Local10 video: Senator calls for criminal investigation of elected officials' residencies
Perry Thurston, Jared Moskowitz, Maria Sachs appear to live outside districts they represent
Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com
Published On: Jul 10 2013 02:42:24 PM EDT
Updated On: Jul 10 2013 11:00:00 PM EDT
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More from Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norrman on the epidemic in Broward County of elected officials living outside districts they represent, contrary to the FL Constitution; FL state Senator Jack Latvala, Chair of Senate's Ethics & Elections Comm. -and a recent recipient of my emails about whats' really going on in Hallandale Beach- will NOT tolerate this blatant corruption and wants investigations launched into these illegal actions right now!; And let's not forget FL state Rep. Joe Gibbons' strange views on raising a family -putting an elective office ABOVE living full-time with your own kids!
Updated at 2:45 p.m.
This is but the latest chapter of several sordid chapters in the serial criminal misrepresentation I have written about here at HBB over the past year or so on candidates and elected officials who do NOT live in the legislative districts they want to represent or do currently represent.
But somehow, the pols involved can never answer a simple question face-to-face, "Why do you refuse to live with the very citizens you say you want to represent?"
This longtime scandal has been exposed in a major way over the past few months thanks to the diligent hard work and resourcefulness of Local10's Bob Norman, Tom Lauder of Media Trackers Florida -who is also Red Broward- and my friend Stephanie Kienzle of VotersOpinion.com, the very enthusiastic blog that covers the Northeast Miami-Dade cities of North Miami Beach and North Miami -a.k.a. my old 'stomping grounds' for those of you out there who remember the wonderfully delicious days of Figaro's Pizza and the Lum's on N.E. 167th Street in NMB, and Marcella's Italian Restaurant on W. Dixie Highway in North Miami..
My last two blog posts on this sore subject, full of facts and videos, were:
JULY 5, 2013
More on Broward County politicians' residency ruse: Is intentionally violating & evading the Florida Constitution 'the new normal' for ethical standards in the Sunshine State? Latest facts & chronology regarding at least 5 Florida legislators from Broward -and one Broward Commissioner- who DON'T live full-time in the districts they were elected to represent
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/more-on-broward-county-politicians.html
JULY 2, 2013
Is Kristin Jacobs poised to become 'the last straw' and the cynical face for voters of the ever-expanding Broward candidate residency scandal? Yet MORE residency problems in Broward County per Media Tracker Florida: Jacobs wants to run for FL House 96 while living in House 93, even while convincing evidence suggests that at least 5 current members of the Broward Legislative Delegation may be knowingly breaking state law, practically daring Broward State's Attorney Mike Satz & Co. to actually do something; Videos by Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman show he's NOT afraid to go after South Florida's unethical pols and ask the hard questions
The three of them have been positively ingenious and patient about observing our local pols and pol-wannabe's in their natural state of obfuscation and mis-representation, and in Stephanie's case, highlighting the almost-comical situation where a woman who lives in Miramar in Broward County, wanted to run for City Commission in North Miami Beach in Miami-Dade County, and who almost got away with it if not for Stephanie's dedicated zeal to prevent yet another repeat of what the video up top represents.
Correct, as if they were all just running At-Large from South Florida
Speaking of being At-Large, I realized last night that in my many previous posts about FL state Rep. Joe Gibbons and his very questionable residency situation, which for so many years, to my great, great frustration, only Bob Norman and myself seemed to care a whit about, I neglected to include a link to a short-but-pithy post I'd written on him last year that dealt publicly with his very strange family living situation, which he prefers not to talk about publicly because of how selfish and self-serving he comes out in the tale.
It's my June 17, 2012 post titled, Today, on Father's Day, where are FL Rep. Joseph "Joe" Gibbons' children celebrating with him? Likely up in the Jacksonville area where they all live, NOT in Broward County where he pretends he lives full-time
By the way, now that I think about it, WTF, Channel 10?
How is it that Channel 10 is NOT tweeting these video reports of gold by Bob Norman on their own Twitter feed while tweeting all sorts of the usual blather we associate with TV station twitter feed product?
The only reference to Bob Norman's Wednesday's story on Twitter with his name attached was by a citizen from FTL named Marcelo Medina, but who didn't include the Channel 10 link to the story.
and then this today...
I don't blame the Fort Lauderdale resident, whom I'd never heard of, and who doesn't appear to be a member of Broward's massive Govt./Politics/Lobbying Industrial Complex, instead I blame the management and staff at Channel 10 who clearly aren't paying more attention to what's right in front of them that's captured everyone's attention, since most reasonable people, regardless of ideology, think it's NOT too much to ask that people running for elective office actually live where the voters do.
The station needs to actually start thinking outside-the-box, and by the way, is there not a single intern at the station who could be doing that necessary tweeting?
(I've written about this previously on the blog but that was a while back, so for you more recent readers here's a story about me and Channel 10
Many years ago, 1981 to be exact, I was supposed to be a summer intern at Channel 10 while home for the summer from IU, back when their studios were still down on Biscayne Blvd. and N.E. 39th Street.
Long story short: despite earning the job thru a great cover letter and excellent follow-up interview at the station, the Chair of the Telecommunications Dept. at IU would NOT allow me to accept the position because he said the Dept. needed all their students who were Seniors-to-be to get gigs like that, not Juniors-to-be like me.
I explained to them that while I understood their position, not only was Channel 10 the top-ranked TV news station in Florida, but that it was a Post-Newsweek station, which meant that if I did a very good job, it might help me nab an internship the following summer in D.C., either at the Washington Post or Newsweek magazine's D.C. HQ
And besides, there were no other IU students who were Juniors seeking the job, just me, and I was the only person the station's Personnel Director wanted for the job.
But it didn't matter. What opportunity giveth, IU tookth away. #stillangry)
Obviously, I haven't spoken to Bob Norman about it so have no idea if he'd even be interested, but why is there no discussion at all of the idea of giving him his own half-hour TV show on the weekends that deal with the intersection of Broward government and politics, with reporters, columnists and bloggers on as guests, but with elected officials, lobbyists, sycophants and PR apple polishers not regularly allowed on the show?
A show that would deal with larger issues like ethics and why smart policies and certain issues are not given the time of day, while bad ideas like The Wave streetcar in Fort Lauderdale, a boondoggle in the waiting, DO get approved, despite the facts staring at the City of Fort Lauderdale -their residents don't want it.
But the downtown Fort Lauderdale business crowd does want it, for perfectly selfish reasons, even though there's nothing to do downtown during the day save the Art Museum, as I will be writing about this weekend.
Yes, something very much along the lines of the weekly DC Politics Hour show that I have written about here previously, one of the things that I desperately missed once coming back to South Florida, even though I could hear it online.
(It just wasn't the same once I got out of The Beltway and could anticipate the stories they'd be talking about and already knew the context for the ones that did come up.)
Much of Greater Washington listened to it religiously every Friday at Noon on WAMU-FM, the NPR station at American University that was the talk/public policy center of the radio universe in D.C., with co-hosts Derek McGinty and Mark Plotkin and then Kojo Nmadi after Derek left for CBS-TV in 1998 after doing some excellent freelance reporting work with Bryant Gumbel on cable.
And to make a good thing better, they'd have the Maryland or Virginia Politics Hour once a month in the second hour at 1 p.m., and often had the governor on to take calls from listeners that were anything-but-friendly and who'd level the governor under a tsunami of logical facts that the guest reporters from Annapolis, Charlottesville, Baltimore, Richmond or the Wash. Post beat reporters of the state capitol couldn't do anything but sit back and watch the fun.
To quote myself, there's NOTHING even remotely like that anywhere in South Florida on Tv or radio.
It was great, and it's not just that everyone I knew, plus official Washington, listened to that show, but how from even a pure numbers point-of-view, it was the only real competition that the Rush Limbaugh Show on AM talk powerhouse WMAL ever had in the Washington market at noon.
It was fun, informative and there was always something interesting or perplexing that you heard that left you excited, puzzled or even downright scared at who was actually representing you in government as the weekend approached.
As if the retro Soviet-style bureaucracy at Arlington County HQ that looked upon citizen taxpayers like me as as, alternately, cash cows or guinea pigs, wasn't bad enough!
In those pre-Internet, pre-blog days, that radio show was the best forum in all of Greater Washington for regularly zeroing-in on all the mountains of unsatisfactory performances and illegal and ethically-troubling behavior going on by city, county and state officials, which kept the jails busy.
If I were the News Director at Channel 10, I'd do that ASAP and have it ready to roll come September, especially since there are hours and hours and hours of nothing but infomercials on Channel 10 after Noon on Saturday and Sundays, which I find pretty embarrassing, frankly.
Obviously that completely changes for Saturdays once college football season starts up late next month so why not have such a needed program at 10 a.m. on Sundays as the lead-in to This Week With George Stephanopoulos, followed-up by Michael Putney with his excellent This Week in South Florida?
A nice two-hour bloc of serious news in an area that is literally starving for more serious news coverage and analysis.
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Sen. Jack Latvala's webpage on Florida Senate website:
http://www.flsenate.gov/Senators/s20
As you can see from the video above, Sen. Latvala's already shown he's more than a little upset and is keen on getting the ball moving rapidly towards formal investigations and prosecutions, but let him know that you, too, are fed-up and won't tolerate any more of the despicable business-as-usual/wink-wink attitude in South Florida of the Florida Constitution.
You can reach him at "Latvala, Sen. Jack" <latvala.jack.web@flsenate.gov>
