Showing posts with label Sue Gunzburger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sue Gunzburger. Show all posts

Thursday, September 17, 2015

#Ethics still matter in South Florida! Stephanie Kienzle of Votersopinion.com keeps her eyes firmly on what's going on with the VERY CURIOUS legal antics of FL state Rep. Joe Geller, even as most of South Florida's news media keeps ignoring what's right in front of us.

According to ever-vigilant Stephanie Kienzle at VotersOpinion despite what appears to be his obviously unethical -and possibly illegal- delay tactics, it looks like Florida state Rep. Joe Geller is going have to face the music for lying to the Courts in Miami.

Geller certainly plays a mean game of four-corners defense to try to run the clock out, but then consider Geller's client: North Miami Beach City Council member Phyliss Smith, who is accused of... wait for it: absentee ballot fraud!

And it's abundantly clear that she has considerably less than a fig-leaf for a defense.
And did I mention that she refused a court order to turn over relevant records?


VotersOpinion blog
September 17, 2015

Despite the obviously unethical, and possibly illegal, delay tactics employed by Joseph S. Geller, Esquire, the lawsuit filed against North Miami Beach “Councilwoman” Phyllis Smith is finally moving ahead.  In a few short days, she’ll be compelled to answer the allegations of absentee ballot fraud.
Read the rest of Stephanie's fact-filled post at: http://www.votersopinion.com/2015/09/17/is-the-fat-lady-about-to-sing/
Some of you more informed readers will recall that earlier this year while wearing his legislator hat, Joe Geller tried to make logic stand on its head by offering a bill that would, as the legislature's own website put it:
"Repeals requirement that write-in candidate reside within district represented by office sought at time of qualification."

Who could possibly think this is a good idea for civic engagement, public accountability and genuine transparency? 
Joe Geller did. 

Fortunately, the bill died:

(For those of you reading this who don't know, Joseph S. Geller is also the former mayor of the long ethically-challenged town of North Bay Village in northern Miami-Dade County, and more recently was elected to the state House of Representatives last November as a dependable knee-jerk Liberal vote.
Thus, Geller represents those parts of southeast Broward County that are the most important parts of our "beat" on this blog: Hallandale Beach and Hollywood, and necessarily, Geller's various actions and antics in Tallahasse and locally are part of our regular focus.

Yes, he's the brother of the former state Senator for this area, lobbyist/lawyer/developer mouthpiece Steve Geller, who was the frequent subject of so many posts on this blog in the past, including when he ran for Broward County Commissioner in 2010 -BEFORE actually living within the district. 
Fortunately for everyone in this area, and common sense, his track record in office and strange sense of what he as a lawyer/lobbyist was entitled to do was found wanting, and Commissioner Sue Gunzburger was handily re-elected, with stronger ethics in Broward one of her key legacies.) 

Kudos to my friend, truth-telling Stephanie for keeping her eyes firmly on the ball while most of the South Florida news media seems to be too distracted and giddy from the return of the football season to notice that there ARE still a LOT of very unsavory things going on with pols in South Florida 
and the Sunshine State that ARE worth investigating and making public.
And worth prosecuting!

Tomorrow on my blog I'll have some interesting details and background info you may want to peruse regarding another case of an official in power in South Florida whose track record makes clear that he is an unrepentant serial abuser of the public trust.

Despite this, he remains both surprisingly aloof and intent on maintaining his very clear sense of entitlement, despite self-evident facts that would make others in his position resign out of either sheer guilt or embarrassment.
Or both!

But he remains steadfast and without remorse, making decisions that affect lots of South Florida residents everyday.

Such is the price we all pay for living in an area of the country where to our collective and continuing dismay, we have FAR MORE than our fair share of elected officials and govt. officials with more self-confidence and hubris than common sense.

Stay tuned!

Monday, November 17, 2014

Because #Ethics still matter to some of us in Broward County; re upcoming December 4th meeting of the Oversight Committee for Office of the Broward Inspector General











-----
"Laws and Constitutions go for nothing where the general sentiment is corrupt."
-New York Times editorial, September 22, 1851

"Why do they need that in the Broward County charter?"

-Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper at April 2, 2008 HB City Commission meeting, in discussing possible inclusion of Broward County Charter Review Commission's proposal for Ethics Commission to deal with Broward County Commission,on November 2008 ballot.
Six YEARS after the county's voters had overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the County charter requiring its adoption, the Broward County Commission had yet to live up to its legal responsibility. 
That's why!

-----
Below is a long-overdue email that I finally remembered to send out Monday afternoon to Broward County Government HQ in Fort Lauderdale, via Kevin Kelleher, the County's Director of Human Resources

November 17, 2014

Dear Mr. Kelleher:

I'm writing to you today in your capacity as liaison to the Oversight Committee for the Office of Broward Inspector General.


I would like to know when and where this year's meeting will take place so that I can make sure that my voice, as well as the voices of other concerned residents of Broward County, have the opportunity to continue to push-back and call-out the stealthy, frequently anti-democratic and very antagonistic actions taken by so many elected public officials, who for some reason persist in thinking that they are beyond the reach of both the law and society's norms.

At last year's annual meeting of the Broward IG Oversight Committee, I spoke in some detail about some of the matters that I was most concerned with involving the evolving structure, operations and public outreach responsibilities of the Broward IG's office. 
I noted specific areas that I believed the office was deficient in and called for much-needed improvement in those areas IF it wanted to truly satisfy Broward County's much-beleaguered citizenry's very strong interest in seeing unethical behavior investigated, pulled-out by the roots and 
fully-prosecuted.

I said that in my opinion, IF the Broward IG's Office wanted to continue 
to maintain the public's trust, the area that most-needed tangible improvement was the allocation of adequate resources and personnel to public outreach in cities that were being formally investigated, so that the public would 
know with certainty just what WAS and was NOT being investigated, and how the public could best assist the office with respect to perhaps gathering additional relevant facts and evidence, to say nothing of context.

The latter was something that, to my astonishment, was NEVER done in Hallandale Beach in 2012 and 2013 when the Broward IG was investigating the longstanding Hallandale Beach CRA scandal involving tens of millions of dollars, since in my opinion, it would have produced a LOT more useful information and context for the IG's Office to peruse and consider.
In my opinion, they barely saw the the tip of the iceberg.

As someone who was frequently the only member of the public attending those early morning meetings years ago of the appointed Broward County Ethics Committee, someone who actually videotaped many of them so that I could later describe in accurate detail what had transpired in those 
meetings, esp. with respect to which appointed member was consistently voting FOR meaningful ethical standards and thresholds and which appointed members had consistently tried to obfuscate, misdirect or otherwise water-down any serious effort to hold people with power, influence and 
opportunity to account, I take what happens with the Office of Broward IG very seriously.

I don't think I or others need to apologize for wanting to make sure that the will and best interests of the Broward citizenry is represented as often as possible, NOT pushed to the side of the road by self-interested politicans, government employees and outside groups, esp. ones with zero public oversight like the Broward League of Cities, a group that STILL clearly wants its member cities and officials to have as low a threshold as possible, to meet and carve-out exceptions to common sense -as if common sense was something that we'd been enjoying too much of over the years, instead of its opposite. 

Obviously, many of these individuals and groups would very much like to keep their perks and the trappings of the pay-to-play culture that had long flourished in Broward, and want to un-do the very small, positive things that have FINALLY taken place.
Sorry, that ship has sailed! 

Despite my fact-filled warnings and anecdotes last year to the IG Oversight 
Committe and the public attending that meeting about the reality on-the-ground at Hallandale Beach City Hall, that same corrosive attitude and anti-citizen culture I described then persists from top-to-bottom at HB City Hall.

There has been no let-up by Mayor Joy Cooper and City Manager Renee Miller since either the April 2013 issuance of the IG's damning report on the Hallandale Beach CRA scandal that involved tens of millions of dollars, or, even since Mr. Scott and the Chief Counsel's own descriptions last year of the sorts of foolish and entirely self-serving gambits and attempts at misrepresentations engaged in by those women and the city.
Right down to Mayor Cooper intentionally sending her inaccurate letter and account of the facts to everyone scheduled to attend last year's IG Oversight Comm. meeting 
That is, everyone BUT the IG's Office itself.

Yes, it was hard not to see that desperate and pathetic effort for precisely what it was.
A shameful effort to obfuscate and blame others for their own unethical behavior and lack of proper governance, due diligence and meaningful oversight for SO MANY YEARS, which is just how I described it last year since that's precisely how the majority of Hallandale Beach's best-informed residents and Small Business owners see it

I look forward to hearing from you soon about that upcoming meeting.
-----
Mr. Smith,   

The next Inspector General Selection and Oversight Committee Meeting is currently scheduled for Thursday, December 4 at 2:00pm in Room 422 of the Broward County Governmental Center, 115 South Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale Florida 33301.   
Should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.   

Kevin

Monday, June 3, 2013

Questions, questions and more questions about Tuesday's important Broward County Commission meeting re possible audit of controversial Hallandale Beach CRA; Meeting now has an added feature: City Manager Miller and CRA Attorney Zelkowitz who publicly argued that the Broward IG didn't have legal authority over the HB CRA, will now be speaking and playing the role of Wiley E. Coyote before the boulder falls on them. Must-see TV! HB citizens want the truth, not more stonewalling, finger-pointing and spin from city's elected officials and city employees

October 13, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.
While I hope that as many of you reading this as possible make an earnest effort to try to attend the meeting in-person on Tuesday morning to be supportive of the effort to finally get a meaningful audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA and where all the millions went, which will be made in-person by Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Michele Lazarow and former HB Commissioner Keith London, it will be available by webcast: agenda item #87, at http://broward.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=5

I'll be there to not only watch the proceedings and see who shows up in the chambers, but also to record it for posterity and later uploading to my YouTube Channel at some point.

You need to keep in mind, though, that while there's a lot of consent agenda at the beginning of the meeting, the question of when the item will actually come up is entirely up to the various whims of the Commission, depending upon what gets pulled or moved around.

Which is to say that your concept and my concept of time and space are NOT always the same as their's, so you may need to turn the volume of your computer down a bit lest you become hypnotized by all the talk about RFP's, advisory boards and an alphabet city of environmental groups having something or another to do with the airport and some very bad stuff under the ground there.
In other words, stay caffeinated!

And in case you forgot where you lived, here's a photo of the HQ of a place where you have never been able to find anything meaningful or truthful about what was going on with the HB CRA or the scandal involving it: the CRA-subsidized faux newspaper.



The faux newspaper that serves as a propaganda arm to Hallandale Beach City Hall, which was specifically cited in the Broward Inspector General's final report. April 17, 2013 photo by South Beach Hoosier. (c) 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

Below, following the meeting info, is my email of late this afternoon to Broward County Commissioners Sue Gunzburger and Barbara Sharief and many other interested parties throughout the Sunshine State, especially here in Hallandale Beach and Broward County.
Lots of good facts there, especially for those of you who have not been following the story closely.

Full agenda is at: http://205.166.161.204/agenda_publish.cfm?id=&mt=ALL&get_month=6&get_year=2013&dsp=ag&seq=351

MEETING OF JUNE 4, 2013
(Meeting will convene at 10 a.m.)

Agenda Item 87.
DELEGATION:  Keith London and Hallandale Beach City Commissioner, Michelle Lazarow

Attachments
Exhibit 1 - Delegation Request

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In case the links above don't work for you, they are at
http://205.166.161.204/agenda_publish.cfm?id=&mt=ALL&get_month=6&get_year=2013&dsp=agm&seq=14253&rev=0&ag=351&ln=60577&nseq=&nrev=&pseq=14386&prev=0#
and 
http://205.166.161.204/docs/2013/CCCM/20130604_353/14253_Exhibit%201%20-%20Keith%20London%20031213.pdf

-----

June 3rd, 2013
4:45 p.m.

Dear Commissioners Gunzburger and Sharief:

I just heard the good news this afternoon that Hallandale Beach City Manager Renee Miller and HB CRA Attorney Steven Zelkowitz have formally requested an opportunity to speak in-person before the entire Commission on Tuesday in response to this agenda item.
I couldn't be more pleased.

I'm particularly interested in hearing the comments of Ms. Miller, who assured me last summer in-person when we spoke for about ten minutes or so that she was indeed a "reformer," and wanted very much to end what was publicly perceived as the culture of deceit and misinformation that has long existed at Hallandale Beach City Hall as de facto policy, and instead, bring more public transparency to it so that citizens would have more confidence in what was being said and done in their behalf.

These comments of hers to me followed her speaking for at least 30 minutes to dozens of very-concerned and well-informed HB residents who posed tough questions to her, wherein she closed by asking everyone in the room for a fair chance to be judged based on her own record, not their assumptions, which is not at all an unreasonable request.

As a longtime critic of the consistent way things have been done in such egregiously unprofessional, incompetent and aggressive ways at HB City Hall, where logic and reason seldom if ever intersected, I hoped for the best and was  prepared to believe her once she'd become more familiar with the city and its many problems and had some time to initiate these changes she spoke about, though in more vague terms than I'd have liked.

I say "interested" in hearing her comments because the truth is that by any reasonable standard, using her own track record, Ms. Miller has been anything but a "reformer" since then, and has engaged in precisely the sort of stealthy, unsavory and below-the-radar conduct and behavior that not only completely contradicts everything she said last summer, but which is identical to the very problems SHE was supposed to rectify when she was hired last year.
But isn't, of course.

Under her "leadership" the city was scheduled to hold a public meeting that was advertised as being the latest occasional Visioning meeting to discuss the city's future.
Well, they planned to do so, but that meeting was postponed and re-scheduled.

But on the very day the public meeting was scheduled to be held -held NOT at HB City Hall but in a city park building- the meeting did NOT appear on the city's own website calendar, and the public that showed-up was NOT allowed to speak or ask questions or even correct the record when "facts" were stated that were anything but facts.

Which would've made great TV for anyone in HB watching at home on cable TV except for the fact that the city, which is to say Ms. Miller, chose NOT to allow TV cameras inside to either broadcast the public meeting LIVE or to record it for viewing on cable TV or viewing on the city's website later, as has happened in the past.
I mean it's only the city's future, right?

So with that in mind, here are some assorted thoughts, facts and questions you may want to ponder as this agenda item is discussed and Mr. Zelkowitz and Ms.Miller try their best to defend the indefensible and keep HB taxpayers in the dark about what really has been happening for years to all that money with zero accountability and responsible follow-up by city employees, despite their job titles and salaries.

After all the many months this scandal has consumed in wasted time, energy and taxpayer dollars, here's what we know as of now for facts.

The City of Hallandale Beach still has NOT placed a copy of the Broward IG Report on their own website NOR have they publicly posted their official response.

That very same city website that all these months since he was hired, still doesn't list the public email address of the CRA Director, Daniel Rosemond, the man brought in by Ms. Miller from the city she used to work for last year.

Mr. Rosemond is here to do something for the CRA, though what that something actually is is not at all entirely clear based on his record thus far, since he seems to have already forgotten that we don't work for him, he works for us, the residents of this city.

You see, as if the HB CRA didn't have enough problems with public trust and confidence -that is to say, the public's complete lack of trust and confidence in them and their policies- Mr. Rosemond had no problem in showing-up at a public event in March where neither Ms. Miller or any members of the City Commission were present, and within a matter of minutes
was repeatedly telling the assembled HB citizens that he was supposed to be reassuring, that he had "no obligation" to meet with them.

So, this is the new guy brought in by Ms. Miller to change the culture of corruption and incompetency that has NOT been properly held accountable?
An arrogant person who insults taxpayers and small business owners who know far more about the problems with the CRA than HE does from first-hand experience?

For at least ten weeks, as I've written you previously, the city was in violation of Florida law and the city's own ordinance by NOT publicly disclosing the Lobbyist and Visitor logs, meaning that even as the city in the form of Ms. Miller was publicly saying the IG had no authority and then later said the report was wrong, the city was violating the law. Period

And who was directly involved in some of these meetings with a developer that were NOT being properly disclosed when it was supposed to be?
The new CRA Director.
Oops!!!

This fact is already known to both the Broward IG's Office and the Broward State Attorney's Office, not that they've done anything about it publicly yet, which raises its own questions for dumbfounded HB residents, who wonder why the latter in particular seems SO very disinterested in paying attention to what has been going on here for years in plain sight.

1.) How much money in attorney fees and personnel costs has the City of Hallandale Beach spent in defending their myriad legal positions that are clearly in opposition to the best long-term interests of its citizen taxpayers since the Broward IG's Office first began their investigation of the city?

2.) How much of that came AFTER the preliminary report was issued that the city was asked to respond to, neither of which were posted on the city's website?

3.) Lest you doubt the veracity of what I've written here, here's what the City of Hallandale Beach has on its own website as of 4:30 p.m. today about the Broward Inspector General's preliminary report and the final report, as well as the city's official public response to them
Nothing.
Really.
Teaser Alert: That's not by accident.

It's simply not enough to say that you want to change things for the better, you actually have to follow-thru and make good on them.

I truly hope that you will both be very firm in your questioning of Ms. Miller and press her to answer reasonable questions that she has refused to answer publicly for many months as she has engaged in finger-pointing and stonewalling.

In my opinion, thru her own words and actions, Ms. Miller has already lost the trust and confidence of HB citizens who closely follow what's really going on in this city
As more and more HB citizens open their eyes and slowly find out the truth about what has been allowed to take place with her in charge, that disapproval and distrust of her will only grow.

It's unfortunate, but the buck ultimately stops with Ms. Miller.

Please vote to give HB taxpayers the truth they were owed years ago but prevented from finding-out by the very people who were supposed to be working FOR them -their elected officials and city administrators.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Given the longstanding mismanagement and corruption involving MILLIONS of dollars at Hallandale Beach CRA, why has Broward's independent Office of Inspector General refused to hold a single outreach mtg. with citizens in Hallandale Beach, while OIG has met with other Broward civic groups? It's very perplexing and counterintuitive to getting cold hard facts out into the sunshine and the public realm

Above, Broward Inspector General John W. Scott at a Broward League of Women Voters event in Coconut Creek, FL on January 24, 2013. Below, four of the five Hallandale Beach citizens who found time on a busy weekday afternoon to drive up to Coconut Creek in northwest Broward County to listen to and ask some questions of Mr. Scott. Pictured left-to-right are Keith S. London, Dr. Robert Selz, Dr. Judy Selz, and Csaba Kulin. Not pictured: me! January 24, 2013 photos by South Beach Hoosier.© 2013 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.



Below is a copy of my email this afternoon to Hallandale Beach's two reps on the Broward County Commission, Sue Gunzburger and Barbara Sharief, about the independent Broward Office of Inspector General relative to an issue that I've previously mentioned here on the blog and in numerous emails around the area, almost of which have elicited the same perplexed and unhappy reaction among concerned citizens upon first learning of it.
The email speaks for itself.

I should mention here that as of 8:00 p.m. tonight, in advance of Tuesday's important County Commission meeting in Fort Lauderdale with an agenda item re an audit of the HB CRA by the County Auditor's office, Comm. Sharief has not publicly made her opinion known, while Comm. Gunzburger has made clear to everyone that she is going to fight very hard for it.
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/05/broward-auditor-looks-at-hallandale-beach-cra-with-eye-toward-recovering-misspent-funds/

I sincerely hope that Comm. Sharief will show the same good judgement and pro-citizen sentiment that she's consistently shown the past few years on many issues, including the controversial red-light camera issue, where she has been one of the very few bright spots among all of Broward's pols, city officials and public policy pundits. 

Comm. Sharief has been a consistent opponent of the overwhelmingly pro-RLC County Commission and Broward Legislative Delegation's knee-jerk votes on this issue, the very same people who have been so VERY quiet the past few weeks about the #shortyellow issue in Florida, where the Florida Dept. of Transportation lowered the required length of the yellow traffic light below the Federal standard of 4.5 seconds, without contacting the Florida Legislature and its leadership, in order to capture more cars on camera and generate more revenue for Florida cities.

That's entirely in keeping with the long-time strategy of the taxpayer-supported Florida League of Cities, many of whose individual members received considerable campaign contributions last year from the companies engaged in this so-called service, which is exactly what happened here in Hallandale Beach.

As you regular readers of the blog will recall, Arizona-based  American Traffic Solutions and Mayor Joy Cooper have become the best of friends the past few years after she and the City Commission forced this on city residents a years ago despite their consistent opposition, in order to generate more funds for the city.

The mayor received thousands of dollars in campaign funds from ATS after writing a pro-RLC essay in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and it's largely because of her that Hallandale Beach has became so infamous around the state on this issue.

While I'm hoping for the best since it seems like such an obvious thing to vote YES given the damning IG report on the HB CRA, personally, I believe that a vote against an audit by Comm. Sharief on Tuesday would do long-lasting damage to her public standing in Hallandale Beach, especially among its more well-informed and most-concerned residents, all of whom are super-voters.

But its her vote, so she's going to do whatever she's going to do, and if she votes NO, she will have to live with the resulting negative consequences.

-----
Given the longstanding mismanagement and corruption involving millions of dollars at the HB CRA, why has Broward IG's Office refused to hold a single public outreach mtg. with citizens in Hallandale Beach, while meeting with other Broward groups?


May 31, 2013
3:30 p.m.

RE: Given the longstanding mismanagement and corruption involving millions of dollars at the HB CRA, why has Broward IG's Office refused to hold a single public outreach mtg. with citizens in Hallandale Beach, while meeting with other Broward groups that were NOT directly affected?


Dear Commissioners Gunzburger and Sharief:

Since the question of whether or not the Broward County Commission should authorize the Office of Broward County Auditor Evan Lukic to perform a thorough audit of the Hallandale Beach Beach CRA will be coming-up at Tuesday's meeting, given the city's longstanding failure 
to have normal and effective operating quality controls over millions of dollars in place, or even pretend to have actual public accountability and thorough follow-up to ensure that  public funds were spent for their intended if ill-founded purposes, a motion that I support 100%, due to the HB City Commission/CRA Board's longstanding refusal to have a thorough audit of the entire HB CRA, i.e themselves, I'd like to bring to your  attention a related issue involving the Office of the Broward Inspector General.

Since The Commission authorized the creation of that Office a few years ago, you won't be surprised to hear that it has held several public meetings with various civic groups, affinity and social groups throughout Broward County to get their "message" out.
It's actually entirely what you'd expect.

Included among those meetings was one that was hosted in late January by the Broward League of Women Voters in Coconut Creek featuring IG John W. Scott.
I and four other very-concerned Hallandale Beach citizens actually attended that get-together at a condominium, despite its lack of proximity to HB.

But despite my personally having provided the IG's Office with a LOT of verifiable information regarding unethical and illegal conduct and behavior involving individuals in this community, esp. regarding the HB CRA, and Mr. Scott's own publicly declarations that he believes getting his office's message out is an important function -and it being brought-up at that very meeting- his office have refused to hold a single public community meeting with citizens of Hallandale Beach since his office initiated its investigation of the City of Hallandale Beach involving its missing-in-action supervision under former HB City Managers Mike Good and Mark A. Antonio involving so much mis-spent millions and missing documents, to say nothing of the missing professionalism HB taxpayers had a reasonable right to expect but never receivedDespite the fact that this city's residents and taxpayers have been personally affected by what has happened.

I have personally written to Mr. Scott on several occasions and have brought up the issues of his Office showing some good faith to this community by actually following-up on his OWN public declarations and do so for all of the most-obvious reasons.
That includes a written request to him over a week ago, yet his office has been completely, and rather curiously, non-responsive on this matter.

I strongly urge the two of you as representatives on the County Commission of this community's beleaguered citizens to contact the IG's office and remind them that they have a logical AND moral duty to speak directly and publicly with the citizens of this directly-affected city.
A duty that is at least as strong as it is to all of the many Broward groups that the IG's Office has already spoken to that are NOT directly affected at all.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Unexpected good news for supporters of Beam Furr's candidacy -look at all the "Usual Suspects" of Broward endorsing feckless, ineffectual, business-as-usual Joe Gibbons for County Commission. Gibbons, the pol who STILL can't answer basic questions about his real job, where he lives and why his life is SO VERY complicated, with a straight face. His job, his wife and his kids are ALL located elsewhere, so are the only things keeping him in Broward his own ego and ambition? How did such a mediocre pol get such lofty ideas about himself? Now THERE'S a question!; same as for Alexander Lewy now that you mention it

A week before some of us concerned citizens in Hallandale Beach were seeking to appeal to the Broward County Commission's good judgment, and direct them to have County Auditor Evan Lukic's office perform a thorough top-to-bottom audit of the Hallandale Beach CRA so we can all see just where the tens of millions of CRA dollars really went over the past few years, since it's clear there are too many missing documents, unanswered questions and outright lies and disinformation from current and former elected officials and administrators, we were once again reminded of how very poor that judgment of their's so often is.

Broward Bulldog
Broward Auditor looks at Hallandale Beach CRA with eye toward recovering misspent funds
By William Gjebre, BrowardBulldog.org 
May 13, 2013 AT 6:08 AM
http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/05/broward-auditor-looks-at-hallandale-beach-cra-with-eye-toward-recovering-misspent-funds/

My post on this of last week:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/mark-your-calendar-for-june-4th-latest.html

That friendly reminder comes courtesy of Tuesday's Broward Politics blog and a piece by Brittany Wallman detailing that four members of the current Broward Commission are foolishly supporting undistinguished no-account Joe Gibbons over Beam Furr in the 2014 race to replace incumbent and term-limited District 6 member Sue Gunzburger, who, months ago  endorsed moderate, Good Government-type Furr, the former Hollywood City Commissioner whose district  was just north of HB and Pembroke Road and west of U.S.-1, and which is currently held by Peter Hernandez.


South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Broward Politics blog
County Commission wants Gibbons elected
By Brittany Wallman
1:38 p.m. EDT, May 28, 2013
Read the post at 
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/broward-politics-blog/sfl-county-commission-wants-gibbons-elected-20130528,0,3207643.story

In my own personal estimation, Beam Furr is someone whose quality character, serious work ethic and problem-solving personality is much more-attuned to the genuine concerns of southeast Broward's most-concerned residents than the disingenuous and unproductive Gibbons, who spends so much time away from the area, and whose actual "residency" as such is more implied and assumed than ever proven to a reasonable degree that would satisfy people who know the true facts.


But then given how very reluctant the local South Florida news media and local law enforcement officials have been to take a public stand against Joe Gibbons and similarly situated elected officials in South Florida, and FOR the letter and spirit of the actual laws of the state -with the exception Bob Norman of Channel 10 and his wife Brittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel- versus the wink-and-a-nod approach long taken towards ethics and rules by the leaders and foot soldiers of Broward  Democratic Party chief Mitch Caeser's team, it's no wonder that so few Broward residents know the true facts about Gibbons, despite how many years he has been engaging in this strange tale of his and I've been writing about it.


BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes
House Pro Tem Investigated for Homestead Fraud
By Bob Norman
November 15 2010 at 10:15 AM
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/11/joe_gibbons_investigated_homestead_fraud.php

County Commission candidate's ties to Broward questioned
Gibbons' wife, young kids live elsewhere
By Brittany Wallman, Sun Sentinel
April 12, 2013
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-04-12/news/fl-joe-gibbons-homestead-20130406_1_joe-gibbons-homestead-exemption-d-hallandale-beach

State attorney probed Gibbons' campaign funds 
By Brittany Wallman
11:14 a.m. EDT, April 15, 2013, 
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-04-15/news/sfl-state-attorney-probed-gibbons-campaign-spending-20130415_1_joe-gibbons-sloppy-bookkeeping-memo

To add to the list of media and law enforcement's failed opportunities you could also add the general weakness and the dog-chasing-its-tail fecklessness of Broward County Republicans, and their inability or unwillingness to go after all the low-hanging fruit.
Their failure to mount a smart and fact-based civic offensive against Gibbons and others in the Broward Dem Party's leadership with gaping holes in their claims to meeting state residency requirements.

A real professional media campaign  that tears off the thin facade Gibbons and others have used as a shield for years, with facts that can not be disproved or labeled mere allegations.
Some things are either true or they're not, and when you know that people are engaging in a public charade, you don't do the public any favors by tolerating people in your midst who are breaking the spirit and letter of the rules and laws, no matter how much it might embarrass the guilty parties. 

In case you doubt me on this...
Los Angeles Times
Indiana secretary of state convicted of voter fraud
February 4, 2012  1:17 pm

As If I haven't already mentioned this subject a hundred times before here in this space -or is it more than a hundred?- when it comes to Gibbons and his ever-changing narrative, alibis, excuses and rationales that are contrary to how 99.9% of the people in this county live their life.

Joe Gibbons is NOT a professional athlete, an airline pilot, an FBI agent or a Navy SEAL, all people who spend lots of time away from their homes and their families, yet for some unexplained reason, nobody in South Florida's enormous press corps has ever simply walked-up to Gibbons with a microphone and asks him how come he can't either get a job in South Florida, instead of with a law firm in Tallahassee, or, doesn't simply resign and actually get a job where his wife and children live.
Imagine that! 

Really, as if I needed even more reasons to be supportive of Beam Furr's candidacy!

Today's piece by Wallman contains a list of Broward's "Ususal Suspects" -below- who are sponsors of an upcoming Joe Gibbons fundraiser, and it's not just that it's composed of 4 of members of the current County Commission, but also includes some of Gibbons' quite unremarkable and under-performing friends from the legislature representing Broward.

People who are without any tangible accomplishment other than showing a real knack for whining and complaining instead of generating genuine good ideas for citizens and businesses that are actually popular with Florida taxpayers and their colleagues in Tallahassee which will improve the area's Quality of Life.
It's not just salaries that have been stagnant in South Florida the past 25 years, it's the Quality-of-Life.

Of course, the fact that these pols really DON'T see how their public endorsement of oleaginous  Gibbons is a BIG PLUS for Furr among people who want real public accountability instead of more of the usual politics-as-usual that causes Broward to remain so mediocre in so many ways, is pretty funny to me and many of my friends.

Frankly, we only wish this exact same crew of characters would have a fundraiser for Gibbons every month until the August 2014 primary, because then it'd give voters and the news media plenty of opportunities over the next 14 months to ask them just what it is, exactly, that Gibbons is so adept or masterful at that would make him a good County Commissioner?

I ask because nobody-but-nobody sings his praises as a hard worker or public speaker or behind-the-scenes font of knowledge who makes logical arguments that sway opponents.
Not even other Broward Democrats who know him would say that with a straight face, so, what explains this great fascination to publicly endorse such an under-performing person before he's said even one thing publicly about what he thinks he could do at the Commission that others couldn't?
Now THERE'S a real good question the news media ought to be asking him and his pals!

The names on that list made public by the Sun-Sentinel's Wallman are precisely why I wrote here weeks ago -and told some of you in-person weeks before that- that my intuition was that state Senator Jeremy Ring of northern Broward County, a Democrat who's very respected by Republicans in Tallahassee, would likely play much more of a role in getting that long-overdue audit of the corrupt, incompetent HB CRA that we are owed -and which HB Mayor Joy Cooper has been so adamant about NOT allowingthan most people thought.

That Cooper opposes a thorough audit of the HB CRA is quite understandable when you know that the facts that come out of it will inevitably reflect very negatively on her and her personal neglect and culpability while she has been mayor for the past ten years and was supposed to be looking-out for residents, not taking advantage of them.

As well the facts would, given that Cooper was driving the CRA for so long to do the very things it did, however unsavory it appeared to Good Government types like me or my friends in SE Broward.
She didn't care about that, she cared about getting what she wanted and what helped her politically. Period.

That the Gibbons fundraiser is -surprise- NOT being held within his own state House District -nothing for you HB, West Park, Pembroke Park and Miramar! is par for the course.
Yes, just like his last state House race had its mailing address outside of the district.

Here are the names again for the record: Broward School Board District 2 member Patricia Good; Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis and Commissioner Iris Siple; Broward County Commissioners Dale Holness, Martin Kiar, Stacy Ritter and Lois Wexler; state Reps Jim Waldman and Perry Thurston. 

What is it about NOT representing this area except in the legislature that animates this strange character named Gibbons, since it's clearly NOT about making the community better?

But then I could say the same thing about the person whom fundraiser sponsor and Comm. Marty Kiar most resembles politically around HB, City Comm. Alexander Lewy, aka Lewy the Liar, who is running to replace Gibbons in state House 100 next year.

(Of course, quite a lot of pro-reform people I know in HB say 'good riddance' however you can rid this town of Lewy and the strange tenets of Lewyism, like the urge to always create a bigger government job corps, but me, well, I think of the genuine harm he could do up in Tallahassee while exerting no real power, while simultaneously getting an even more swelled head and high opinion of himself, despite having never really done any heavy lifting of any kind, since I really don't like to reward that sort of thing. Me, I'm looking quite forward to voting against Lewy next year.)

Seeing Kiar's name on this list of back-slappers is absolutely no surprise, since he shares a lot of the worst aspects and elements of the mentality and ideology of Lewy -which is to say that he's 99.9% ego & ambition, .01% sincerity.
Like Lewy, he's not just shallow like the shallow end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, he's shallow like a store-bought pool that has no depth of any kind.

All these many months later and the public has still never been told by the South Florida news media how Kiar explains how it came to be that the Broward County Commission districts were redrawn in such a way that the only precinct in Kiar's hometown of Davie that made it into District 1, Comm. Ilene Lieberman's old district, was, yes, Kiar's.
What a small world!!!

The small convenient world of Broward politics-as-usual where people with power have favors done for them behind-the-scenes by other people with power, and the public is never the wiser -and the press corps just keeps snoozing the afternoon away.

I mentioned this fact twice last year on the blog and have referenced it a few times in emails, all while the two local newspapers and TV stations made almost no effort to find out the answer.

May 2, 2012
When, if ever, is the sleepwalking South Florida news media going to demand that Broward County Comm. candidate Marty Kiar publicly answer questions about how his one precinct in Davie was the one placed in District 1? The silence on this matter is positively deafening, but the questions WON'T go away

May 9, 2012
The curious case of Broward County Comm. candidate Marty Kiar's Tweets, which, for me, are more revealing for what they DON'T say


Oh, and since you would not have read this elsewhere, Gibbons-supporter Kiar missed that first 911 County Commission meeting last month that everyone in the news media said was so damn urgent.
Never mentioned was why Kiar was missing on what was expected to be a close vote and naturally, South Florida's news media cooperated by never bothering to ask him.
Guess it wasn't so urgent after all.

Noticeable by his absence on this party list is Broward Comm. Tim Ryan, which is a good thing from my perspective, since he's someone I've long admired since returning to South Florida from the Washington, D.C. where I lived and worked for 15 years.
Ryan is such a scrupulously ethical and big idea guy, and someone who actually got meaningful ethics legislation passed while he was in the state legislature, unlike Joe Gibbons, Steve Geller and Eleanor Sobel, all of whom have been under-performers for Hallandale Beach residents in so many different areas that I can't even let myself get sidetracked by mentioning them all here.

There's still lots of interesting things yet to emerge publicly about Joe Gibbonsand I know some of them myself.
Reasonable questions and facts that will cause people with open minds to question his credibility and basic honesty, especially not just his odd "arrangement" with his wife and children who don't live with him, but what he actually did/does for HER former business and the true level of his involvement with it.
There's much more there than you have heard or read thus far, if you just know where to look.
I do.

In the end, the main reason for the beleaguered residents of Hallandale Beach to be against Gibbons is the simplest one: he's NEVER been a very good or even reliable representative for this community's best long-term interests.

While it's never been reported publicly in the two newspapers or on TV, anyone who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention to what goes on in this community -or been reading this blog- knows that Joe Gibbons has NEVER been helpful to the residents of this city who want genuine reform, meaningful transparency and public accountability at HB City Hall.

Joe Gibbons has been totally AWOL for years, whether it was the case of the unpopular and incompatible Diplomat LAC project championed by Mayor Cooper that was eventually defeated by the County Commission, the longstanding HB CRA corruption, or even the red-light cameras and how they came to be introduced into this community by Mayor Cooper as a revenue-generator, not a tool for public safety, and placed on streets that were not where they were most-needed.

Joe Gibbons has had plenty of opportunities to do the right thing and he has always done nothing.
Why would you think he'd be any different in representing you as a Broward County Commissioner?

We DON'T want a do-nothing County Commissioner who just goes along with whatever the dominant political establishment wants, like so many pols in South Florida.
No thanks! 

Gibbons showing-up on Election Day at the HB Cultural Center doesn't make up for all that, esp. if you saw the crowd of misfits that he hung with while there. 
Not surprisingly, it was the very defenders and architects of the mess at the CRA, the people who always have their hand out for CRA and taxpayer money, not the people in this community who want the WHOLE TRUTH and nothing but the truth.
Again, as if I needed more reasons to be supportive of Beam Furr.

Depending upon my schedule in June, I might even swing by the Gibbons fundraising event in Fort Lauderdale in a few weeks and park myself outside the restaurant and take photos of all the local pols and bundlers going inside to tell this useless elected official how great he is, and place it here on my blog for all to see.

You're more than welcome to join me!

-----
Given how much I wrote about this recently here on the blog, I suppose I should remind you readers that All Aboard Florida is having their after-the-fact scoping meeting Wednesday afternoon in Fort Lauderdale.

But because there will be no presentation of any kind, just handouts and perhaps a video running somewhere on a screen, plus, no doubt, some attractive female PR types to chat everyone up, to me, it looks to have all the hallmarks of walking into a room where everyone there wants there you to either sign-up for a new cell phone provider or a new credit card -an immediate U-Turn for me.

Which is to say that I won't be going due to the lack of real information and feedback, and instead, will be going to Hollywood City Hall for their important joint CRA/City Comm. mtg,
on Margaritaville at 5 p.m.