Showing posts with label Eagle's Wings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eagle's Wings. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Cornered! Pious Comm. Anthony A. Sanders consistently ignored Hallandale Beach's most-concerned taxpayers, and now, as they see their suspicions about him proving to be entirely justified by an IG investigation, because of his own words, deeds and votes, they're urging him to quit and come clean. Words, deeds and votes that the South Florida press corps has almost completely ignored for four long years.

Where Comm. Anthony A. Sanders has needlessly tried everyone's patience for almost four years -Hallandale Beach City Hall. May 28, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved


Cornered! Pious Comm. Anthony A. Sanders consistently ignored Hallandale Beach's most-concerned taxpayers, and now, as they see their suspicions about him proving to be entirely justified by an IG investigation, because of his own words, deeds and votes, they're urging him to quit and come clean. Words, deeds and votes that the South Florida press corps has almost completely ignored for four long years.

Almost every person and group now under investigation is one that I've discussed many times here on the blog, often with incriminating photos.

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Miami Herald
Inspector General digging into Hallandale Beach payments
Details emerge about Broward IG’s Hallandale probe; payments to commissioner’s wife eyed.
By William Gjebre, BROWARDBULLDOG.ORG
June 22, 2012

A Hallandale Beach program that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and contributions to community groups is a key focus of the Broward Inspector General’s widespread investigation of city management practices.
Documents obtained by Broward Bulldog show the Inspector General obtained city files on eight community-based organizations, several linked to City Commissioner Anthony Sanders or his wife, Jessica. The documents include information about city payments to Jessica Sanders and others associated with the groups.
While records indicate that the Inspector General’s probe is multi-faceted, investigators appear to be strongly focused on city grants and charitable contributions made through its Community Partnership Grants program.
City records show that such giveaways increased 60 percent in the past three years — from $400,000 in fiscal year 2009-2010 to $647,000 this year.
“As economic times worsened the city saw a greater need for services in the community which directly corresponded with the increase in the amount of requests to the city,” City Manager Mark Antonio wrote in a letter. He added that for 2012 “two teams of professionals who were non-city employees” reviewed 29 applications.
Available city documents show that in 2010 and 2011, city grants and donations did not specify where the money came from: the general fund, the Community Redevelopment Agency or the Law Enforcement Trust fund. But this year, after a CRA management makeover, they were shown as follows: general fund, $256,130; CRA, $274,600; and Law Enforcement Trust Fund, $116,654.
The Inspector General asked for the files on these program recipients:
• Eagles Wings Development Center Inc., job training and social services program, $50,000 in the past two years.
• Greater Mt. Everett Resources and Learning Center, a work force training program for construction trades, $61,000 this year.
• Lampkin’s Creative Arts for All LLC, including Dizzy Fingers School of Excellence, Inc., training youth in how to advance in the arts, $50,000 this year.
• Palms Center for the Arts, Inc., a youth arts and job preparation program, $107,000 past three years.
• Palm Community Action Coalition, community based program assistance, $26,000 over two years.
• Palms of Hallandale Beach Weed and Seed, a crime prevention and community development program associated with the Department of Justice, $143,000 past three years.
• Phileo Outreach Ministries Inc., a program for rehabilitation of youth, $45,000 past two years.
• Zamar School of Performing Arts, Inc., $25,000 two years ago.
State corporate records for Eagles Wing listed Hallandale Beach Commissioner Anthony Sanders as president and his wife, Jessica, director, in 2009. In 2010 and 2011, Jessica was listed as director, but Anthony Sanders was not listed. He was appointed to the City Commission on Sept. 8, 2008 to fill a vacancy.
Jessica Sanders also has ties to two other non-profits on the Inspector General’s list, according to public records.
She is a contact for the Palms Community Action Coalition, which until April 2011 was known as the Palms Community Development Corporation. Jessica Sanders, as “interim site coordinator” for Palms of Hallandale Beach Weed and Seed, appeared at a July 14, 2011 Hallandale Beach commission meeting before a vote to award a $45,000 grant to her group. “Vice Mayor Sanders excused himself from the dais during the presentation and recused himself from voting,” city minutes say.
In an interview this week, Commissioner Sanders indicated that he is perplexed about the county’s inquiry.
“I can’t answer why they are asking for the records,” he said. “They are looking at nonprofits. I don’t mind that they are looking at Eagles Wings. It is a service to the community and always has been…food programs, job training and other services.”
Sanders indicated he may meet with IG investigators soon.
Jessica Sanders said there has been no wrongdoing and noted that she has provided some records to IG investigators. She said that she and her husband “stayed here to make a difference. We do good work.”
“I’m not concerned about the probe,’’ she added.
 Her income from the Weed and Seed program was not from city funds, she said, but came from the Department of Justice, which backed the program. She said that on several occasions, she was asked by the Weed and Seed governing board to operate the program when the group’s administrators failed to perform.
The county investigators also sought information payments made by the city to Nellie Bacon, Clara Brown, Deborah Brown, Selinda Washington-Jackson and Jacquelyn Rosenau.
According to state corporation records, Rosenau is director at Eagles Wing. Clara Brown is corporate secretary for Palms Community Action Coalition. Deborah Brown was president of Palm Center for the Arts in 2011, and a principal and director of Zamar School in 2011. Washington-Jackson works for Weed and Seed. Rosenau used to work for the agency.
The city supplied copies of its lease and rental agreements with non-profits to investigators.
 Those agreements are with: Hallandale Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, Zamar School of Performing Arts, and the Palm Center for the Arts.
The chamber, which received $25,000 from the city in 2010, has an office in City Hall, next to the commission chambers. The rental fee for approximately 400 square feet of space is $1 a month.
The Palm Center for the Arts, 501 NW First Ave., sits on land the city purchased with CRA funds in 2009 from Anthony Sanders’ nonprofit Higher Vision Ministries; a commissioner at the time, Sanders did not vote on the sale.
Sanders bought the property in 2001 for $45,000 and sold it to the city for $235,000 after receiving a $46,000 property improvement loan. The city initially agreed to forgive $7,500 of the loan. When the city bought Sanders’ property, however, it forgave an additional $7,500 when at the time the sale was finalized. City officials have said it was an error by the city.
In August 2009, the city leased Sanders’ former property to the Palm Center for the Arts for a one-time fee of $10, on the condition it provide community art and music training programs. While the lease states the center is not allowed to sublet or rent the facility, the city modified the agreement to permit the Zamar School for Performing Arts to operate a summer camp at the center in the summer in 2009.
A provision in the Palm Center lease allowed for a summer camp music program. The city helped Zamar with $25,000 to operate the camp.
The IG’s office has also requested information about additional money given to various groups that was more than initially authorized.

With the 20/20 vision that hindsight provides us, it's clear that for some 46 months now, Anthony A. Sanders has wasted almost as much of our time as his own time while masquerading as a Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, not only unwilling to do the occasional heavy lifting that comes with the job, but also unwilling to perform the more mundane tasks of simply being an approachable, at-large representative in a town of under 40,000, with a modicum of either effort or enthusiasm.


No, unfortunately for us, it seems that the very person-to-person tasks and activities that many political candidates actually believe they'd find most satisfying in making a genuine difference, actually bore Sanders.


Comm. Sanders has made clear over almost four years that he wanted nothing to do with such responsibilities, and even now, in the moment where he has drawn so much unfavorable attention to himself and this city, he seems to almost flinch at the very idea that the public has the right to expect something from him.


But that counter-intuitive attitude of Sanders also explains why after 46 months on the job, and doing so in such a dreary and undistinguished way, so many HB residents not only find him insufferable and completely lacking, but are perfectly willing to watch from a distance as he and his wife slowly twists in the wind, amid calls for him to resign.


Sanders certainly hasn't wanted for opportunities to do the right thing, but in 46 months, where at some point Sanders could've learned the fundamental difference between being a lapdog for the comfortable and the status quo in our area, and an energetic and fully-engaged watchdog for the public's best interests, he has consciously opted-out.


The same way that he has SO FREQUENTLY AND CONSISTENTLY been the only one of the five commissioners to NOT attend a public meeting or forum somewhere in the city.
No, it's clear for all to see that being an advocate for the taxpayer wasn't the role Sanders saw for himself on the five-person commission.


Instead, to be generous, he's only done the right thing, by my eyes, on an important issue maybe three times.
Three times in 46 months.

Compare that to the hundreds of votes where he had the chance to add something to the public discussion but instead, consciously chose to keep quiet and look the other way, moving things along that should have been voted down -and out.
How many HB City Commission meetings have we attended where something important was being decided and he says a grand total of ten words?
So why did he run in the first place if he was not comfortable with the job responsibilities?
And why, like Bill Julian, did he refuse to learn to do a better job?

Both are good questions and ones that ought to be asked of him publicly when you get the chance.
He owes us an explanation.
Yes, owes.

So rather than relish the opportunity to make a tangible positive difference, in exchange for performing anemically a few times a month as one of the puppets of Mayor Joy Cooper's Rubber Stamp Crew -a group that would be a comedy group if it weren't for the fact that they all had such bad judgment that was not only expensive, but also fatal to the well-being and future Quality-of-Life of the taxpayers and residents of this small ocean city- he has done as little as humanly possible and shaped the future of this city in negative and confounding ways that most residents would never want for themselves or their neighbors.


That is, to the extent that he's actually paying attention, and there's yet another one of the fundamental criticisms of Sanders -he honestly doesn't know what going on in this city and consistently takes the word of both the mayor and city staff who are themselves, unworthy of the responsibilities they have and myopic in their vision.


It's been Comm. Sanders' great fortune to be an elected official at a time when the public is both apathetic and intensely cynical, and the local news media has been both incurious and unwilling to report what is right in front of them.
And it has been our great collective misfortune.


To be blunt, Comm. Sanders has never quite figured out what his role was on the dais.
Well, that is, other than to act as point man to get as many tax dollars flowing into northwest HB as possible, if possible, circulating thru people well-known to him. 


He has consistently refused to be open and responsive to HB residents who either don't live near him or who were known to him before the mayor forced him on the city in August of 2008, an effort most people paying close attention view as means rather foul, and some think illegal, given as how it violated the city's own rules, which had been followed the year before.
But not for Sanders.

In fact, he has consistently refused to meet with residents of other parts of the city when there were issues that were of critical interest to them, refusing to even return the phone calls or respond to the emails of homeowners asking him to visit their neighborhood and see what their unique perspective was.
This was never more dramatically demonstrated to everyone's astonishment than with the proposed Diplomat Golf Course redevelopment project of 2009 and 2010 in northeast HB.

Sanders refused to tour the area, even while a few members of the Broward Planning Council, all of whom lived quite far from HB, came uninvited on their own dime on weekends to see what the facts-on-the-ground were here. 
The word that best describes Sanders performance on this matter is galling.

No, Comm. Sanders didn't care about the facts and he certainly couldn't be bothered to learn them when given a chance to, because as always, what Sanders wanted most of all was access -and the ability to talk to the developer's attorney and representatives about jobs and job training -and what it would take to get his vote.

And does he ever know someone whom he wants to see be involved in that for every project that moves a shovel of dirt in this city!

Just like his vote last week on Beachwalk.

Over-and-over again, Comm. Sanders, thru his standoffish attitude, of refusing to even show-up, and his unwillingness to learn what most of the community already knows about the longstanding poor management of the city, something this puppet never speaks about, he has refused to do the sorts of common sense things that are required of all elected officials to gain the trust and respect of their community, so that even when there are disagreements, everyone is generally willing to believe that everyone involved is working for the betterment of the whole community, just from a different perspective. 


Not so with Sanders, which is why he has richly earned the enmity of Hallandale Beach's most-informed taxpayers, people who are NOT apathetic and who DO pay attention to what actually happens in this city.

By refusing to do even the most basic aspects of his job, a job he ran for after all, of consistently being unprepared for public meetings and of refusing to ask tough questions when they are necessary, he has now found himself cornered, and in the position of being someone who is not only unpopular with the most-concerned and well-informed people in the community, but also unable to get even the benefit of the doubt from them (or others) because he never showed them the slightest bit of common courtesy over almost four long years.

Now he stands in the spotlight for his own words and deeds, as well as for those whom he supported thru his votes for city grants and CRA loans, no matter how preposterous and unsound the ideas, no matter how slight the return to the greater community.


Comm. Anthony A. Sanders has rightly earned the suspicion cast upon him now and the distrust of a large segment of the community.

Having failed to do even the most basic of things once in office, Sanders can now count on no public support or encouraging words from those of us in the community who gave him the benefit of the doubt, only to see him eventually reveal himself for what he really is, a lower-case political fixer.
And I don't mean fixer-upper.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

As we get closer-and-closer to the real targets in Hallandale Beach of Broward IG John W. Scott's inquiry, longstanding questions begin to get the overdue attention they always deserved, while many of the 'Usual Suspects' have good reason to be VERY concerned; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy


Above,  501 N.W. 1st Avenuewhich 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 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 that has seen so many tens of thousands of Hallandale Beach taxpayer dollars and CRA dollars poured into it. For what, THISphoto by South Beach Hoosier
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

As we get closer-and-closer to the real targets in Hallandale Beach of Broward IG John W. Scott's inquiry, longstanding questions begin to get the overdue attention they always deserved, while many of the 'Usual Suspects' have good reason to be VERY concerned; @MayorCooper, @SandersHB, @AlexLewy

AFTER the city vastly overpaid for it, despite having no written or organized plan for what they'd actually do with it once they had it, just like the dozens and dozens of other properties it owns in NW Hallandale Beach, you probably won't be too surprised to hear that it was rented it to a non-profit run by a woman with a real curious knack for tapping into HB taxpayer and CRA largess, 
Deborah Brown, sometimes, even without the elected HB City Commission either approving it or even knowing about it until after-the-fact.


© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

The city charges her a grand total of $10 a year in rent.
So remind me again, why the hurry to buy it?

To this very day, Mayor Joy Cooper, City Manager Mark A. Antonio and Comm. Anthony A. Sanders, himself, the seller of the property, can't logically explain to you with a straight face why it was so urgent that this parcel be bought ASAP, or show you any written plan or strategy for it.
The current belief among most HB residents is that the reason breaks down as something along the lines of, "Because."
Because Mayor Cooper wanted it done.
Yes, the same reason given for almost anything that ever happens in this city. 

(Of course, these are also three people who can't logically tell you why the Mayor ignored its own rules in filling Commissioner vacancies in rushing Sanders in as interim commissioner without following the very procedures used the year before, and her refusal to allow the public in the Comm. Chambers to speak about it.
The answers are elementary: Mayor Cooper didn't want to be reminded she was bending the rules and didn't allow the citizens the opportunity to speak because she didn't want the spectacle of her being continually criticized.
Then-City Attorney David Jove, as always, just sat there like a bump on a log, unwilling to remind the mayor what the city's procedures were. I guess he just closed his eyes and counted his pension. All of that was the predicate for the situation that exists today.)

In my last blog post early Friday afternoon, I mentioned last week's Broward Bulldog article by Bill Gjebre that dealt with the continued refusal of most Hallandale Beach elected officials and city employees to fully cooperate with Broward Inspector General John W. Scott and his professional investigators.

Broward Bulldog
Hallandale refuses full cooperation in county probe; Which commissioners are targets?
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
June 14, 2012 AT 6:29 AM
Hallandale Beach City Manager’s Office has refused to fully cooperate with the Broward Inspector General’s Office investigation into the city’s management of the Community Redevelopment district.
Read the rest of the post at
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/06/hallandale-refuses-full-cooperation-in-county-probe-of-finances-which-commissioners-are-targets/

What I hadn't counted on was that in-between my writing that post early Friday morning and posting it later, Bill Gjebre had updated his story with a piece that was dramatically more case- specific about what areas the Broward Inspector General's office was looking into and whom was thought to be under the most scrutiny.
We were given some facts and asked to connect-the-dots in our head since the IG's Office won't comment on an ongoing investigation.

Broward Bulldog
Details emerge about Broward IG’s Hallandale probe; payments to commissioner’s wife eyed
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
June 22, 2012 at 6:20 AM
A Hallandale Beach program that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollar in grants and contributions to community groups is a key focus of the Broward Inspector General’s widespread investigation of city management practices.
Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/06/details-emerge-about-broward-igs-hallandale-probe-payments-to-commissioners-wife-eyed/

What has made my situation odder is that most of what follows below was actually written before Gjebre's fact-heavy update was posted online, and soon making the rounds all over Hallandale Beach and Broward County via email and IMs among the civic activist and public policy set, a smaller circle to be sure within the larger circle of Broward-area government and politics, and one that prefers its officials clean and sober and free of crony capitalism taint.

Most of the people I know who follow things closely here in Hallandale Beach already believed that they had a pretty good idea who the most plausible and likely targets in town were, besides former CRA employees, in part I'm happy to say because of some of my fact-based posts here  the past few years asking some pretty reasonable questions about where the money was going that the city refused -and still refuses- to answer.
Still, I didn't expect that so many of the people I have specifically mentioned here in the past would show up in one article.

I must say, with no false modesty, when you re-read the odd connections I uncovered and wrote about on April 12, 2012, in my post titled, An IG investigation! Finally! Plus, more curious CRA matters to ponder - William Gjebre in BrowardBulldog: Broward Inspector General's office zeroing-in on Hallandale Beach after numerous reports re city's curious CRA loans and land purchases with no written plan in place for the latter, it's uncanny how many of the same names and faces re-appeared in Friday's Bulldog piece:

http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/ig-investigation-finally-plus-more.html


As you might've imagined, that remains one of my most-read posts of the year, one that I sent a copy of to the IG's office to examine and help connect-the-dots I figured they were dealing with, given the lack of cooperation they were getting from the city.

That particular post also proves that despite what some of the apologists for our 'Usual Suspects' in town might think, my intuition and nose-for-news are much more highly-developed than they knew.

Now they know!

The individuals and groups who presently and formerly occupied the property located one block west of this Palms of Hallandale Beach monument sign on W. Dixie Highway and Foster Road -which, this being Hallandale Beach after all, the illuminated lights are almost always out at night- pictured at the top of this post, have a lot to worry about.

Their days of operating in the shadows are coming to an end because after years of obfuscation by Mike Good and Mark Antonio, HB taxpayers want to know what that money is going, and they want to be able to see it clearly on the city's website or the group's own website.
If it wasn't clear to them a few weeks ago it should be clear to them now -the days of a handful of people in this city feeling like they have an entitlement to govt. dollars are over.

In the minds of HB residents and voters, there's STILL ethical and financial questions lingering over this particular property, too, like vultures circling a dead body in the desert.
But the powers-that-be at HB City Hall prefer to ignore them and look away.
And as I hardly need tell you, that's no way to run a city.
Which is why we need some new faces on the Commission!


© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Fortunately, the IG's professional investigators don't have to do what Mayor Joy Cooper or City Manager Mark. A. Antonio or Comm. Antony A. Sanders or his wife Jessica wants them to do, nor do they have to take their word for anything.

No, the IG agents live in the world of puzzle pieces, evidence and what you can prove, not Cooper, Antonio and Sanders' world of intentional misdirection and studied issue avoidance.

That critical difference should be causing lots of people in this town to not sleep quite so soundly at night. 

Equally concerned should be a whole host of former city employees, of whom the most obvious is former City Attorney David Jove, who played the role of Wooden Indian for so very many years under City Managers Mike Good and Mark. A. Antonio, saying nothing and doing nothing while questionable and unethical things were done right in front of him.

(Yes, all of those hundreds of HB City Commission and CRA meetings I attended and bitched about the Miami Herald and South Florida Sun-Sentinel consciously NOT sending anyone to cover them, and now, the logical result is that both newspapers and all four English-language TV stations in South Florida have ZERO employees who are up-to-speed on what's been going on here for years. 
Yes, the logical result of completely inadequate local news coverage is a useless press corps.)

But as everyone in town was always been quick to say even when the inexplicable and the shady doings were happening right in front of us as citizens, Jove wanted to keep his job and his sweet pension, so...    

By the way, good luck trying to find anything at HB City Hall or on the city's website that approximates a copy of an objective third-party analysis of the so-called "job training" program that involved Jessica Sanders.

Guess we were all right when we said last year that it was a good thing that Comm. Lewy didn't succeed in steering $200k to the Comm. & Mrs. Sanders and their group at a City Comm. meeting -after midnight, with hardly anyone there.
The one where he made his motion without ever identifying them by name.
This one below!


MONDAY, AUGUST 1, 2011
While you were sleeping: Comm. Alexander Lewy's budget chicanery & Liberal Guilt just cost you another $200,000-plus. For what and for whom, exactly?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/while-you-were-sleeping-comm-alexander.html

And let's not forget the faux newspaper, The Sun-Times, which receives CRA money and only has to re-pay half of the loan.


Above, the faux newspaper that receives CRA funds that are intended to end blight in the city, the South Florida Sun-Times. Maybe if they actually tried to gain some integrity by finally covering what's really happening in this city objectively, and airing both sides of an argument on public policy, they wouldn't be the subject of so much derision and mockery by this city's residents, but they aren't interested in actually reporting fairly, only in providing cover and succor to the comfortable, the well-heeled and their pals at HB City Hall. Until that ends, nobody will ever take anything they touch seriously. April 17, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
© 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

Miami Herald
IN MY OPINION
Hallandale Beach paper shows way to make easy money  
By Fred Grimm  
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

As I mentioned here last week, the owner of this faux newspaper that's supported by Hallandale Beach CRA dollars, thanks to contributor and Mayor Joy CooperCraig Farquharpublicly lied about not having an opinion on the controversial Diplomat project in 2009 and 2010, but many people, including me, have actually seen a copy of his email to Broward County urging its passage.

Plus, here's the official record that Craig Farquhar, this recipient of HB taxpayer largess that the taxpayers are actually AGAINST, this so-called person with "no position" on this issue is a stone-faced liar: Page 13 of the Broward Planning Council's Minutes of February 25, 2010.
is that enough proff for you that he's a hypocrite?
Right there under Speakers in support of PH 8, six spaces after Joe Kessel, five spaces before Patricia Genetti.

Yes, of course, Farquahar is a member of the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce!
I told you it was the center for crony capitalism in this town -and he's the proof of that.
He received a $50k CRA loan, only has to repay $25k.
http://www.broward.org/PlanningCouncil/Documents/PlanningCouncilMonthlyMinutes/02252010Minutes.pdf

Newcomers to this blog take notice:
Broward Bulldog
Sweet deal for owners of Hallandale newspaper that features mayor as columnist
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
FEBRUARY 9, 2012 AT 6:11 AM
A weekly newspaper in Hallandale Beach got a $50,000 city “loan” under terms so favorable that half of it – $25,000 – amounted to a taxpayer giveaway because the city did not require it to be repaid...
Read the rest of the story at: 

See for yourself:
http://web.me.com/mike.butler/Change_Hallandale/Updates/Entries/2010/2/26_CIty_Raises_Taxes_while_Wasting_Money_on_Private_Companies_files/SunTimes_PromissoryNote.pdf

Or, see my February 14, 2012 blog post titled, 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

Yes, plenty of people who are associated with the Hallandale Beach Chamber of Commerce have profited off the public's teat, which is something that Craig Farquhar has managed to do for years, yet he is a person who almost nobody in town would recognize.
But I'm sure the manager of his bank does.