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

https://twitter.com/RedBroward/status/1054766645128773632

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

--------
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

https://twitter.com/RedBroward/status/1054766645128773632

BUSTED? Hallandale Beach Commissioner Caught With Illegal Voter Card Targeting African-American Churches https://t.co/o2wp62Yk8M pic.twitter.com/S5V2TlMfwa

— RED BROWARD (@RedBroward) October 23, 2018

@Buddynevins @browardpolitics @GlennaWPLG 1/ Is this Jeffrey Brown -"local leader"??- part of same #HallandaleBeach Brown family that produced Dr. Debra Brown, Joy Cooper-ally who was only person who went to jail in HB CRA scandal for using $ 4 personal use instead of "her" kids?

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 23, 2018

@lbarszewski 2/ The Dr. Brown who when @BrowardIG/#SAO contacted @MYHBeach abt whether it wanted restitution for stolen $, then-Mayor Joy Cooper, WITHOUT approval of City Comm., said "No," the city wld not require her to re-pay the thousands of $ she stole https://t.co/eCpd7XrR42

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 23, 2018

@BrittanyWallman 3/ Is this Brown related to Josh Brown, who had gall to use the city-owned facility he & sister Deb paid $1 a year for as a contact address for partisan political purposes, and even placed campaign signs for Cooper, Julian & Sanders there? https://t.co/HGegEwgNBX

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 23, 2018

@GlennaWPLG 4/ Some things never change, like the abysmal level of #ethics in #HallandaleBeach. Names change, roster of allies change, but HB determined to see itself as special and deserving of special rules, not ones rest of world/state = governed by. https://t.co/6ujRhHfYLj

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 23, 2018

5/ ICYMI: I asked then-#HallandaleBeach CityClerk YEARS ago why lobbyist #EvanRoss got treated deferentially by city staff, allowed to sit in staff seats in Chamber. 🤔
Everyone knows I was APPALLED by process that led to selection of unqualified Dally. https://t.co/eXy3MhOzKm 🤨

— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) October 23, 2018

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!

ICYMI: the DOUBLE Hallandale Beach connection on the recent story about fired Miami Gardens police chief arrested after a prostitution arrest; Surprise! It's City Manager Renee Miller and the Hallandale Beach CRA

In case you forgot about this -or never knew it- the former Miami Gardens deputy Police Chief Paul Miller referred to in the Miami Herald article below about the just-resigned Stephen Johnson, who resigned amid allegations of harassment and illegal stop-and-frisk tactics at the 207 Quikstop, is the husband of current Hallandale Beach City Manager Renee (Crichton) Miller.

ICYMI: Fired #MiamiGardens police chief apologizes after arrest: ‘The stress overwhelmed me’ http://t.co/GS9J1MdR1r w/@LDixon_3
— Joey Flechas (@joeflech) March 1, 2015

Miami Gardens police chief says stress led him to act inappropriately, apologizes after prostitution arrest: http://t.co/jxsHz0zKKg
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) February 28, 2015

Renee Miller, whom you will recall like it was yesterday, is the very same woman who so famously and frequently lectured us over recent years at HB City Commission and CRA meetings that one of the reasons that SHE was so well-qualified to undermine the valid and scathing criticisms that you and I have so frequently made public with self-evident evidence about the longtime incompetent and unsatisfactory doings of the HB CRA and the equally-curious, perplexing (and unsatisfactory) 

policies and practices of HBPD that routinely wastes personnel and resources like there's no tomorrow, was because... SHE helped create and manage them in Miami Gardens before she was (so foolishly) hired here.

Of course, when a certain charming, well-informed and well-known female HB civic activist of our acquaintance decided to contact the City of Miami Gardens last year to inquire about this boast of Renee Miller's and put it to the test, the folks in Miami Gardens more than scratched their heads.
Let's just say that THEY didn't quite remember recent history the way our current City Manager tells it. 
Not at all. 

Surprise!

In case you missed the amazing recent This American Life segment on the Miami Gardens Police Dept. and the 207 Quickstop while Paul Miller was Deputy Chief, it's here.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/548/transcript

You might want to sit down before you listen to it!

Update: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/blog/2015/03/updates-miami-gardens-police-department

The second HB angle on the story is that Police Chief Johnson was the pastor at HB-based Bethel House of God Church at 516 NW 4th Avenue, a past recipient of HB CRA largesse.

You might better remember Bethel from this doc written by Marcum LLP, a January 2012 draft for the City of Hallandale Beach in the form of an Agreed-Upon Procedures Draft in response to the HBCRA's years of completely inadequate and invisible financial control over millions of HBCRA dollars by City Managers Mike Good and Mark Antonio and their two -and current- Assistant City Managers, Nydia Rafols and
Jennifer Frastai, former City Attorney David Jove, Mayor Joy Cooper and the four other members of the HB City Commission acting as the CRA Board, where nobody drawing a HB paycheck ever bothered to verify whether CRA funds were being spent properly or prudently, to say nothing of being spent as outlined in their own formal requests for funding.

Or, whether it had simply been used for pocket money. 

http://www.myactsofsedition.com/wp-content/uploads/Hallandale-AUP-DRAFT-02-03-2012.pdf

Which as we know from the Broward State's Attorney's Office, happened in the case of one of Mayor Cooper's most-vocal political supporters, Dr. Deborah Brown, the little minnow that was arrested per Inspector General: Hallandale Beach ‘grossly mismanaged’ millions in public funds

http://www.floridabulldog.org/?s=Broward+Inspector+General+slams+Hallandale+for+%22gross+mismanagement%22

while no HB elected officials or bureaucrats were arrested or fired.

Or perhaps you know Bethel House better from this doc from 2012;

http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2012-06-20/Item%207C/SUPP_DOCS/Documents/Doc4.pdf

Yes, THAT Dr. Deborah Brown.

From last Spring:

http://sheriff.org/apps/arrest/details.cfm?id=4942B5F7-47E0-4100-842B-B0866BCA3F24&key=6F7F9D3E44F9D895EBF12028E5C77143&page=1&lname=BROWN&fname=DEBORAH

BROWN, DEBORAH R

INMATE INFORMATION

Arrest Number: 801400840  Arrest Date: 05/19/2014  Race: B  Sex: F  DOB: 10/09/1961  Height: 504   Weight: 179  Hair: BRO  Eyes: BRO  Arresting Agency: MAIN JAIL  * Location: Main Jail  * Visitation: 2B View Schedule * Expected Release Date:

click to enlarge

CHARGE(S) INFORMATION

Charge Number:	1
Case Number:	14006686cf10a
Statute:	812.014-2c1
Description:	GRAND THEFT>$300<$5000
Charge Comment:	NIC
Charge Status:	PENDING TRIAL (Surety Bond is pending)
Bond Type:	BD
Bond Amount:	1,000.00
Disposition:
Projected Sent. End Date*:

* Subject to Change

The Deborah Brown the city gave its MLK Humanitarian of the Year award to, remember, even as I discovered on my own -long before the Broward IG- that she was routinely failing to file required non-profit financial documents for her group with the IRS.

Not that anyone at HB City Hall was checking that.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-01-31/news/fl-cn-mlkaward-0131-20100128_1_mlk-humanitarian-award-targets-at-risk-youth-austin-hepburn-center

The very woman who annually leased property from the city/CRA in NW Hallandale Beach for years for peanuts -$10.

AFTER the city poured lots of taxpayer money into it.

Property that as you'll recall had previously belonged to Comm. Anthony Sanders and his wife, which was bought from them by the city for about $89,000 more than it was actually worth.

And when time came to vote on the purchase, not surprisingly, Comm. Sanders didn't
have the good sense to recuse himself on the vote, as HB's former City Attorney David 

Jove, the legal bump-on-the-log waiting to retire and collect his pension, simply let it all 

slide, as he had for so many years.

Trust me, the Local10 video with Glenna Milberg, as well as my own comments, speak volumes: 

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/video-local10s-glenna-milberg-examines.html

The Hallandale Beach scandal that won't go away

Above,  501 N.W. 1st Avenue, which in Hallandale Beach polite society and public policy circles is considered THE most egregious example of dozens of exasperating and highly-questionable examples of dubious government spending and crony capitalism that've taken place on Mayor Joy Cooper's ten-year watch, and one of the most dubious of any in Broward County, which is REALLY saying something. 

It's the infamous former property owned by HB Comm. Anthony A. Sanders and his wife, Jessica, that has seen so many tens of thousands of Hallandale Beach taxpayer dollars and CRA dollars poured into it. 

For what, THIS?

A property which was bought by the city without ANY plan for its future use, and which is now rented to a non-profit for $10 a year, and which Sanders can still use for free? 

(Some of the above is from 2012 blog posts.) 

The same public property that Deborah Brown's brother, Josh, used for some very curious purposes, including, perhaps, at least temporarily for purposes of running for office.
But isn't using that a prohibited purpose on public property? 

Yes.

The same public property controlled by Deborah Brown that had partisan campaign signs for Mayor Cooper, Comm. Sanders and Comm. Julian on it for WEEKS in 2012 prior to the November election?

Campaign signs on taxpayer property? Yes.

From my October 15, 2012 blog post titled, 'Ethics? Not for us! Follow-up to my post re Hallandale Beach's unethical "business as usual" attitude, with "special rules for special people" if they are named Joy Cooper, Bill Julian and Anthony A. Sanders; What ethics? What rules? @MayorCooper, @SandersHB"

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/ethics-not-for-us-follow-up-to-my-post.html

Deborah Brown's attack on a Keith London for Mayor volunteer at a HB election site at Ingalls Park in SW HB on Election Day in 2012 precipitated HBPD being called in to bring order there.

And actually having to keep many police officers on hand to make sure that Brown and 

other Cooper for Mayor supporters didn't start physically attacking their opponents -again.

Or did you never read about that bit of news in the Herald and the Sun-Sentinel?

For obvious reasons, you also never saw that fact appear in the HB CRA-subsidized South Florida Sun-Times, HB City Hall's propaganda sheet.

HB citizens' reality in the current media age is as certain as death and taxes: being ignored ad infinitum and watching as far too many print and TV reporters accept pablum from HB City Hall as an explanation rather than concentrating on what is right in front of them and raining cold hard facts down upon officials and forcing them to account for what REALLY happens here.

But then the reality here is that two groups that ought to be looking out for HB citizens, the Broward IG office and the Broward States Attorney office are NOT fully doing their job with any sign of gusto, either, given how much entrenched incompetency and corruption has been going for years in this target-rich environment.

As it happens, since I was at Ingalls Park within minutes of HBPD being called, I took several photos of all the HBPD cops forced to stand around for hours and hours doing nothing but drinking Cokes and playing with their cell phones.

I never ran the photos on my blog because at a certain point, even after all these years, no matter how hard I try to stay vigilant, how do you (I) accurately describe the surreal dimensions of HB's everyday reality?

Trust me, people in the rest of Florida and around the country can't believe what we routinely are forced to bear and to accept as "normal" every day in Hallandale Beach.

Nobody is going to help us but ourselves.

More thoughts on that next week.

Don't say it with flowers, say it with subpoenas! Subpoenas finally drop on the heads of Hallandale Beach officials, including Mayor Joy Cooper, and now the Joint Legislative Auditing Comm. is showing genuine interest in getting the WHOLE TRUTH from the HB CRA about what happened to all that money. Yes, the scandal in Broward County involving MILLION$ that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and their Dana Banker & Rosemary Goudreau have been ignoring for months. Future owners of the Sun-Sentinel, please take note!

Local10 video: Hallandale Beach CRA accused of misspending $2.1 Million
Broward County Commission takes no action on audit request.
Reported by investigative reporter Bob Norman
Published On: Jun 04 2013 07:11:25 PM EDT, Updated On: Jun 05 2013 11:01:19 AM EDT

http://www.local10.com/news/cra-accused-of-misspending-21m/-/1717324/20425002/-/3mpae4z/-/index.html

Legislature asks Hallandale for answers about CRA spending; Subpoenas land at city hall browardbulldog.org/2013/06/legisl…
— Broward Bulldog (@BrowardBulldog) June 10, 2013

My comments after the article. 
-----

Broward Bulldog

Legislature asks Hallandale for answers about CRA spending; Subpoenas land at city hall

By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org  

June 10, 2013 AT 6:15 AM

The Florida Legislature’s joint auditing committee is wading into Hallandale Beach’s questionable spending of local redevelopment funds, demanding that city officials explain the use and handling of those funds.

Legislators who head the committee also are urging the city commission to ask Florida’s Attorney General for a new opinion to clarify how Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) funds can be spent. City leaders have challenged a previous opinion.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/06/legislature-asks-hallandale-for-answers-about-cra-spending-subpoenas-land-at-city-hall/

While all you regular readers of the blog know by now that I've written FL state Senator Jeremy Ring about the HB CRA scandal before, perhaps some of those fact-filled emails I also sent to the fair-minded state legislators on the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee and certain members of the FL House and Senate leadership who still genuinely care about public accountability and the public good, emails that I've never mentioned before, have finally worn away their natural skepticism that things here in Hallandale Beach at the CRA could really be as bad as we all knew they were in fact.

Nothing like having the facts on your side in an argument, and we've all collectively had facts by the mountain-lode from the very beginning.

HB City Hall, on the other hand, had it much easier.

There, highly-paid city employees only had their never-ending desire to keep Mayor Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew happy, and spending money where she wanted it spent, without having those pesky problems of caring what actually happened to the money or even whether it was spent the way it was supposed to, albeit, for impermissible purposes.

Finally, a few rays of sunshine...

This afternoon, former Hallandale Beach Commissioner Keith London, a friend, sent the following comments out over the transom, and I thought they were worth your attention.

 

Everyone,

Last week Commissioner Michele Lazarow and I spoke to the Broward County Commission regarding the “Gross Mismanagement” by Hallandale Beach of its CRA.

On Friday I received a copy of the letter from the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee demanding specific action(s) by the city of Hallandale as outlined in the Broward Office of the Inspector General official report title “Gross Mismanagement”.

As a “concerned citizen” I also spoke with the Florida Auditor General’s office and requested they perform a complete audit of Hallandale CRA under Florida Statue Chapter 163. I was pleased to see their office was copied by the Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee letter on Friday.

In addition, the State Attorney’s office has issued subpoenas to the city of and at least one elected Hallandale Commission member seeking documentation into the “criminal investigation” of Deborah Brown.

The above information is vastly different than the story Cooper portrays in her writings in the Sun Times last Thursday (the newspaper which receives $50,000 annually from the City and a CRA grant of $25,000) – click here.

The State Attorney’s Office, Florida Legislature Joint Legislative Committee, Florida Auditor General, Broward Office of the Inspector General, and The Broward County Commission will surely enjoy reading the rants of denial in her article while the investigation continues. 

-----

* I'll have a video posted here very soon of the comments that Keith and HB City Commissioner Michele Lazarow made last Tuesday before the Broward County Commission so that you can hear them for yourself.

Officially, those photos that I sent some of you by email last Tuesday afternoon of Keith London and Mayor Joy Cooper at the Broward County Comm. meeting ran at the Broward Politics blog, so if you were to go to the Sun-Sentinel's website, they don't appear in search results.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/broward-politics-blog/sfl-keith-london-joy-cooper-20130604,0,4413456.photogallery

Here's the link to the reader comments to the strange S-S photo gallery of Tuesday, the one that incorrectly implied that Mayor Cooper would speak, which if the Sun-Sentinel's Tonya Alanez had simply read the agenda docs, she'd know that was NOT going to happen.

http://discussions.sun-sentinel.com/gallery/sfl-keith-london-joy-cooper-20130604/sfl-keith-london-joy-cooper-20130604-002/10

Not that they went back to correct that, after-the-fact, as would happen at most newspapers!

And where's any mention of what was actually said about the HB CRA at that meeting, either in the morning or later in the afternoon on Tuesday?

There is NONE.

If you want more proof of the Sun-Sentinel's obliviousness to this story, consider this.

If you do a search on the S-S website itself, there's nothing on their website about the HB CRA scandal or what Keith London or Comm. Michele Lazarow have said about it, whether last Tuesday or in the past few months, even though it's clearly news.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=%22Hallandale+Beach+CRA%22&btnSubmit=&target=adv_all&date=&sortby=contentrankprof&spell=on

0 results for ‘"Hallandale Beach CRA"’. Showing 0 results for‘"Hallandale Beach CRA"’.

Sort by: Relevance | Date

No Results Found

So, obviously, there's also no high-minded editorials from them about the HB CRA scandals and HB City Hall's longstanding lack of ethics.

LOL!

In fact, what Michele actually says or does or thinks about any issue of any kind at HB City Hall has never caught the attention of the S-S since her election in November.

Nothing about a single issue in 7 months according to their own records!

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=%22Michele+Lazarow%22&btnSubmit=&target=adv_all&date=&sortby=contentrankprof

Yes, despite everything that has happened here over those same seven months.

Your first reaction upon hearing this likely to shake your head and say 

"How in the year 2013 can that be true?"

There's your local news coverage, Sun-Sentinel style.

Some well-informed people around Broward have been suggesting something to me for many months and now I'm officially going to share this bit of groupthink with you, though that was before I started hearing last week that subpoenas were on the way:

They believe that Sun-Sentinel columnist Michael Mayo has thrown in the towel on HB and is no longer going to get exorcised by what  happens here, since he believes that the Broward State Attorney's Office doesn't want to do their job and neither does FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office, either.

They further believe that Mayo sees writing a column about HB, like he once did fairly frequently for a few years, as a losing proposition, and that he no longer thinks it's worth the time or effort because nobody cares what happens here.

In that respect, he'd just be like News4, NBC6 and 7News, who have been invisible on this story.

* Attention future owners of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
Here's your snapshot of newsroom editor Dana Banker's commitment to fair-minded local news coverage as viewed thru the prism of someone who lives in my city and who is well-informed -nothing.

And let's not forget Rosemary Goudreau, the editorial page editor under whose leadership nothing about the HB CRA scandal has ever appeared in print.
You know, in case facts matter.

Election Day tomorrow will give Los Angeles voters either their first woman or first elected Jewish mayor, in Wendy Gruel or Eric Garcetti. Garcetti has the LA Times endorsement, a 7-point lead and counts seriously attacking traffic as one of three most-important tasks at hand; Is there someone like Hallandale Beach's Dr. Deborah Brown in Los Angeles, someone who will walk up to volunteer campaign workers of someone she doesn't support and tell them and anyone around them that their candidate is "the devil"? Like she did in HB last year. If you know, let me know!

KCAL news video: Latest USC Price/LA Times poll shows Eric Garcetti with seven point lead over Wendy Gruel in LA Mayoral race, with 11 percent of voters still undecided.

As Election Day in the U.S.'s second-largest city looms tomorrow, and Los Angeles voters getting either its first woman or first elected Jewish mayor, Eric Garcetti and Wendy Gruel have spent the last days of their hard-fought campaign battling for Black voters and for the favor of fickle Undecideds, who like being fussed over, but who find it hard to commit.
Just like Hollywood's central casting.

It all makes me wonder if any of the middle-class Los Angeles neighborhoods where my SoCal friends live have someone like Hallandale Beach's Dr. Deborah Brown living amongst them.

Someone with strong connection to the City Hall teat and powers-that-be, in her case, to mayor Joy Cooper, and who has no qualms about showing up at polling sites and boldly walking up to volunteer election workers of candidates she doesn't support, and just a few inches from these campaign workers faces, loudly proclaim that their preferred candidate is "the devil." 

You know, like she did repeatedly in Hallandale Beach last year at the city's Ingalls Park precincts on the city's SW side, to volunteer supporters of HB mayoral candidate Keith London?

Yes, that would be the same Dr. Brown I've written about here on the blog before with the curious -and which some in the community would say borders on fictitious- loan and grant applications that give the appearance that her group was/is a non-profit when the IRS says differently.
The very same Dr. Brown whom the Office of the Broward Inspector General wrote about in their damning final report a few short weeks ago.
Allegations she used money her group was given by the city for purposes for which it was NOT intended, like, well, let's just say unethical conduct and let you read it yourself.

But then again, having received money for years from City Hall, including many large grants just under $25,000 from former HB City Manager Mike Good, she already knew from experience that city officials would never check on what she did with CRA funds, that since as the IG report says, they DIDN'T. 
Yes, no double-checking information or accountability from the city before the vote and zero after the money is dispensed.


Excerpt from March 6, 2013 Broward Bulldog
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/03/broward-inspector-general-slams-hallandale-for-gross-mismanagement-of-cra-funds/

The final report will recommend to the county that it look over its legal options “to prevent the ongoing abuse of the CRA process and recover those funds that may have been misspent,” the preliminary report says.

In Hallandale, there was an apparent lack of regular monitoring by the CRA of who got its funds and how that money was spent.

In one case, the report says, a nonprofit grant recipient spent nearly $5,000 in funds to make a payment on her time-share at the Westgate Resort in Orlando, make payroll payments to herself and her brother and on other things.

“We found probable cause to believe that Dr. Deborah Brown, the founder and director of the Palms Center for the Arts (PCA), engaged in criminal misconduct in the handling of a $5,000 award the PCA received from the CRA,” the report says.

Brown could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The matter has been referred to the sheriff’s office and the Broward State Attorney for prosecution.

The reason I ask is because I've been closely following the back-and-forth of the Garcetti-Gruel campaigns the past few weeks via videos on various LA TV station websites and the LA Times and... well, there's a lot that needs fixing in LA no matter who actually wins, because many voters have just about reached their limit on govt. waste and inefficiency and cronyism.  

I ask because I had breakfast on Sunday morning yesterday with a friend of mine who, like me, had supported Hb City Commissioner Keith London against longtime incumbent mayor Joy Cooper.
But unlike me, he's a longtime HB resident, so someone with even more perspective than my nine years of living here and seeing the chaos and dysfunction up-close.

While I was flitting about with materials and messages from one election site throughout Hallandale Beach to another on Election Day for Keith, and my friend Csaba Kulin and Michele Lazarow, who were running for the City Commission, my Sunday morning tablemate was working the crowds of HB residents arriving to vote at Ingalls Park in southwest HB, just one block south of Hallandale Beach Blvd.

(Yes, as some of you long-time readers of the blog may recall, that also the place where the City of Hallandale Beach used to have its recycling site. The one that had no directional signs on nearby streets, much less, on main drag HBB, letting people know exactly where it was. Now the city foolishly has no central recycling site for residents to use even while much of the city lives in places where recycling something other than newspapers simply doesn't take place, due to the city's apathy, like smaller condos and apts. As usual, the city seems clueless what to do to capture that market, despite how obvious it is. For starters, you make it as easy as possible.)

If any of my friends in LA know who Dr. Brown's counterpart in LA might be, or even have seen media reports about the activities of such a doppelgänger, please drop me a line and share the 411.

View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.

Garcetti: "Enthusiasm" High Day Before Election. NBC4 new video: reporter  Toni Guinyard speaks with mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti on NBC4's "Today in LA" May 20, 2013.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Los Angeles Times

Greuel, Garcetti court black voters on final weekend

By James Rainey and Seema Mehta 

May 19, 2013 8:09 p.m.

Polls show Garcetti ahead but Greuel favored among African Americans. The winner will be either the first woman or the first elected Jewish leader in the mayor's office.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayor-daily-20130520,0,2746694.story

The LA Times endorsement of Eric Garcetti from February 17th, for the primary, was leagues ahead of the sort of thing you ever read in South Florida newspapers, both in terms of length and in gravitas.

Titled, Eric Garcetti for mayor He's the candidate with the most potential to rise to the occasion and lead Los Angeles out of its current malaise and into a more sustainable and confident future," it concluded with this:

Voters at first embraced Villaraigosa because they saw in him the power to inspire. Garcetti has that too, but in a different, quieter fashion, and he backs it up with experience in City Hall, a share of troublesome mistakes and 12 years of achievement. If he avoids a tendency to be glib when he should motivate, and if he avoids the tendency to allow his finesse to give way to a desire to be all things to all people, he could be just what Los Angeles needs. At this time, out of this field, he's the best choice for mayor.

Now that's how you write and end a persuasive editorial!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/endorsements/la-ed-end-0217-mayor-20130215,0,7012293.story

KCAL/CBS LA News video, Profile of LA mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti
February 28, 2013 8:16 AM
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/02/28/la-mayoral-election-preview-eric-garcetti/

The above profile includes the following nugget:

But perhaps Garcetti’s most ambitious goal is to tackle the city’s notorious traffic problems.
“We have to reduce our traffic in Los Angeles. And I want to see five different rail finished or well underway by the time I leave office,” he said. “It’s the only way we will be able to get enough people out of cars to be able to really make a dent in the traffic that is choking our lives.”

Tuesday night you might want to be watching here to see LIVE election results
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/live-video/