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.
