 S. Ocean Drive.
What is now referred to as 2000 Ocean, below.





A proposed development that was opposed by both the city residents living closest to it, at the Parker Plaza condos, as well as the majority of the rest of the community.




The latter, a reflection of the fact that the city's elected officials, City Manager and CRA officials seemed even more intent than usual in bending over and rushing the project through with as little public engagement and input, and handicapping the public by NOT making PUBLIC INFORMATION available to me and them as soon as it was available.
(Yes, not only the common thread but actually the default position of Hallandale Beach elected officials and City Managers since I first returned to South Florida 20 years ago, after working and living in Washington, D.C. for roughly 15 years, often on behalf of some of the largest of Fortune 500 companies, and the nation's most influential law firms, PACs and lobbying groups.)

Typically for Broward County pols, where no interest looms larger than self-interest, Joe Gibbons did all of this while he was running against first-term incumbent Beam Furr for his Broward County Commission seat representing SE Broward County, including Hollywood. 
If you were a normal person, you'd think that the issue would have caused the South Florida news media to be all over it, given that it was happening while Gibbons was campaigning for public office again.
But you'd be wrong.

As I wrote about many times here on the blog, absolutely ZERO members of South Florida's press corps, print or TV or even NPR affiliate WLRN, were interested in asking any hard questions about that particular arrangement, despite the unethical optics of it, to say nothing of the huge amount Gibbons reportedly would have received if he had succeeded: $200,000 according to well-informed people involved in the process.

And the worst part of all, a FACT that I wrote about then on my blog and in emails to many of you, Gibbons NEVER even did the bare minimum the city's extant ethics and lobbying laws REQUIRED.

That is, Gibbons never filed the required lobbying docs at HB City Hall, as every other lobbyist is required to do, yet he had many conversations with City Commissioners and top city staffers at the time, including several with unethical Comm. Anthony Sanders, a man who later was forced out by Broward Inspector General John Scott because of Sanders steering nearly a million dollars in HB CRA funds to his family and friends, naturally, because the city was unwilling and unable to do even the most basic oversight of the millions of dollars in the city's CRA pot.
(For the record, the Miami Herald has STILL never reported in-print that he was forced to resign -or else!)

That Joe Gibbons, who lived in Jacksonville with his family while he was a state Representative, while claiming, falsely, to be a full-time bona fide Hallandale Beach resident, was a great believer of rules for you and me, but NOT for him. Surprise!

Even now we STILL don't know who the real priorities of Steve Geller and Joe Gibbons were when they were public officials in Tallahassee or Broward County: the public or their own financial interests?




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NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA
Florida attorney general's office fights a ruling on a lobbying restriction
Jim Saunders | The News Service of Florida | 10/26/2023

Pointing to securing the “public trust,” Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office has asked a federal appeals court to overturn a decision that blocked part of a 2018 state constitutional amendment imposing new restrictions
on lobbying.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom this summer issued a permanent injunction against a restriction on state and local officials lobbying other government bodies while in office. Bloom said the restriction violated First Amendment rights.

But in a 62-page brief filed Wednesday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers in Moody’s office disputed that the restriction is unconstitutional and said paid “lobbying by public officials threatens the integrity of and public confidence in democracy.”

Florida’s restriction alleviates the threat of financial quid pro quos and their appearance in a direct and material way,” the brief said. “It prevents elected and executive-level officers, who wield political influence, from taking, or appearing to take, dollars … for political favors … in derogation of public trust.”

The 2018 amendment, which was proposed by the state Constitution Revision Commission, sought to bar public officials from lobbying “for compensation on issues of policy, appropriations, or procurement before the federal government, the Legislature, any state government body or agency, or any political subdivision of this state, during his or her term of office.”

The remaining plaintiff in the case is Miami-Dade County Commissioner Rene Garcia, after Bloom ruled that another plaintiff, South Miami Mayor Javier Fernandez, did not have legal standing.

Garcia, a former state House member and senator, is executive vice president of New Century Partnership, a firm that provides lobbying and other services. Garcia said he turned down at least two clients who sought lobbying services for legislative appropriations in Tallahassee because of the restriction, according to Bloom’s ruling.

In the filing Wednesday, Moody’s office took issue with the injunction applying to officials across the state. The brief said that if Bloom’s ruling is upheld, it should apply only to Garcia.

“Because Garcia’s injury is limited to the fear of enforcement against him, the court could have afforded complete relief by enjoining the state defendants from enforcing the restriction against only him,” the brief said. “By enjoining the restriction as to all public officers in the state, the district court departed from traditional equitable practice.”

Bloom, who is based in South Florida, ruled that the 2018 constitutional amendment and a law that carried it out placed “content-based, overbroad restrictions on speech.”

“Contrary to defendants’ assertion, the in-office restrictions target speech based on the context of the speech and its content,” Bloom wrote.

But the state’s brief Wednesday said that “no matter the public office or the lobbied government entity making political decisions, Florida has a substantial interest in preventing officeholders from being (or appearing to be) bought and paid for in the political arena while holding public office in public trust.”

Bloom did not block another part of the voter-approved amendment that restricts former state and local officials from lobbying for six years after leaving office.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by

Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in Hallandale Beach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones the rest of world and Florida are governed by
Below are my Twitter responses to Red Broward blogger Tom Lauder's piece from last Tuesday 
about some very curious doings behind Hallandale Beach City Hall at the Cultural Center, a place where the city's self-evident political, racial and social polarization are always present during Early Voting.
 
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches
That polarization, especially its racial component, is something that I have personally witnessed to my amazement dozens and dozens of times the past 15 years, which was often carried-out with the help of former Mayor Joy Cooper and her campaign supporters, always so quick to help someone who can help them out when nobody is looking.
But nothing compares to the skullduggery that takes place on the actual Election Day, esp. at the neighborhood sites in Hallandale Beach, where you can be forgiven for plausibly thinking the Balkan Wars of the 1990's were still taking place.
Yes, for so long, rather than fighting over what were the best ideas or best solutions for the city's many longstanding problems, problems and imperfections that I can literally recite from memory, what you find are years-old personal and political grievances writ large never far from the surface, complete with the motley cast of characters and hangers-on always play to type and cliché, with fist-fights, calls to 911 and then the rush to cast themselves as a victim to their friends and the general public. It's all so sad and pathetic and... predictable. 

(I even recall the Election Day scene at Ingalls Park in southwestern Hallandale Beach within the past ten years, where several Hallandale Beach police cars were forced to respond to a call about an actual fight involving involving Dr. Deborah Brown herself, where about 6-8 HB cops were positioned afterwards in the area to keep Brown and her Cooper-supporters from trying to physically intimidate or verbally harass supporters of pro-reform candidates at Ingalls Park that I knew. Yet another low in a sea of so many head-shaking things under Cooper's reign of ruin.)

Most of you know will know nothing at all about this matter below, but on the chance that you have been thinking about things other than elections today, five days before the real Election Day, it's a sad reminder that so many of the things that I and so many of you have fought against for many years, namely, against unethical behavior, doesn't just exist but THRIVE in a city of less than 5 square miles.
A city where it should actually be quite easy to reach residents, Small Business owners and voters if you were serious about communicating your concerns and solutions.
By the way, please don't sleep on the #scoop that I mention below regarding what former HB Mayor Joy Cooper did when contacted by the Office of the Broward Inspector General and the Broward state's attorney regarding the only arrest made in the entire years-long HB CRA scandal that wasted tens of millions of dollars.
http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/20130418OIG11020FinalReport.pdf

http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/PublicationsPress/Documents/OIG11020-201405219-BrownMemo.pdf

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https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2014-05-20-fl-hallandale-band-director-arrest-20140520-story.html
School director charged with stealing city funds
Robert Nolin, Sun Sentinel

The director of a private arts school in Hallandale Beach — and onetime recipient of a city humanitarian award — has been charged with bilking thousands in city funds earmarked for a student trip.

Deborah Brown, 52, Hallandale Beach, surrendered herself to Broward Sheriff's investigators Monday on a charge of grand theft. A warrant had been issued for her arrest last week with bond set at $1,000.

Brown, band leader for Gulfstream Middle School in Hallandale Beach, is also director of the Palms Center for the Arts, a nonprofit school for drama, dance and music. In March 2010, she received a $5,000 grant from the city's Community Redevelopment Agency for a class trip to Washington, D.C.

According to police reports, Brown only spent $323 on the trip. The remainder she diverted for private use: $2,000 in cash withdrawals for herself and her brother; $683 for a payment to an Orlando resort timeshare; $258 for a rental car; and $200 in cellphone costs.

The fund diversion was uncovered during an audit of the city's CRA by the county's inspector general.

In January 2010, two months before the alleged theft, Brown received Hallandale Beach's Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award for 25 years of community service.

City spokesman Peter Dobens said Brown was never a city employee and only received grant money for her after-school music program. "We haven't had a relationship with her for a couple of years," he said.

Despite the arrest, Brown will retain her band leader job. Under School Board policy, employees charged criminally will not be disciplined until their case is concluded. "It doesn't affect her current job status," district spokeswoman Nadine Drew said of the arrest.

Mayor Joy Cooper said Brown's educational work has benefitted the community. "Dr. Brown has helped many needy children through PCA's art programs," she said.

rnolin@tribune.com or 954-356-4525

----
"The Broward County Inspector General’s Office has launched another inquiry into Hallandale Beach’s Community Redevelopment Agency, three years after finding the city “grossly mismanaged” millions of dollars in CRA funds."
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2016/06/browards-inspector-general/

Joy Cooper did this WITHOUT ever telling the elected HB City Commission about the letter she received from law enforcement, never asking them what they thought should be done, or even having a recorded vote on the matter.
Instead, Cooper wrote back that her good friend, the convicted Dr. Brown, did NOT have to pay back the thousands of dollars she stole that, according to her own CRA application, was supposed to help kids, a fact that she took full advantage of when she was using the money to buy cosmetics or help pay for her condo.
Just as she had done previously dozens of times, Joy Cooper just decided she would nudge the elected City Commission out of the way and substitute her own very bad judgment.
Predictably.
So yes, you are right, I have provided you with a bit of a scoop, since I first heard about it when it took place, but I ask you, how come the South Florida news media has STILL never reported on this fact, despite it taking place LAST YEAR?
Why didn't they mention it?
   
@RedBroward BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches






















More tomorrow re the ethical scandal behind the ethical scandal at Hallandale Beach City Hall that the South Florida news media has slept on the past 18 months.
Even if you think you know how thin-skinned, self-referential and flat-out LOW former Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper was prepared to go in order to hold onto power, you just won't believe the level of chutzpah Joy Cooper can show, even to law enforcement officials.
Really!

Monday, July 30, 2018

Why does Miami Herald write so much about eruv story in Hallandale Beach, 6 weeks later -and drop hints of anti-Semitism- but for YEARS completely ignored a more compelling story re city's CRA wasting TENS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS over several years?

I know this may sound like one of the million-and-one rhetorical questions that almost every civic-minded resident of South Florida asks him or herself every day a new edition of the Miami Herald sees the light of day but...
Why DOES the Miami Herald write so much about one story in Hallandale Beach, 6 weeks after-the-fact, but completely ignore a more important, self-evident story re the city and its CRA -composed of the elected City Commission- wasting TENS of MILLIONS of DOLLARS over several years? Public dollars.

And, just as importantly, why for years has the Miami Herald IGNORED the stark reality that would have been staring any of their reporters in the face IF they had bothered to do some basic investigating of the story I've been writing about here on this blog for years:
EVERY single African-American state Senator & state Representative and Hallandale Beach City Commissioner whose Majority-Minority district includes Hallandale Beach either looked the other way as TENS OF MILLIONS of CRA dollars were wasted, actively fought AGAINST efforts in Broward County and in Tallahassee to ensure that an accurate public audit was performed so that residents would know where that money went, or, were themselves the beneficiary of the CRA funds.
Why? Why indeed?

The four guilty parties of whom I speak:
1. former City of Hallandale Beach City Commissioner and then state Rep. Joseph Gibbons

2. current Florida state Senator Oscar Braynon II










3. current Florida state Rep. Shevrin Jones


4. former City of Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Anthony A. Sanders, who resigned one year ago following a Broward Inspector General investigation that detailed how over $900,000 in CRA funds was directed by him and his family to... well, his very own version of a friends-and-family plan.
The same Anthony A. Sanders whose resignation from office was NEVER ever mentioned in a Miami Herald story, much less, the reasons for it, and what might've happened to him if he had not done so.



Not mentioned but just as curious: Where was Broward County Commissioner Barbara Sharief whose district also included the affected area?

Yeah, that's a good question, if I do say so myself. 
#confounding

In case you forgot or never knew, the folks at the South Broward Chabad, who are one of the two mentioned in this Miami Herald story are the same ones that have asked for some very curious special hometown deals from the City of Hallandale Beach over the years, including a few years ago when they asked for some very extraordinary consideration -a loan with different terms than usual-
and then awarded former HB Comm. Alexander Lewy, i.e. "Lewy the Liar" to you longtime regular blog readers, an award after receiving it.
Which was both convenient and curious and... mortifying.

My original plan for today was to be posting something to my blog about the very-curious and stealthy lobbying taking place re the Sky Island redevelopment matter at Hollywood's Young Circle/ArtsPark and what I'd learned the past three weeks,since letting some of you know the basics of that deal that has completely shocked many of the area's usually well-informed residents.
But once I heard about this Miami Herald article last Wednesday appearing out-of-the-blue, I decided that Sky Island would have to wait another few days.








By the way, I note for the record that this story contains 5 photos, more than any other Herald story involving Hallandale Beach in the past 15 years. 
A story that appeared SIX WEEKS  after the motion by Comm. Annabelle Lima-Taub to bring it up on the City Commission agenda in the future failed to get even a second vote on the dais out of the five elected City Commissioners.

Why so many inches in the newspaper about an issue affecting so few, and who, clearly, did such a remarkably poor job of engaging and persuading their neighbors to support them, even while persuading the Miami Herald it was a worthwhile story?
And as you read along, ask yourself why the article never states when the City Commission meeting with all the fireworks took place.
It wasn't in April, it was in June, and the public spoke in June not on an actual agenda item but under Public Comments. Seems kind of relevant, don't you think?
As does the fact that threatening public officials with lawsuits during public meetings if they don't do what you want tends not to work out so well, no matter what kind of success you've had elsewhere.

These observant Jews need a lifeline to leave their homes — but the city is ‘stonewalling’
BY REBECCA ELLIS
rellis@miamiherald.com
July 25, 2018 02:34 PM
Updated July 25, 2018 09:32 PM

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article215358415.html 






For you newcomers to the blog who may've never seen some of those earlier blog posts of mine laying out the case or the predicate for better understanding Gibbons, Braynon, Jones and Sanders behavior, that is, completely ignoring the public's desire to find out what was happening with the millions wasted at the HB CRA, here are four posts that should effectively help connect-the-dots:

Nov. 2, 2013:  http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/latest-news-re-hallandale-beach-cra.html





Sunday, April 15, 2018

You only thought you knew how evil and corrupt former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper was. You have no idea. But you will soon! Don't worry, the Broward State Attorney's Office now has all the documents and info they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General. Uh-oh!

You only thought you knew how evil and corrupt former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper was. You have no idea. But you will soon! 
Don't worry, the Broward State Attorney's Office now has all the documents and info they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General. Uh-oh!


Coming soon: How former Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper OBSTRUCTED public records requests for YEARS, violated Florida Sunshine Laws, even while head of the Florida League of Cities and deeply involved with the National League of Cities, as she was always quick to brag about at Hallandale Beach City Commission and CRA meetings, even when it was NOT germane to anything being discussed.

Of course, all that time, Hallandale Beach taxpayers were forced to pay for Cooper to attend their meetings all over the country as she tried to pass herself off as something other than what she was: respected.
But she was corrupt with a capital “C.”
As I had been saying and writing year-after-year even while the local news media largely refused to look into any of the dozens of matters that would have been reported upon if they happened in other parts of the country.

But don’t worry, the Broward States Attorney now has all the documents and information they need, thanks to the Broward Inspector General.
But David, isn’t the Broward SAO the same LEO office that knew for OVER 5 years, via recordings, that Hallandale Beach mayor Joy Cooper had already committed numerous felonies and misdemeanors, blatantly, yet still refused to have her arrested and charged?

Which means that the last five years of Joy Cooper in office were completely unnecessary and could have been prevented, since Florida Gov. Rick Scott would have removed Cooper from office then if SAO simply acted responsibly and with the public's best interests at heart? Oh sure, there's always that! 🙄🤨😠🤫🤔
The case involved hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars 💰💰 and was a subject that I blogged abt frequently at The Future Foundation, a so-called non-profit that was run by Mayor Cooper and city employees with offices at city hall, but which had a very adversarial attitude towards thepublic knowing what they were doing.
Or even letting electdd officials know what they were doing, and why.

When I gave details of what was going on to the Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the four English-language TV stations in Miami, the  news media was NOT interested! Surprise!