Where has the Hallandale Beach CRA spent $80 Million? Keith London on urgent need for Florida JLAC to authorize Florida Auditor General to audit the Halladale Beach CRA

My friend and former Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Keith London sent out the following email alert recently to the people of this southeast Broward County community, largely because he knows they share his deep and abiding concern about the troubling financial status of (and operation of) the Hallandale Beach CRA, the controversial subject of dozens of past blog posts here over the years, including some this past week.

If you are a Florida resident, whether you live in Hallandale Beach or not, I strongly urge you to read Keith's words and to follow-up in the coming days by contacting the very people in Tallahassee on the JLAC who will be deciding whether or not to authorize Florida Auditor General to audit the Hallandale Beach CRA.

As most of you know from my emails, blog posts and tweets of the past few days,

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/390892650032689152

https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/status/390867248316809217

there are powerful forces involved in this fight, both locally and up in Tallahassee, who desperately want to prevent an audit and prevent the true facts and figures from ever seeing the light of day, and they will do anything they can to accomplish this.

THAT is why it's so important that you spend a few minutes to contact them and ask them to give the residents, taxpayers and small business owners of this beleaguered community the opportunity they've always wanted: to FINALLY get the answers they are owed about where all the CRA money went while everyone in charge looked the other way -or looked-on approvingly.

Answers they have never gotten from the powers-that-be in this city, who have much to fear from genuine transparency and real accountability and oversight, three things they often preach but never practice themselves.

Which, of course, is a large part of why the HB CRA is in the current position it's in, and why nobody who pays close attention to things in this city trusts Hallandale Beach City Hall.

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Everyone,

Act today to protect your tax dollars! Email or call the Florida Legislature's Joint Legislative Auditing Committee (JLAC) to request that the Florida Auditor General audit the Halladale CRA.

I spoke to outgoing JLAC Chairman Senator Abruzzo last week and he explained the agenda is being set this month for the legislative session. It is now or never!

Only JLAC has the purview and the legal ability to order the Florida Auditor General to audit the Hallandale CRA. But if they do nothing now, they will set a precedent that will haunt future attempts to ensure tax dollars are spent properly. Please take the opportunity to make sure your voice is heard!  Here are links to all committee members’ emails and phone numbers

Senator Joseph Abruzzo Chairman

Representative Lake Ray Incoming Chairman

If you choose to include them in your email or call, here are a few facts.

In the JLAC's June 4^th 2013 letter to the Hallandale Beach CRA, they requested the following.

·         The CRA follow the Attorney General opinion 2010-40

·         Request a new AG opinion and then abide by the decision 

·         Explain and justify the Specific Improper and Questionable CRA Expenditures , totaling $2,168,598 identified as misspent by the Broward Office  of Inspector General (OIG) in their report titled “Gross Mismanagement of Public Funds by the Hallandale CRA”

The CRA Board of Directors (BOD) voted 3:2 to reject JLAC inquiries daring JLAC to take action.

This was done at a Special Meeting held in the July where 40 residents attended requesting further scrutiny and transparency.

We need JLAC's help to get answers. Where has the CRA spent $80 Million? How can $12.5 million in “pooled cash” be wire transferred from a city account into the CRA account without ever being voted on by the CRA BOD or Commission?

Your actions and support are necessary to ensure your tax dollars are being spent appropriately and our local government is representing its citizens!

See the attached letter from the OIG attorney and remind JLAC members that the OIG looks poised to start another investigation of the Hallandale Beach CRA.

Please contact everyone on JLAC by phone or email today.

Keith S. London

www.KeithLondon.com 
http://www.facebook.com/KeithSLondon

JLAC 6-2013 Letter to Hallandale Beach CRA re request for documentation.pdf 208K   View   Download

Instead of looking-out for you and your Hallandale Beach neighbors, HB's craven state legislators (Sobel, Gibbons, Jones & Braynon) are doing Mayor Joy Cooper's dirty work in Tallahassee, making excuses for her ten years of oversight/policy failures with the HB CRA; #JLAC

Today I'm delivering into your hands more proof of what I've hinted at for many months about who in this community was working hard to help the people of Hallandale Beach,

and who was ACTIVELY working against us and our collective long-term best interests. 

The name is hardly a surprise.

For your inspection, via this email and later this morning on my blog, I've got what I consider to be the Smoking Gun that shows how Mayor Cooper's network of cronies

around the state is working behind-the-scenes (and unremarked upon by the local 

news media) to run interference for her, obfuscate, and in general, do their best to 

prevent the truth from coming out about what has been going on here for years with her

in charge, and with millions of dollars going out the door with little to show for it.

That Smoking Gun comes in the form of a smarmy and incriminating letter that Mayor

Cooper's good pal, state Sen Eleanor Sobel, and state Sen Oscar Braynon II, sent to the Joint Legislative Auditing  Comm. (JLAC) in Tallahassee, asking them NOT to investigate the incompetent and maybe even illegal activities of the HB CRA while the Mayor has been in charge of the CRA Board and NOT to perform an audit so that HB citizens will finally know the truth. 

As I could've predicted.

As we ALL could've predicted, because that's who she is.

As you read the attached letter, what's noticeable by its absence is the same exact thing that has been completely absent from public conversation the entire time that Eleanor Sobel has been in the state Senate, supposedly representing us, and in particular, missing the past two years while so much public scrutiny has attached to the HB CRA while it was

FINALLY being investigated by the Broward Inspector General's Office -anything by Eleanor Sobel remotely resembling genuine concern about getting to the truth of things, and actually finding out what happened to all those millions that were supposed to eliminate blight and create jobs within the CRA district, but which were instead used as part of a crony capitalism racket based on politics, with the CRA loan to the fake newspaper being but the most obvious example of that.

There's a very logical reason that there are ZERO newspaper articles or TV news videos

available of Sobel saying that she wants to get to the bottom of the whole sordid CRA mess.

She doesn't want to!

She wants to ignore the issue completely and does NOT want the South Florida 

news media asking her to publicly explain why she has been so invisible in HB 

for so many years, and on this troublesome issue in particular.

Just like state Representatives Joe Gibbons and Shevrin Jones, who have also been completely invisible on this matter and who want to stay on the mayor's good side. 

In her letter, Sobel fundamentally misrepresents what happened because she has to have the Mayor's back on this issue -or else.

Same reason that useless Gibbons and clueless Jones didn't do the right thing for HB citizens, taxpayers and small business owners, esp. the ones who live and work within that district, which is most of the city, including me.

With these three people, being a friend of Joy Cooper is far much-more important than 

actually doing their job responsibly and looking-out for the best long-term interests of HB's 

citizens, their own constituents.

In my opinion, they flat out sold us out

Rather than signing the letter herself, though, Sobel shows her true nature and somehow 

has managed to make things even worse.

She uses the cover of a co-signing African-American legislator like Braynon on this letter,

-someone who, literally, has NO IDEA what's been going on here with the HB CRA 

and that I have NEVER seen at any meeting or event, never even heard his name 

mentioned once- in her attempt to perform PR spin for the mayor and the city among her

colleagues.

It's perfectly despicable.

That Sobel has managed to get this guy who literally has no idea who anyone in this city

is, to simply roll over for her in her attempt to publicly protect her friend Joy Cooper, says 

as much about her as it does for his really poor judgement in letting us know with certainty

how truly disconnected he is to our community.

And just in case you forgot, most of the CRA corruption took place in HIS legislative district, too. http://maps.flsenate.gov/de1/map.html?plan=s016s9030&district=36

Yes, just more of Eleanor Sobel being Eleanor Sobel.

Again, a point that ought to be hammered home as often as necessary.

Fecklessness all around us in Hallandale Beach.

Sobel, Braynon Joint Letter to Senator Abruzzo 09-16-13 (2).pdf 366K   View   Download

Latest news re prospective audit of Hallandale Beach CRA by Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee: Now HB residents know for sure who their real friends in Tallahassee are -and aren't- and they are NOT named Eleanor Sobel, Joe Gibbons or Shevrin Jones. But this merely confirms what we've already known and long suspected -Hallandale Beach's 3 state legislators are NOT representing us well in Tallahassee and are putting personal politics and relationships above their duty to us. Now we know for sure!

My short and to-the-point email of Monday afternoon to dozens of concerned people throughout Southeast Broward, Tallahassee and certain TV stations, websites and blogs, went something like this:

Well, after making a phone call this afternoon to JLAC's office up in Tallahassee,
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/cgi-bin/View_Page.pl?Directory=committees/joint/Jcla/&File=index_css.html&Tab=committees
I received the response below.

Now we at least have some documentation proving who this community's real friends in Tallahassee are -and aren't- these days, and who's just been feeding us lip service about rallying to the cause of giving Hallandale Beach citizens their long overdue accounting of where the HB CRA millions were really going for years, while nobody at HB City Hall was performing anything close to the level of genuine oversight and scrutiny that was demanded -or which HB taxpayers, residents and business owners had a reasonable right to expect.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: JLAC
Date: Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 4:04 PM
Subject: RE: re prospective audit of Hallandale Beach CRA by JLAC

Mr. Smith:

To date, the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee has not received a request for an audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA from any member of the Legislature.

I apologize for the slow response. After your call today, Debbie mentioned your email on August 19th, but neither of us recalls seeing it before.

Kathy

Kathy DuBose, Coordinator

Joint Legislative Auditing Committee

(850) 487-4110

___

Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 12:34 PM
To: JLAC

Subject: re prospective audit of Hallandale Beach CRA by JLAC

Monday August 19th, 2013
12:30 p.m.

To Whom It May Concern:

As of this morning, has the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Commission received any correspondence from the following state legislators formally requesting that JLAC perform an audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA: Sen. Eleanor Sobel, Rep.  Joe Gibbons and Rep. Shevrin Jones?

Living here, and being very involved in the effort to get your Committee to do one so that citizens of this community can finally get the financial answers that we have long been denied, I can tell you that there are no media reports of any of the three of them doing so, thus far, so I just want to get confirmation of that fact.

Thank you for your assistance!

DBS, Nine-year Hallandale Beach resident