Monday, May 3, 2010

On Tuesday afternoon, Broward County Commissioners will meet ethics reform up-close and personal. But will they swallow it or just complain?

What does this patched-up hole in this wall of a Broward County government building on Andrews Avenue and Broward Blvd. -one block due north of the Broward Govt. Center- the same building with this filthy exterior on the Andrews Avenue side, below, have in common with transparency and ethics?
Think about it for a minute.

Back on March 12th, these were the subject of my post titled Errant driver's crash highlights Broward's embarrassing neglect of property; give that driver an award!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/errant-drivers-crash-highlights.html

Both photos taken April 27th, 2010 by South Beach Hoosier

What they both have in common is that it is self-evident that there is a problem and yet the very people who are supposed to do something about it, the County Commissioners and Broward Administrator Bertha Henry, have not done very much about it.

They've tried to cover it up in spots, like a bad doctor who treats a patient's symptoms instead of the actual underlying causes, but when you are up-close to the problem, it makes you pretty angry that it is not being fixed in a way that is either logical or promptly, but rather with an obvious half-assed band-aid, which is what this plywood really is.

Sure, just keep ignoring the cracks in the wall surrounding it and pretend that nothing bad will happen!
In this case, the loopholes in the ethics proposals.

Per an email I received Sunday from my friend and longtime Broward civic activist,
Charlotte Greenbarg, President of the Broward Coalition, there's going to be a workshop tomorrow that you may want to take note of, which, as of now, I fully expect to be at. http://www.browardcoalition.org/

Broward County Commission Ethics Workshop,

Broward County Government Center, Room 430,

115 S. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale,
Tuesday, May 4 12:30-2:30 p.m.

Park in garage to the west of the Government Center, take your ticket to the receptionist in the Commission office to be validated, so you
don’t have to pay.

This issue is one that Comm. Sue Gunzburger has been championing for quite some time.

In case you missed it the first time around, see
Buddy Nevins' excellent post from February 23rd titled Commissioners Loving Ethics Reform To Death, that keenly noted the overt and hidden dynamics and politics behind something as simple as bringing stricter ethics and transparency to Broward County government:
http://www.browardbeat.com/commissioners-loving-ethics-reform-to-death/

His predicate for that post was this one :
http://www.browardbeat.com/gunzburgers-ethics-reform-has-political-undertone/

I wasn't feeling so great over the weekend, so I didn't post the video that I shot of Friday morning's Special Meeting(!), all 121 seconds of it, to my YouTube page. http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

I fully expect it'll be up by Tuesday morning, along with some other videos I've shot the past few weeks.