Showing posts with label Pam Bondi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pam Bondi. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

#RealityCheck re #Ethics #Lobbying and #Transparency in the Sunshine State: My observations re Michael Van Sickler's spot-on article re lack of meaningful transparency in lobbying govt. in Florida - Former FL Attorney General Bill McCullom's contact with current FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office raises questions about "special rules for special people"

My comments and observations are below this excellent article by Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau reporter Michael Van Sickler as it appeared over the weekend. 
- Michael Van Sickler at mvansickler@tampabay.com. Follow @mikevansickler.
http://www.tampabay.com/writers/michael-van-sickler/

It's one of the most-thorough stories on a topic of great importance to society, and me personally -how government and public policy are directly affected by third-party actors- that I've seen in quite some time in Florida.

I've added some links below that did not appear in the email about this subject that I sent out this afternoon to lots of concerned Florida residents, activists, pols and journos around the state, especially in Tallahassee and Broward County 







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Tampa Bay Times
Former attorney general's contact with Pam Bondi's office raises questions
By Michael Van Sickler 
November 29, 2014 


When the cruise line Royal Caribbean sought to amend a 1997 consumer protection agreement with the Florida Attorney General's office, it hired a lawyer familiar with the agency's inner workings.

Former Attorney General Bill McCollum called on the staff of his successor, Pam Bondi. Six months after the June 2013 meeting, Bondi's office granted McCollum's request. 

Royal Caribbean's advertised rates would no longer have to include fees for services, like baggage handling and loading cargo. The fees, which can inflate a trip's cost by more than $100, could be listed separately from the company's advertised rates. 

On at least two other occasions, McCollum met with Bondi's staff to discuss two more clients - NJOY, an e-cigarette company, and HealthFair, which sells health screenings from mobile clinics. 


Read the rest of the article at
http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/former-attorney-generals-contact-with-pam-bondis-office-raises-questions/2208238

I guess Bill McCollum thinks he's former FL Senate Minority Leader and attorney/lobbyist Steve Geller, who for years was well-known for his penchant of down-lobbying City officials in Southeast Broward County, as well as Broward County employees/elected officials, people whom you'd think he was at least nominally supposed to be representing in Tallahassee, but whom it was often said he was largely indifferent or even hostile to if their interests were opposed to those of his many well-known and well-heeled clients.

But whenever Steve Geller was forced to answer question about the issue of whom he truly represents when he was wearing so many different hats, often at the same time -especially before and while he ran unsuccessfully for the Broward County Commission in 2010, losing in part because of lingering questions about his fidelity to common sense ethical norms, or even the fact that he did NOT actually reside in the Commission District he was running for- Steve Geller nonchalantly trotted-out the same lame and self-serving excuse that Bill McCollum has with respect to his numerous contacts with FL Attorney General Pam Bondi and her staff.

This issue of the public appearance of "special rules for special peopleis one that strongly resonates with residents, activists and Small Business owners throughout the Sunshine State regardless of ideology, political party, age, gender and geography. 
It resonates precisely because the evidence is clear that the problem is only getting worse, even as it goes largely unreported and unremarked upon in South Florida's news media when it does occur, with the result that far too often the public finds out the facts AFTER a decision was made.

It's a problem that I have seen firsthand on many occasions over the past eleven years where I live, Hallandale Beach, and is one that our state legislators in Tallahassee clearly need to tighten-up dramatically, with similar efforts initiated to create more meaningful AND enforceable rules about transparency and lobbying registration at County Govt. Centers and City Halls across the state.

Which is to say, often the sorts of less-scrutinized locales where lobbyists like former state Rep. Joe Gibbons are currently more than content to work in the shadows and be shown deference, and often DON'T register as a lobbyist with the appropriate govt. entity when a public policy issue is being decided by that govt. body, even when they have a client directly involved in the outcome -and they are the one directly trying to fashion a specific result for their client.

Yes, even when it's clear from both the spirit and letter of the present ethics and lobbying laws that individuals like Gibbons ought to be registered as a lobbyist, as happened this past year in Hallandale Beach, with a proposed condo bldg. project on the beach for the super-rich asking for approval from the Hallandale Beach City Commission.
A proposed building that was by any reasonable standard, completely incompatible for the area.

Many of you reading this email today know only from from past emails of mine that in their failure to properly cover it, the South Florida news media for months ignored the fact that the ultimate decision and recommendations reached by the HB City Commission on this matter created the very real possibility that lobbyist Joe Gibbons would net $200,000 if his client had gotten their way, as I wrote in blog posts earlier this past Spring, and will be revisiting soon.

But like many past and present legislator-lobbyists in Florida, or former state officials, Joe Gibbons likes to act like has special privileges that put him above the reach of the state, county and municipal laws that were originally created to ensure that the public at large knew precisely whom all the players in the public policy drama were -and knew that information BEFORE any decisions were reached.

Instead, though, by NOT following the reasonable rules that others must observe, Gibbons and his lobbyist friends put the onus of enforcement on local and county officials to force him to do something that he clearly doesn't want to do, practically daring them to follow and enforce the law.
So guess how that usually turns out for the public, who has a legitimate right to know who all the players at the table are?

And how do you think that turns out in Hallandale Beach with a City Attorney like V. Lynn Whitfield, who has stated at city meetings that it's NOT her job to enforce ethics laws and rules the city already has on the books?

*In case you forgot about Whitfield's way of resolving matters -by ignoring them- see the short video I made titled "Csaba Kulin re Hallandale Beach City Attorney Whitfield's comments re her role on ethics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtpFnVOFA-I

Yes, you just have to think that Joe Gibbons and his lobbyist friends love City Attorneys like Whitfield with their counter-intuitive attitude that puts the public at a genuine disadvantage and effectively neuters the law.

As if the public isn't working at enough of a disadvantage, esp. regarding development issues, given this city's track record of trying to keep public info secret from residents and neighborhoods as long as possible, even on huge projects, witness the Diplomat RAC project with 5-8 25-story-plus condo towers proposed in a single-family neighborhood in NE HB that ultimately was voted down by the Broward County Commission months after it got passed by the HB City Commission days before Christmas in 2009.
The final plans were not made public by the city until 28 hours before the vote, which finally occurred near 2:43 a.m., as I wrote here at the time:

December 17, 2009 At 2:43 a.m., Hallandale Beach approves First Reading of controversial Diplomat Country Club LAC, 3-2
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/at-243-am-hallandale-beach-approves.html

Since Joe Gibbons is NOT an attorney, even though when he wasn't acting in his capacity as a state legislator, he worked as a lobbyist for a prominent law firm based in Tallahassee -despite his wife and kids living in Jacksonville for years while he claimed to be a permanent resident of Hallandale Beach, hundreds of miles away- Gibbons can't even use the sort eof xcuse offered by Geller.

By the way, since they get mentioned by name in the article above, in the late 1990's I did some consulting work for Dickstein Shapiro's office in Washington, D.C. on an important matter for them on behalf of Jacksonville-based CSX. 
Which we won.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Keith London writes re "Concerned Citizens of Hallandale" request JLAC to order a CRA Audit and seek an AG opinion; Hallandale Beach citizens wonder if the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee (JLAC) will come to the rescue of Hallandale Beach's beleaguered taxpayers after the "gross mismanagement" of millions of CRA dollars by Mayor Joy Cooper and her Rubber Stamp Crew, or will they punt?



"Concerned Citizens of Hallandale" request JLAC to order a CRA Audit and seek an AG opinion

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Csaba Kulin's spot-on email about the Hallandale Beach CRA scandal to HB Comm. Anthony A. Sanders re Sanders' refusal to vote (twice!) to do the right thing for HB taxpayers and small business owners, and instead, vote to help Mayor Joy Cooper and Comm. Alexander Lewy in their desperate attempt to avoid a full public accounting for where ALL the millions of CRA dollars really went

Above, civic activist Csaba Kulin on his balcony, shortly before we recorded some videos that you will soon start seeing here on the blog. The binders on the table are full of City of Hallandale Beach documents and research information csaba has spent many months putting together regarding the city's VERY, VERY CURIOUS pension plan that pays (will pay) a select group of former and current top employees, including the past three City Managers -R.J. Intindola, Mike Good & Mark A. Antonio- for their past service at a MUCH-HIGHER rate than what they actually earned it at. That very crucial and very expensive decision will cost HB taxpayers millions of dollars MORE than it should, and yet even today, years after-the-fact, the City of Hallandale Beach STILL can't or won't say publicly who made the decision and produce the documentation. No, Csaba and I haven't forgotten about that pension scandal one bit. March 22, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2014 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

My friend and fellow Hallandale Beach and Broward County civic activist Csaba Kulin wrote a short and spot-on email last week that I wanted to share with you today that's a continuation of the pro-reform thoughts of this community in blog posts I've written recently about the Hallandale Beach CRA scandal.

A scandal that will not be brushed away like HB Mayor Joy Cooper desperately wants, so she doesn't have to be personally accountable to the public for what has happened here for years with her in charge all the while.
Mayor Cooper is in heavy-duty 'spin' mode, and I haven't even told you yet anout her new PR gambit, which will be the subject of a future post here.

Csaba's email was sent to Hallandale Beach Comm. Anthony A. Sanders re Sanders' abject refusal to vote (twice!) to do the right thing for HB taxpayers and small business owners, and finally get them some long-overdue accountability on the HB CRA that has wasted millions of dollars, most of it in NW HB, including voting AGAINST an audit of the HB CRA by the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, JLAC.

But instead of doing the right thing, Sanders twice voted the wrong way and actually had the gall to preen up on the dais and mock residents at last wednesday night's CRA Board meeting for more of them not speaking that night.

Typical cynical and Sanders attitude showing not only his stupidity, but his continuing lack of respect for the citizens of this community that he's supposed to work for, NOT that Sanders has ever shown a strong work ethic in the past or even worked very hard at being properly prepared for meetings, since he often appears confused about what's happening -and it's no act, no matter how much he tries to make it seem like he's just lying in wait, being impatient

No, it's nothing of the sort, it's just sheer laziness and a lack of resolve and backbone to do the sort of responsible job anyone in his position is expected to do -provide oversight and hold people accountable
It's NOT exactly Breaking News that Comm. Anthony A. Sanders doesn't want to do either one of these, he just wants to go around town being a commissioner, like it's a ceremonial position or something.

It's typical of Sanders lack of attention to detail that the simple fact is that HB citizens were NOT allowed to speak after they'd heard the staff or CRA Directors talk about the two matters on the CRA Board agenda or even what they wanted to do, only BEFORE anything was ever said or publicly presented.

So in this respect, Sanders' disrespectful remarks to the public at large as well as the ones in the room sitting before him was entirely in keeping with the bad reputation he's earned over six years for NOT being smart, prepared or attentive to detail at meetings, but rather oblivious and inarticulate, and that's putting it mildly.

NOT that the South Florida news media ever publicly mentions this self-evident fact about Sanders when they show up -if they show up.

Yes, after witnessing the stunts Sanders pulled at last week's CRA meeting, you seriously wonder how in the world he ever fooled so many people into voting for him when you see how truly clueless he is, and unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his own actions and words.

So clueless, that when actually presented with a golden opportunity for two easy lay-ups, Sanders balks and plays defense for Mayor Cooper and Comm. Alexander Lewy, neither of whom want a full public accounting for where all those HB CRA dollars went while they -and Sanders- were the majority of the City Commission, and playing Santa Claus.

-----


Commissioner Sanders,
I am very disappointed in the outcome of Wednesday night’s HB/HBCRA Board of Directors meeting. There were two very reasonable, common sense changes to the Joint Legislative Auditing Committee (JLAC) response and both failed due to the lack of your support. Comm. Julian and Lazarow not only talked the talk, they walked the walk. They needed your support to succeed but they did not get it.     
The first one was to request JLAC to perform a complete audit of the HBCRA and return any money improperly spent to the CRA Trust Fund.
It is in the best interest of every resident of the CRA district. You would want every penny put back into the CRA Trust Fund which was improperly spent by anyone. How can you NOT support that?
Knocking on doors last fall, when I asked, hundreds of residents could not name any significant results of the 70 million spent by the CRA in the last 15 years. Apparently you do NOT want to know and you do NOT want anyone else in the CRA district to know where all the money went. Can you explain to why?
The second item you did NOT support was to ask the Florida Attorney General for an opinion as to the proper type of expenditures a CRA can make using CRA funds according to Chapter 163 of the Florida Statutes.
The question is, do you want the CRA to function as a Community Redevelopment Agency or something the Mayor or City Manager decides to function as? You do not support the motion to reduce the City Manager’s spending authority of 25 or 50 thousand dollars. Detailed financial reports are not on the City’s web site. We do not know most of the details what is going on at City Hall. We find out most details by chance.
Do want the CRA to function as the Mayor’s “cookie jar”? If she likes you, if you go along with her, you get a few cookies. If she does not like you, you get nothing with a dose of abuse. The anger and the poisonous venom coming from her voice over the phone last night is telling of her and her management style. Maybe you did not want to face that music?     
If I was in your shoes, I listen to what the Florida Attorney General has to say, not only the “hired guns” of the Mayor. Remember, AG’s opinion is free and carries a lot of weight.
I do not have to tell you that the battle for better government does not stop here. There are just too many good people working very hard to make the long needed changes in Hallandale Beach. I am sorry to see that you do not seem to one of them.
I do not want to sound overly harsh or accusatory toward you but you must understand the frustration I feel about the way our city’s leadership is treating us and handling our affairs.
Sincerely,
Csaba Kulin 

Sunday, July 14, 2013

City of Hallandale Beach thumbs its nose at the FL Joint Legislative Auditing Comm., even as the common sense rationale for JLAC to perform a thorough audit of the entire Hallandale Beach CRA has NEVER been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community -after hearing the continued obfuscation and spin of Messrs Cooper, Lewy & Sanders after years of their personal mischief & neglect that has gotten the city's CRA in this mess in the first place. THEIR personal lack of oversight and accountability for the crony capitalism merry-go-round that they were only too happy to feed with CRA dollars. "Faster! Faster! Faster!" they yelled like small children. Meanwhile, CRA Attorney Zelikow is oblivious to the numerous conflicts-of-interests right in front of him. Oblivious, myopic, it's all the same thing when poor oversight is apparent like it is here in Hallandale Beach

 
 July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. The photo of HB City Hall above was snapped on my way into Wednesday's meeting that proved to be such a truly embarrassing debacle for long-overdue accountability and transparency for the taxpayers of this city, who are perpetually run roughshod over by Mayor Joy Cooper and her current Rubber Stamp Crew of Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders. 
The City of Hallandale Beach thumbs its nose at the FL Joint Legislative Auditing Comm., even as the common sense rationale for JLAC to perform a thorough audit of the entire Hallandale Beach CRA has NEVER been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community -after hearing the continued obfuscation and spin of Messrs Cooper, Lewy & Sanders after years of their personal mischief & neglect that has gotten the city's CRA in this mess in the first place. THEIR personal lack of oversight and accountability for the crony capitalism merry-go-round that they were only too happy to feed with CRA dollars. "Faster! Faster! Faster!" they yelled like small children. Meanwhile, CRA Attorney Zelikow is oblivious to the numerous conflicts-of-interests right in front of him. Oblivious, myopic, it's all the same thing when poor oversight is apparent like it is here in Hallandale Beach
------


The tweet the next day in the Broward Bulldog, a genuine journalistic enterprise, unlike the faux newspaper that receives a sweetheart CRA loan and comes complete with a propaganda column by Mayor Joy Cooper.

Wednesday night the City of Hallandale Beach City Commission thumbed its nose at the bipartisan Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee (JLAC), voting 3-2 to reject JLAC's formal request that the Hallandale Beach CRA Board of Directors -the five-member City Commission- get an Attorney General's Opinion from FL Attorney General Pam Bondi's office. 

Voting against the specific JLAC request: 
Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper -by phone on her vacation somewhere in the worldand HB Commissioners Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders.
Voting to comply with JLAC request: HB Commissioners Michele Lazarow and William Julian.

At one point in the frequently confounding and rambling discussion that so often willfully ignored common sense and the past ten years of history in thsi town, when HB CRA Attorney Steven W. Zelkowitz (of GrayRobinson PA) was saying why he believed the HB CRA Board should NOT accede to the JLAC's common sense request and instead listen to himself and Hallandale Beach City Attorney V. Lynn Whitfield, Zelkowitz commented that FL Attorney General Pam Bondi -and presumably her office full of experienced litigatorshad no more expertise in CRA law and related matters than anyone else, and that she was just a member of the Florida Bar just like him.

Essentially, Zelkowitz was telling his bosses and the people of this city that AG Bondi's opinion was due no special deference, so why bother asking for it, even though it's free?
No, don't do that, instead, better to listen to the two attorneys on the dais.
Which is not too self-serving and parochial, now is it?


July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

More than is usually the case at a meeting at HB City Hall, it's really too bad you readers could not have been present as eyewitnesses in the Commission Chambers and heard the venom and self-justifying nonsense coming from Mayor Cooper over the the poor quality public loudspeaker when she was speaking and frequently interrupting others about about how neither the Broward Inspector General's Office or the JLAC had the authority to demand anything of them, much less, make them pay back funds to the city CRA that were used for things that are (clearly) inappropriate.
Like fireworks.

In her first few months on the job last Summer, HB City Manager Renee Miller made quite a concerted effort to be seen around town in public as a genuine reformer and genuine believer in and practitioner of meaningful transparency -perhaps to curry the acceptance of the reform element of this city with which I and my friends are associated with, even in her personal conversations with them and me.

Unfortunately, in the ensuing months, Miller has, thru her own actions and words, revealed herself to be anything but that much-needed reformer for this town's frustrated citizens taxpayers.

Instead of being that much-desired breath-of-fresh-air, Miller has been no change at all from her immediate predecessors, Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio, who realized that the secret to their keeping their job was being able to count to one -and keeping Mayor Cooper happy.

Even if that meant pretty much ignoring the desires, opinions and policy choices of the other four elected members of the HB City Commission, a fact that's been obvious to anyone paying attention.

On Wednesday night, HB City Manager Miller was particularly adamant about the city NOT paying back any funds to the CRA.
The CRA that -surprise- she is the Director of.

Wednesday night was classic cocksure and autocratic Joy Cooper, constantly maligning people and groups with a different perspective and impugning the true motives of others.

Even those that weren't there in the room to defend themselves, like the JLAC, who certainly never expected that anyone who had fallen into such a financial and ethical hole like the city's CRA has has fallen into under Cooper the past ten years, would have the gall to question the bona fides and motives of the very people trying to throw her and the CRA a rope to get out of the hole.
But question and malign them she did -it's who she is.

I taped the whole meeting and at times could barely control my frustration at what I was seeing and hearing, but then that's how every meeting with Mayor Cooper goes, since logic and reason never intersect, and her aggrieved sense of pettiness, the perpetual chip on her shoulder that she parades around with, is treated like it was the same thing as immutable facts.

If many of you readers far from these shores had been there, you'd have gotten an eagle's-eye view of what sort of seriously disconnected elected officials and city administrators HB citizens have been up against for years at HB City Hall in their efforts to get to the truth about where all the money went.

Their battles to get an honest audit of the whole CRA, not the mini-audit of selected area of the CRA that the city did a few years ago, which made Marcum LLP's report a must-read whodunit, full of anonymous or ghost-like employees who must've removed all those massive amounts of files and documents they couldn't ever find, and hundreds and hundreds of exceptions to the city's very own rules.

That. of course, is to say nothing of all of the city employees approving money going out without checking for appropriate forms or approval or was even being spent for the purposes for which it was intended...

(And that was just in the small portion of the CRA that the City Commission would allow to be examined, since as the folks from Marcum LLP were always at great pains to remind everyone, what they did was NOT, technically an audit.

MARCH 9, 2012
Wednesday night's HB City Comm. mtg. re the gory details of Marcum LLP's audit of the City of Hallandale Beach and its entrenched anti-Sunshine, anti-taxpayer culture
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/wednesday-nights-hb-city-comm-mtg-re.html

MARCH 7, 2012
Csaba Kulin continues connecting-the-dots on Marcum LLP's devastating audit of Hallandale Beach, revealing how city's own rules were routinely broken and leaving taxpayers on the hook

MARCH 6, 2012
More on the $20 Million of Hallandale Beach city contracts that went unchecked -Csaba Kulin re Marcum LLP's limited audit of "Exceptional" Hallandale Beach City Hall and its longstanding dysfunctional practices that insult HB taxpayers
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/more-on-20-million-of-hallandale-beach.html )

After the despicable performance by Cooper, Lewy & Sanders, the common sense rationale for JLAC performing a thorough audit of the entire HB CRA has never been more overwhelming -or more desperately needed by the citizens of this community.

And what can you say about Steven Zelkowitz, the HB CRA attorney, the hired-hand from GrayRobinson PA  who doesn't realize or doesn't care that Murvin Wright of the CRA Advisory Board -appointed by Mayor Cooper!- and whose meetings Zelkowitz is supposed to attend, is a walking/talking poster boy for conflict-of-interests. 
But Zekowitz is THE expert. LOL!

Don't know what's worse, that Zelkowitz really believes what he says or that he's dumb enough or naive enough to continue to believe what he hears from the very people at HB City Hall who've been guilty of trying so hard to hide the truth and evade responsibility for their own actions for so many years.


So, what do you residents, taxpayers and small business owners of Hallandale Beach say about the possibility of having a JLAC "field hearing" in Hallandale Beach in the coming months, so that members of the Committee can come into the belly of the beast and see for themselves how millions of CRA dollars have been squandered for one thing after another over the years with no tangible positive results that HB residents can see or feel or taste.

Come see the longstanding graffiti, still highly-visible in the same places year-after-year on the city's main roads, especially on U.S.-1/Federal Highway, directly in front of and in some places ON the new and old HB City Halls.


I don't know about you, but when I see lots of graffiti, I think "blight."
And when I live in a city that doesn't do anything about it for years...

Self-evident graffiti ignored for years by the powers-that-be at HB City Hall, the Police Dept. and the CRA staff that is supposed to actually help get rid of blight, not just ignore it, as I told then-City manager Mark A. Antonio and the City Commission in 2011 at a City Commission meeting, where I publicly chastised him and the city Commission for ignoring what was right in front of the very building we were all in.
Why did Antonio and Mayor Cooper and the hundreds of HB city employees do nothing about it I asked?

Despite coming into the same building for work every weekday for over ten years, City Manager Antonio said he'd never seen any of legions of graffiti-covered signs that were and are and have been up-and-down U.S.-1/Federal Highway for many years once you head north from the City of Aventura in Miami-Dade County, despite the signs hiding-in-plain-sight right in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall -and Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex directly
across the street- courtesy of, among others, "esc" and "HGS."



July 10, 2013 photos by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. Above, directly in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall on U.S.-1/South Federal Highway. Below, directly in front of the main Hallandale Beach Post Office directly south and across the street from HB City Hall. Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino and the Village at Gulfstream Park retail complex are across the street.   



Yes, a lot of people in town are slowly coming around to the idea that only this sort of shock treatment, a visit, will cure the sick patient that is the HB CRA and the people who run it so badly.

(The longstanding eyesore and firetrap that is the old HB City Hall on West Dixie Highway & S.W. 3rd Street., less than a half-mile from the present City Hall, will get an update with photos soon on the blog, where the city's neglect of what it has been to its residential neighbors across the street has long been one of my pet projects.)

The JLAC can come and hear first-hand from HB residents about how they cringe at hearing the preposterous things said routinely in this city at CRA meetings by the Directors.
Or as was the case on Wednesday night, hearing how things like expending CRA funds for fireworks are really economic measures according to the mayor and city manager, which help people within the CRA.
Hmm-m... despite the fact that fireworks actually take place in an area that is NOT in the CRA -the beach?

That's an odd argument to make, but it's just part-and-parcel of the unreality that exists here.

To those of you who've asked me recently, even before Wednesday night's debacle, I agree with you: "What a friend we have in Jesus." 
Still, I don't want to leave things strictly up to fate or karma, so I'll happily sign your petition for Recall of Comm. Sanders in a heartbeat, just tell me when and where to go, and I'll sign and help you get even more signatures. 
The number of signatures needed to trigger a recall election of Comm. Sanders is actually much lower than you think.



July 10, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved. Above, Hallandale Beach City Hall Complex on S. Federal Highway/U.S.-1, as I left Wednesday night's meeting. To remind you again, this is where attention to details and appearances has never been their strong suit in the nine-plus years I've lived here, since returning to South Florida after 15 years in the Washington, D.C. area. Thanks to the city's incompetent, myopic and poorly-managed DPW, the spotlights on the city's monument sign above, at the corner of U.S.-1 & S.E. 5th St., have NOT worked since June of 2012. Which is to say that they have NEVER worked since City Manager Renee C. Miller has been City Manager. But attention to details and appearances really DO matter when you are a government, don't they? The situation with the lights not working on this sign is but the tip of the iceberg. Seeing this sort of thing all over the city, it's hard not to imagine how badly more-complicated things that are hidden away from the public are really botched, isn't it? Exactly.

This was the first news article posted online by the only visible reporter who showed-up, though it's clearly incomplete, as we've come to expect from that newspaper, given how short their editors like pieces to be, shorn of context that explains why things happened the way they did. 
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/hallandale/fl-cra-hallandale-response-20130710,0,505886.story


Of course, that doesn't prevent their reporters from actually trying to develop independent sources of information and actually going around the city herself to speak with people who know what's going on, instead of only dealing with people at HB City Hall.
But that's NOT what they do at that newspaper.
Not now, not ever, and that's why it's so terribly unsatisfying and frustrating to the people who live here.

They know implicitly that this lack of effort by TV and print reporters and columnists to really dig below the surface, is something that Mayor Cooper counts on and has been extremely appreciative of over the years-reporters who don't independently observe and only report, when they do show-up, on what's visible, only playing the role of court transcribers and re-writer of press releases.

And that's part of why it is that Mayor Cooper's reign of ruin and malicious and willful mischief with the CRA has been allowed to continue for so long, and why people like Alexander Lewy and Anthony A. Sanders can get away with their questionable antics because nobody in the news media is paying attention, lifting a finger and holding them to account.
A bad press corps is a license to steal.
A bad press corps that doesn't even bother to show-up is... our reality in Hallandale Beach