Comparing and contrasting Fort Lauderdale with Hallandale Beach

The Sun-Sentinel's Broward Politics blog had this interesting post yesterday afternoon by Brittany Wallman about Fort Lauderdale Comm. Carlton Moore and the controversy about whether or not he should be allowed to vote on his successor next week.

To which I responded with... well, at least tried to.

But as has been the case so many times in the past, the comments wouldn't go through as written, despite doing everything I was prompted to do.

"Oh well, I don't really need their website to comment do I" he said with a laugh.
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Broward Politics blog
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
New Fort Lauderdale commissioner will be appointed Tuesday
Posted by Brittany Wallman at 4:15 PM

Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Carlton Moore will be replaced Tuesday, Nov. 4, the day his resignation takes effect. He has served on the City Commission since 1988.
Commissioners in June agreed to let Moore have a vote on who will replace him. The interim commissioner who is selected will stay until the city elections in the spring.
But Mayor Jim Naugle apparently has changed his mind. He said at the Oct. 21 meeting that Moore shouldn't be allowed to vote on the matter.
Read the rest of the post at: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2008/10/new_fort_lauderdale_commission.html


This story has a lot of resonance for me.

Unfortunately, the City of Fort Lauderdale CAN'T beat the current Broward record of voting for an interim Commissioner less than fifteen minutes after a resignation is announced, currently held by the City Of Hallandale Beach, set on August 5th.

Another big difference is that FTL will be voting for the replacement the day the resignation of Comm. Moore is official, while the City of HB voted for Comm. Fran Schiller's replacement, Anthony A. Sanders, less than fifteen minutes after news of the resignation was made public.


This quick un-publicized vote came at Mayor Joy Cooper's insistence, despite there being well OVER three weeks before Comm. Schiller's resignation would become official.


In fact, there was still another regularly-scheduled HB City Commission meeting BEFORE the Schiller resignation would be official.

But a publicly scheduled meeting with proper advance notice given, where the citizens of HB could gather and publicly discuss the matter, likely in front of local TV news cameras, was NOT at all what Mayor Joy Cooper wanted.

So the vote went ahead -with Comm. Schiller NOT voting on her successor- but with Comm. Dotty Ross voting for Pastor Sanders despite publicly saying that she knew almost nothing about him, even remarking that he hadn't so much as filled out a form that she could look at.

See for yourself at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2063633124352034112

That's just a small example of the difference between how the Cities of Fort Lauderdale and Hallandale Beach practice democracy in the year 2008!