Local FL news coverage that is making a positive difference: In another FL city beset with egregious examples of CRA ethical shenanigans and rampant crony capitalism, Volusia County publisher Henry Frederick takes his responsibility to the community seriously, and asks hard questions about public ethics, government accountability and journalistic credibility. His fact-based straightforward questions are blunt when necessary: Is the Daytona Beach News-Journal protecting New Smyrna Beach Mayor Adam Barringer? And if so, why?; @NSBNEWSnet

nsbnews YouTube Channel video: Headline Surfer publisher Henry Frederick shows Volusia County Chairman Jason Davis film of how New Smyrna Beach CRA funds are actually being used, contrary to Florida law. Part I of 4. Uploaded April 29, 2013. http://youtu.be/RSoIXIp2OtA

In another Florida city beset with what seems to be egregious examples of CRA ethical shenanigans and rampant crony capitalism, Volusia County publisher Henry Frederick takes his responsibility to the community seriously, and asks hard questions about public ethics, government accountability and journalistic credibility in his part of The Sunshine State.

His fact-based straightforward questions are blunt when necessary, but then the facts seem to indicate that they are: Is the Daytona Beach News-Journal protecting New Smyrna Beach Mayor Adam Barringer? And if so, why? 

You read your morning newspaper and see stories written from the point of view of a mayor or city manager, neatly... fb.me/2XhTUVGwt
— Henry Frederick (@NSBNEWSnet) May 1, 2013

Headline Surfer
Is the Daytona paper protecting NSB Mayor Adam Barringer?

Posted Tue, 2013-04-30 06:34

By Henry Frederick

http://headlinesurfer.com/content/412000-daytona-paper-protecting-nsb-mayor-adam-barringer

See more on the misuse of New Smyrna Beach CRA funds and other Volusia County and Greater Daytona Beach antics/news at the nsbnews YouTube Channel at: http://www.youtube.com/user/nsbnews/

@NSBNEWSnet https://twitter.com/NSBNEWSnet

*Starting in the near-future, you'll start seeing videos like the one above on this blog. Some of which have already been recorded. 

Compare and contrast the effort and clearly pro-citizen tone taken above by the Headline Surfer, where wasted taxpayer dollars don't get the shrugged shoulders response it does from the Miami Herald and  South Florida Sun-Sentinel, at http://headlinesurfer.com/ with the intellectually fallow and taxpayer-subsidized faux newspaper of Hallandale Beach, which was specifically cited by the Broward Inspector General's Office in their damning report on the true costs of years and years of incompetent and almost-invisible oversight of Hallandale Beach's CRA, the myopic South Florida Sun-Times.

BROWARD INSPECTOR GENERAL FINAL REPORT RE: GROSS MISMANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC FUNDS BY THE CITY OF HALLANDALE BEACH AND THE HALLANDALE BEACH COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY

http://www.broward.org/InspectorGeneral/Documents/OIG11-020HallandaleFinalE-REPORT04-18-13.docx.pdf

Please be advised that the report can take up to a minute to open due to the many exhibits. 

It took 55 seconds for me.

Above, the document that memorializes the fact that the City of Hallandale Beach subsidizes one-sided propaganda thru a grant to the FAUX newspaper.

And yes, that is the same FREE fake newspaper that gives Mayor Joy Cooper a "column" to extoll her particular brand of ill-informed nonsense and half-truths without fear that a Letter to the Editor will EVER appear that directly refutes and corrects her serial mis-statements. 

The Sun-Times not only DOESN'T run them, they DON'T print ANYTHING the slightest bit critical of Hallandale Beach City Hall, Mayor Cooper or the present and past two City Manager and their high-paid staff, who, facts seem to show, did NOT perform their jobs professionally for years, given how the CRA scandal only seemed to grow and grow, with nobody at City hall paying any attention to where the dollars went and providing any genuine accountability for taxpayers.

Just so you know, as of early 2010, HB's city manager and staff made more in salaries than the Hollywood City Manager's Office, despite the City of Hollywood being well over THREE TIMES larger in both size and population. 

Guess who'd never ever mention that salient fact during budget talks -or ever? 

Yes, the Sun-Times!

Yes, the same preposterously one-sided one about a parallel world where HB City Hall and Mayor Joy Cooper and her pals and cronies are always right, always smarter and always looking out for HB residents, taxpayers and small business-owners, when the plain truth is the exact opposite.

Cooper, who has fought so hard and for so long to keep that money flowing to Craig Farquhar and Company , himself, an unethical hypocrite and poseur who while dependent on the city's purse, can't keep his checkbook boosterism and half-truths straight, claiming on the one hand to have had no opinion on the very unpopular Diplomat LAC proposal championed by Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew a few years ago, but then all anyone had to do was check the Broward County website, and there was an email from Farquhar supporting it.
Bu-Bu... Busted!!!

(That out-of-scale development next to the Diplomat Country Club was eventually defeated by the Broward County Commission.)

Farquhar shows his support for the City Hall that feeds him by never allowing a Letter to the Editor to appear in-print, and by running a weekly so-called "column" by the mayor that in the time I have lived here, nine years, has never once read as if it was actually written by her, given her well-known spelling, syntax and metaphor problems that have been well-chronicled elsewhere.

(Lots of people in Hallandale Beach think they know who really writes those columns of hers, and based on the two names I hear the most, both attorneys, I tend to agree.)

Above, self-serving tripe served weekly! August 30, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Above is what passes for normal here in HB, but which is more accurately called propaganda elsewhere.

The perpetually-ridiculed and taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, South Florida Sun-Times, with one of the most egregious and laughable front pages of the past few years -and that's saying something! 

From my July 25, 2012 blog post title, When Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper says "setting the record straight" in her "column" at the taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, grab your wallet or purse, and be prepared to endure self-serving, nonsensical rationalizations that fail both the logic and reality test; 

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/when-hallandale-beach-mayor-joy-cooper_25.html

Broward Bulldog
Sweet deal for owners of Hallandale newspaper that features mayor as columnist

By William Gjebre, Broward Bulldog, 

February 9, 2012

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/

November 8, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The taxpayer-subsidized faux newspaper that serves as the propaganda arm for Hallandale Beach City Hall and Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew - the South Florida Sun-Times. 

This particular vending machine was photographed in 2009 just two feet away from one of the emergency fire exits of The Flashback Diner on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway & S.E. 3rd St. across from Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino. 

Where it'd been in that same position for many years! 

In a normal, well-run city, they'd never have been allowed to be placed in the direct path of a Fire Exit, but in Hallandale Beach, a trio of similar vending machines can be placed right next to an Emergency Exit in a building one block from HB City Hall -and nobody there EVER notices the self-evident safety problem/code violation! 

More often than seems humanly possible, under the present imperious mayor, and with staffers who seem not at all interested in the best long-term interests of this city's residents, Hallandale Beach City Hall is deaf, dumb and blind to everything around them.

To the great detriment of residents, taxpayers and small business-owners who desperately want the city to be normal and be MUCH-BETTER than it has been allowed to be, and for problems to really be solved, NOT just ignored by city administrators and city employees and kicked further down the road. 

October 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 

When Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper says "setting the record straight" in her "column" at the taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, grab your wallet or purse, and be prepared to endure self-serving, nonsensical rationalizations that fail both the logic and reality test

Above, the perpetually-ridiculed and taxpayer-financed faux newspaper, South Florida Sun-Times, with one of the most egregious and laughable front pages of the past few years -and that's saying something! August 30, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

With only 16 weeks to go until Election Day, what's the over-and-under on the number of times that the faux newspaper, the South Florida Sun-Times, will place mayor and "columnist" Joy Cooper, Comm. Anthony A. Sanders or former Commissioner and occasional "columnist" William "Bill" Julian on the front page, knowing that if they aren't on the City Commission after November, there will be no more taxpayer dollars going to crony capitalist and propaganda sheet owner Craig Farquahar?


The whole enterprise is like one massive con job, designed to portray Cooper and her Runner Stamp Crew, as well as her clique of friends and hangers-on around town seem robust and civic-minded, instead of the combative, thin-skinned, not-so-bright and despotic autocrats they have repeatedly shown themselves to be. 


It's the most crass and craven sort of propaganda you can imagine, made worse by the fact that it's financed in part with Hallandale Beach taxpayers' dollars, a sytem of information control that Cooper, Ross, Julian, Sanders and Lewy all want to see continue as long as they can manage it, because the very last thing they want is a real community newspaper that is dedicated to factual reporting of what is -and isn't- going on here.
They positively hate THAT idea!


With this particular gang of nit-wits and overly-ambitious egos based on nothing but sandcastles, there's them and then there's everyone else.
There's their point-of-view and then there's, well, that's it.

October 1, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved 


It's one of the reasons that the faux paper doesn't post letters to the editor, online or in-print. 
They don't want to antagonize their bankers and partners in crime like Cooper, who, along with her husband, have threatened the fake newspaper's owner before for once having dared to print something by another Commissioner that was 100% true, but unflattering to Cooper and her thin-skinned ego.
Well, obviously, she couldn't let THAT slide!


So rather than simply take a deep breath and recognize that if you're a politician, no matter where, there will always be people who disagree with you or who genuinely dislike you, a fact that you have to accept, and one self-evident to people around the world -but not to the Coopers- their first reaction was to strike back and show everyone who was boss -them!


They actually forced the people running the fake newspaper to actually go out into the community and drive around at night to retrieve as many of the distributed copies of the issue as possible.
And to destroy them.
And to agree to never make reference to it again.
Or else!


Needless to say, the bully's threats worked.
That's Joy Cooper in a nutshell.


-----
In case you're new to this particular story, go back to these prior pieces that connect-the-dots:

February 16, 2012 Miami Herald's Fred Grimm weighs in -again- on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach and its sweetheart deal from HB City Hall to be a propaganda arm

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/miami-heralds-fred-grimm-weighs-in.html

FEBRUARY 14, 2012 More about Hallandale Beach's unscrupulo​us crony capitalism deal b/w the faux newspaper, the SFST, and Mayor Joy Cooper, Cub Reporter...

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-about-hallandale-beachs.html

FEBRUARY 14, 2012 Csaba Kulin on Hallandale Beach's crony capitalism deal with a fake newspaper that stands ethics on its head and takes CRA money in exchange for being a City Hall propaganda machine

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/above-september-12-2010-issue-of.html

South Florida Business Journal
Why fight City Hall when you get a handout?
by Kevin Gale, Editor in Chief
Friday, February 10, 2012, 12:10pm EST
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2012/02/why-fight-city-hall-when-you-get-a.html

Sweet deal for owners of Hallandale newspaper that features mayor as columnist

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 

February 9, 2012 at 6:11 AM

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/

From the blog's cold storage vault, circa 2010: Another Hallandale Beach story the South Florida news media originally ignored for YEARS: faux journalism & crony capitalism with taxpayer dollars for allies of HB City Hall

Above, the never-ending embarrassment for us as Hallandale Beach taxpayers and the world of journalism. October 8, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier.

What follows is a Draft of a March 2010 blog entry that while it contains certain elements regular readers may recognize from previous posts here, was never itself posted online this way. And was, of course, 100% true when I wrote it, too.

Looking at it now, I can't help but wonder if Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and his crew of investigators, who are already busy investigating the city, have spoken yet to former Hallandale Beach CRA Manager Bobby Robinson or former HB Director of Development Services Richard Cannone, now of Calvin, Giordano & Associates.


(At HB City Hall Cannone is now considered a registered lobbyist and has visited HB City Hall numerous times on behalf of The Related Group's Beachwalk proposal on the Intercoastal that was unanimously rejected in January by the HB Planning & Zoning Board, but which, this being HB, comes back anyway to the entire City Commission this coming Wednesday night. More on that in a separate blog post on Mo0nday.)
If not, Mr. Scott & Company should definitely be making a VERY STRONG effort to do so -now.

I can personally think of about a hundred or so concerned Hallandale Beach citizens who, given enough of a head's up, would be happy to bring a cup of coffee with them from Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts and then plop down $10 a piece to sit down and observe an interview held in the middle of the auditorium of the HB Cultural Center, so we could finally hear their own accounts of what was REALLY going on that had/has so many HB taxpayers rightly upset.


How public information about development proposals was kept from the public, or so we can all find out which squeaky wheels in town were asking to be greased via CRA funds, with an almost guaranteed lack of appropriate accountability or follow-up.


Reminding you again, the following is from March 2010...


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The City of Hallandale Beach subsidizes one-sided propaganda thru $50k grant to FAUX newspaper.

Above, the document that memorializes the fact that the City of Hallandale Beach subsidizes one-sided propaganda thru a grant and loan to FAUX newspaper.
And yes, that is the same FREE fake newspaper that gives Mayor Joy Cooper a "column" to extol her particular brand of ill-informed nonsense and half-truths without fear that a Letter to the Editor will EVER appear that directly refutes and corrects her serial mis-statements.

The Sun-Times not only DOESN'T run them, they DON'T print ANYTHING the slightest bit critical of Hallandale Beach City Hall, Mayor Cooper or City Manager Mike Good and his high-paid staff.
Just so you know, as of just a few months ago, HB's city manager and staff made more in salaries than the Hollywood City Manager's Office, despite the City of Hollywood being well over THREE TIMES larger in both size and population.
Guess who'd never ever mention that salient fact? 


Yes, Craig Farquhar's faux newspaper that serves as propaganda arm to Hallandale Beach City Hall.

November 8, 2009 photo by South Beach Hoosier

The faux newspaper that serves as the propaganda arm to Hallandale Beach City Hall and the Joy Cooper & Mike Good Regime, the South Florida Sun-Times.
This particular vending machine is located but two feet away from one of the emergency fire exits of The Flashback Diner on U.S.-1/South Federal Highway, across from Gulfstream Park.
In a normal, well-run city, they'd be removed to another place on the property.

But in Hallandale Beach, a trio of vending machines can be placed right next to an emergency exit in a building one block from HB City Hall, and nobody there EVER notices the self-evident violation!
They are deaf, dumb and blind to everything around them. .

Twenty years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hallandale Beach, Florida still needs glasnost!

November 5th, 2009 Update re South Florida Sun-Times, above.At yesterday morning's Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting, I heard the new official Hallandale Beach City Hall stalling tactic regarding the actual citizens and taxpayers of this city being able to see the documents regarding City Manager Mike Good's decision to give $50,000 in city CRA money as a grant to the faux newspaper called the South Florida Sun-Times, above.

Mayor Joy Cooper was practically gloating Wednesday when she foolishly said that she thinks that the particular documents are "proprietary" and can't be shared with public!
Can she really be that arrogant and anti-democratic in public, he said rhetorically.

Can she really think that she can trump the State of Florida Constitution and the protected rights that Florida citizens enjoy under our Sunshine Laws, forever, and that there won't be legal and political consequences for her personally and the city?

To answer my own question, yes, Joy Cooper is indeed that arrogant, that anti-democratic and that egotistical. Proprietary?

Sure, because in the current economy of the year 2009, actual for-profit companies want to model their own behavior on an inferior product like the faux newspaper, the Sun-Times, that doesn't actually generate a profit, has a very poor reputation and that rather than accurately reflect the news of the community in its pages, good and bad, exists as a propaganda arm of Hallandale Beach City Hall and the mayor and city manager who give it money, just like the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce.

Twenty years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hallandale Beach, Florida still needs glasnost!

Below, the phony "story" the city placed in the faux newspaper the week before the 2008 election:

This is the phony, one-sided story Hallandale Beach City Hall had placed in the faux newspaper the week before the November 2008 election, in order to try to ensure that Anthony A. Sanders got elected.


It was dis-honestly titled Setting the Record Straight: On the Purchase of Eagles Development Center, and carried no byline or identifying author information.
Most well-informed people in the city have long-believed that it was actually written by someone in the HB City Manager's Office, likely one of the Asst. City Managers.


Which is to say that some highly-paid city employee, whose salary and pension are paid for with taxpayer funds, was instructed to concoct a lie masquerading as a news story, in order to placate at least one elected city official, in order to ensure that facts about an interim City Commissioner were covered-up and that said interim City Commissioner was elected.

That's how absurd life in Hallandale Beach is, and where was the South Florida news media when this originally happened, even after they were repeatedly told what was going on?
Completely Missing in Action, as usual!

Miami Herald's Fred Grimm weighs in -again- on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach and its sweetheart CRA deal from HB City Hall to be a propaganda arm

Having known the ins-and-outs about this awful deal for years and writing about it here, and having attended the Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting last year where it finally came out how little the recipients of HB CRA loans were actually paying back, if anything, galling gallows humor to even the most jaded veteran observer of HB City Hall nonsense, it's been interesting to observe how now that the Broward Bulldog has reminded everyone in South Florida paying attention what a ridiculous deal Hallandale Beach taxpayers were stuck with, on behalf of the mayor and three of the four commissioners, everyone wants to get in their licks on the unethical low-hanging piñata...
------

Miami Herald
IN MY OPINION
Hallandale Beach paper shows way to make easy money  
BY FRED GRIMM  
FGRIMM@MIAMIHERALD.COM
February 14, 2012

Money problems have pretty much flummoxed the newspaper industry. Corporate executives spend a lot of time obsessing over various strategies to recapture lost revenues. I worry about Strategy Number 17, which entails columnists in sandwich boards.

Who would have guessed that the solution to the industry’s financial problems would come from a little weekly newspaper in Hallandale Beach? The South Florida Sun Times gets all the credit for the brilliant new business plan: free money. Much better than cranky old guys in sandwich boards.

The Sun Times cache of money comes from the city of Hallandale Beach. The BrowardBullDog.org, a regional non-profit dedicated to investigative journalism, reported last week that the weekly newspaper received $50,000 from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency back in 2009. The money was ostensibly a loan, but special terms excuse the newspaper from the burden of paying back more than half the money. The Sun Times gets away with repaying the other half at only 2 percent interest over 10 years.

This is what’s known in the financial sector as “one sweet deal.”

CRAs are special defined urban districts that levy taxes to fund infrastructure improvements. Stuff like slum clearance, water and sewer projects, street lights, sidewalks.

In Miami, CRA funds have occasionally been diverted toward the improvement of private property owned by the close relatives of unscrupulous politicians. We know this because newspapers like The Miami Herald dig into the CRA records and report the scandalous truth. Then the unscrupulous politician goes on radio and says unkind things about The Herald. This is the old, tried, true but not very profitable model of newspaper journalism.

In Hallandale Beach, a city conjured out of the Broward tomato fields by mob boss Meyer Lansky, the Sun Times has invented a better way. The newspaper doesn’t investigate the questionable distribution of CRA funds. The newspaper takes the funds.

The $50,000 was the first “loan” given out under a CRA program supposed to rescue struggling city businesses. BullDog.org reports that the Sun Times was the only business in the program allowed to shrug off half the loan.

BullDog.org, looking at the tax records filed with the CRA, noticed that the president of the “struggling” Sun Times was paid $259,193 in 2007 and $239,054 in 2008. The weekly’s vice president received $192,052 and $229,010 those same years.

Experts in employee compensation have a special term for this level of pay: “Wow!”

Under the old newspaper model, a courageous, slightly overweight, aging but still virile columnist would have gone berserk, suggesting that with that kind of executive pay, no wonder the Sun Times needed a bailout from the city. And why on earth, the columnist would ask, would the mayor of Hallandale Beach push such a dodgy deal through the city’s CRA?

Except that Mayor Joy Cooper, the potential object of the Sun Times columnist’s scorn, also happens to be the Sun Times columnist. Admittedly, her style does not recall Chicago’s Mike Royko (“The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It’s an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.”) or New York’s Jimmy Breslin (“Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”)

But there she is, the mayor/columnist, with her regular space in the Sun Times, with an unfettered opportunity to enhance her public persona. Meanwhile, City Commissioner Keith London (or any other critic of municipal policy) is nowhere to be seen in the pages of the uncrusading newspaper. That may be because London has not only railed about the $50,000 loan, he has criticized the $105,000 the city has spent advertising in the Sun Times over the past two fiscal years. The Sun Times deals were never approved by the city commission, he complained.

(In 2009, a letter was mailed out to city businesses on official Hallandale Beach city stationery stating: “Just about everyone is feeling the effects of the economy and doing what we can to get through tough times. In an effort to promote and support local businesses, the city encourages all businesses to advertise in the city’s only local newspaper.” The love letter was signed by both Mayor Cooper and City Manager Mike Goode.)

A columnist under the old newspaper model would argue that the mayor has a very suspicious relationship with the recipient of so much city money. But the columnist under the much cozier Sun Times model, with the free money strategy, would write, “Hey, suckers. I’m the mayor. I do what the hell I want.”

Read the readers comments at:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/13/2639870/hallandale-beach-paper-shows-way.html

Csaba Kulin on Hallandale Beach's crony capitalism deal with a fake newspaper that stands ethics on its head and takes CRA money in exchange for being a City Hall propaganda machine

Above, the September 12, 2010 issue of the Stongsville Post, a genuine "community newspaper" that reports both sides on issues and controversies in its part of suburban Cleveland, Ohio

Today I'd like to share with you a copy of the email my friend and fellow Hallandale Beach/Broward County activist Csaba Kulin sent out on Monday concerning the continuing controversy surrounding what Csaba and I and many other concerned HB residents have long believed is the city's completely unethical and financially unsound arrangement with a faux newspaper located here in the city.

The problem is simple to understand: in exchange for operating as a propaganda arm of Hallandale Beach City Hall and its mayor of the past ten years, Joy Cooper, the owners receive funds from the city's CRA, which is generally supposed to be used to eliminate blight within the CRA zone of the city.

Since Csaba brings up his former full-time home of Strongsville, OH in his email from yesterday, I thought it was important to preface his new email with another instance where Csaba used Strongsville as a means for comparison to what passes for normal here in Hallandale Beach, so you could judge for yourself.

That instance comes from a Bob Norman blog post from last year, before he left the NewTimes for WPLG-TV, Channel 10, the ABC-TV affiliate here in South Florida, which concerned an email Csaba had written to Mayor Cooper and the other four members of the City Commission contrasting municipal spending habits and patterns of Strongsville to those in Hallandale Beach.  

BrowardPalm Beach NewTimes

Bob Norman's Pulp

Hallandale Beach Mayor Defends City in Sloppy, Error-Filled Email

By Bob Norman

April 27, 2011 at 8:54 AM Comments (55)

Ever heard of Strongsville, Ohio?

Neither had I, but it's apparently a suburb of Cleveland and a place where Hallandale condo president and activist Csaba Kulin used to live.

Kulin is amazed at the bloated cost of Hallandale Beach's budget compared to that of Strongville and recently wrote a letter about it to the City Commission.

Read the rest of the post and the reader comments at: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2011/04/hallandale_mayor_joy_cooper_budget.php

----- 

Dear Friends and Hallandale Beach Residents,

I am sure by now you read or heard about the "sweet deal" the South Florida Sun Times receives from the City of Hallandale Beach. In case you are not aware of it, I included the link to the Miami Herald and the Broward Bulldog articles. My name was mentioned in both articles, so I decided to make a comment to both publications to state my position.

I hope you will find the stories informative. At the bottom you can see my comments.

Sincerely,

Csaba Kulin 

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/09/2633582/hallandale-beach-newspaper-gets.html

From personal experience, I'm a great believer in the importance of an "independent community newspaper" that covers issues that larger mass circulations newspaper can't or won't cover. I know something about that because when I'm in Ohio for part of the summer every year, the town I lived in full-time before moving to Hallandale Beach has one of the best "community papers" in the country, the Strongsville Post. There was no community issue or policy that the Post won't send reporters to examine or report upon, and because of that, the newspaper remains trusted, popular, a good place to advertise a product or service, and accepted as an important part of the community there.

Conversely, that same experience informs my opinion that the South Florida Sun Times (SFST) failed the “independence” test the moment it asked for and accepted money from the City of Hallandale Beach for services NOT provided. The SFST, having accepted funds that could have been better spent elsewhere within the CRA zone to eliminate blight, has for years adhered to a policy that's ever mindful of biting the hand that feeds it.

As opposed to the Post in Strongsville, OH, the SFST has become a one-sided house organ in its "reporting," and has thus become both irrelevant and a subject of open ridicule throughout the community, practically a punch line. In my own condo complex, we routinely discard large bundle of unread copies that were placed in the condo lobby into the recycling bins every week.

A legitimate newspaper that aspires to consider itself a "community newspaper" should, without even having to think about it, write about both sides of an issue or policy, and must encourage and publish opposing points of view. So in our case here in Hallandale Beach, routinely publishing something against the “party line” given by Mayor Joy Cooper in her so-called "columns," rather than NOT publishing anything that challenges what she says, as is currently the case. And the same goes for publishing Letters to the Editor without censorship with respect to topic and content. They ought to publish updated police blotter and proceedings of the City Commission Meetings. The SFST currently does NONE of these things.

If the SFST continues to operate in its current fashion, they might as well change their name to PRAVDA.

The Hallandale Beach CRA, with policy set by the elected City Commission and the mayor, has had more than its share of problems in the recent past. One episode in particular is worth mentioning here as it's indicative of the sort of favoritism and cronyism it has practiced in the past, a story never mentioned in the SFST. A loan in the amount of $125,000 loan was given for what was called at the time, THE CITY CHANEL, and was promoted and developed by Steve Fecske of California, and his local partner, a person very well-connected to HB City Hall. Mr. Fecske’s previous expertise includes, among other things according to Google's search engine, developing pornography web sites.  Like Seinfeld said, “not that anything is wrong with that”.

The night of the city commission meeting, Hallandale Beach taxpayers showed up in force to vehemently oppose the proposed loan on its merits, as well as the transparent way the commission waived its own meager requirements that the business group did NOT meet. Commissioner Keith London took the lead in objecting to it from the dais, but because the mayor supported it, it passed. Where was the SFST?

Well, forward to today, the local partner has since passed away, the money expended from the CRA is lost, and nobody in charge is asking any questions about it. And the South Florida Sun Times remains silent.

In November, voters of Hallandale Beach will have a chance to make major changes in the way this city is governed and the public policies that guide it. Concerned voters who want a better-managed and more transparent City Hall that is proactively accountable to taxpayers, and NOT in love with crony capitalism excesses like the loan to the SFST, should heed the recent lessons that have cost them and their neighbors both money and lost opportunities to make this a better community, and should vote for reform candidates.

Csaba Kulin, candidate for Hallandale Beach City Commission

More about Hallandale Beach's unscrupulo​us crony capitalism deal b/w the faux newspaper, the SFST, and Mayor Joy Cooper, Cub Reporter...

 Above, a photo I took back on October 8, 2010 of the never-ending embarrassment...  for us as Hallandale Beach taxpayers and the world of journalism.
Below, a copy of the email that I wrote and sent out last Friday to the Usual Suspects thoughout South Florida and journalism watering holes in the U.S. and elsewhere.


Sixteen months ago, I wrote the following on my blog, just one of many over the years on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach. My biggest problem wasn't writing it, of course, but rather trying to decide which was THE most outlandish and absurd front page of the dozens they've run that I've kept...

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2010
Csaba Kulin's common sense take on the faux newspaper in Hallandale Beach that gobbles up taxpayer funds, the South Florida Sun Times



It's hard to imagine a more ridiculous, self-serving and un-true headline than this one from August 13, 2009 in the faux community newspaper, the South Florida Sun-Times: AHEAD OF THE GAME: Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper continues to do the job residents elected her to do -once again!

Read the rest of my post above at:http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/csaba-kulins-common-sense-take-on-faux.html

That followed by five months the effort to create...
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2009
Hallandale Beach insiders to offer goodies/new propaganda TV channel to HB City Hall for $200k CRA loan Wed. morning.

As you'll recall above, despite NOT meeting most of the very-low standards the city usually required for a loan, the loan was made... more money down the drain!
That eye-opening post of mine from almsot three years ago is at: http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/hallandale-beach-insiders-to-offer.html

I'm planning on posting some more incriminating info about the SFST in a few days on my blog, possibly including some eye-opening video I still have from 2010 that makes clear how steadfast and stuuborn HB City Hall remains in trying to funnel money to people who, as I'll show, couldn't even do the one thing they needed to consistently do -reliably inform the people of this community.

That info will be news to most of you in Southeast broward and elsewhere I think, since what was in the Broward Bulldog and then the Miami Herald last Thursday is, as some of you already know, just the tip of the iceberg on this story about the mayor's ambition and desire to always get her way being subsidized by taxpayers dollars -yours.

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/sweet-deal-for-owners-of-hallandale-newspaper-that-features-mayor-as-columnist/
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/09/2633582/hallandale-beach-newspaper-gets.html Make sure you read the comments!

Below, more on Joy Cooper, Cub Reporter...
I was going to say Nancy Drew, but of course Nancy Drew in her stint as a reporter in the 1940's film series tried to bring facts to light, not to bury them; she cleared a girl of murder, after all.
http://www.archive.org/details/nancy_drew_reporter

Also, Nancy Drew never threatened a "publisher" before like the mayor and her husband did a few years ago when, out-of-the-blue, something true-but-unflattering about her somehow wound-up in the faux newspaper.

Again, I remind you, that something was true-but-unflattering, but as we all know, the mayor really hates hearing Inconvenient Facts, whether from me or any other citizen paying close attention to what's going on -or isn't- right in front of us, so, as you'd expect, she and her husband went to the "newspaper's" office and went ballistic.
They demanded that... well, that's the part of the story still to come.
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I also commend to you the following piece as well on the blatant disregard for fairness and journalism ethics.

South Florida Business Journal
Why fight City Hall when you get a h andout?
by Kevin Gale, Editor in Chief
Friday, February 10, 2012, 12:10pm EST
http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/blog/2012/02/why-fight-city-hall-when-you-get-a.html

If you have a Facebook account, you can leave a comment... I don't, so can't.

See this mention of our mayor from last month...http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/dc/2012/01/occupy-protest-leads-arrest-assault-officer/165117

And in case you forgot one of the previous Joy Cooper crony capitalism deals with the faux
newspaper... I still have a copy of the letter and envelope that was sent out on HB City Hall
stationary to try to drum up business for a fake newspaper that nobody trusts or believes.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/columnists/story/850227.html
Miami Herald
Mayor, paper are very cozy in Hallandale
By Fred Grimm
January 13, 2009

It pays to be nice.
If only The Miami Herald had been a little nicer, a little more accommodating, a little less critical, some grateful mayor might be sending out swell letters to our potential advertisers.
Consider the South Florida Sun-Times in Hallandale Beach. A nice weekly paper. Very nice. Self-consciously nice. ''We do mostly positive stories. We don't do a lot of negative,'' Sun-Times President Craig Farquhar said.
No nasty (or otherwise) letters to the editor. (Too bad, given that Hallandale Beach residents are both literate and famously contentious. Their letters would liven up any newspaper.)
The Sun-Times (circulation about 55,000) especially eschews articles critical of the mayor of Hallandale Beach. Not exactly what you'd call a media watchdog when it comes to local government. More like a lapdog.
But niceness pays off. Last month, a surprising letter was mailed out to city businesses on official Hallandale Beach city stationery: ''Just about everyone is feeling the effects of the economy and doing what we can to get through tough times. In an effort to promote and support local businesses, the city encourages all businesses to advertise in the city's only local newspaper.'' The letter was signed by both Mayor Joy Cooper and City Manager Mike Goode.


LETTER STARTLING
For an old newspaper guy, who harbors an almost religious reverence for the contentious relationship between journalism and government, it was a startling read.
For Jeanne Roonoe, a businesswoman who has owned Dixie Top Shop down on Dixie Highway for 28 years, it was startling for other reasons. ''For one thing, the city mailed out these letters using first-class mail instead of bulk mail.'' But mostly she wondered why, when so many businesses are hurting, ``the city singled out just one to help.''
Because it pays to be accommodating. The Sun-Times runs a weekly column by Mayor Cooper. City Commissioner Keith London, often at odds with the mayor, claims that the paper refuses to print contrary opinions from him.
In particular, last fall after the mayor ran a column critical of a lawsuit London had filed against the city, the newspaper refused to publish the city commissioner's response. ''We chose not to run his article. We choose not to run lots of stories from people,'' Farquhar said.


SWEET DEAL
London, using Freedom of Information requests to pry the information out of City Hall, found that Hallandale Beach city government spent $18,500 buying ads in the Sun-Times over the past two years. The commissioner suggests that the newspaper, at city expense, has become a kind of unfiltered house organ for the mayor's office.
(However, to be fair, Mayor Cooper's latest column is not exactly a scintillating read. Not a whiff of controversy. No political attacks. No mention of her blood enemy Keith London.)
Mayor Cooper told the Sun-Sentinel that in exchange for the letters to potential advertisers, she expected stories in the Sun-Times that would ``promote the city.''
That happened to be the same term employed by the very nice president of the Sun-Times. ''We all have to work together to promote the city and business,'' Farquhar told me Monday.
Not that I have anything against being nice, even to mayors. It's just a peculiar ethos for a newspaper.

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I only wish the South Florida news media had taken this whole embarrassing situation more seriously when I knew about it and was writing about it before they were.
I constantly contacted all four English-speaking TV stations and both the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel with the pertinent facts, delivering it on a silver platter with all dots already connected, but as you know if you read my posts at the time, the local news media just didn't care.
Not a whit.

All of which makes this sudden media interest in a longstanding situation that HB taxpayers have had to live with for years, now seem rather curious to lots of well-informed people I know and interact with regularly.
Adminstrators and elected officials from other cities and up at Broward County Govt. HQ and regular taxpayer citizens.
They all wonder why the concerns of HB residents didn't matter to the news media when it might've done some good.
It's a little after-the-fact, now.