A City Commissioner's Criminal Circus, and The Choice Confronting Her
I wish that a grad student somewhere would decide to do an exhaustive
study of a poor ethics environment. Broward County, Florida would not
be a bad choice as the subject of her research.<br>
<br>
According to <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/13/v-fullstory/2166137/longtime-deer…; target="”_blank”">an
article in the Miami <i>Herald</i> this week</a>, a Deerfield Beach
commissioner, formerly mayor and formerly a Broward County
commissioner, is the 17th official in this southern Florida county to be indicted on
ethics charges in the last five years. Only last month, <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/rotten-crop-oranges-tamarac-florida&q…; target="”_blank”">I
wrote about the 16th</a>, the mayor of Tamarac, a city with its own
rotten crop of oranges.<br>
<br>
<b>A Criminal Circus</b><br>
Considering that a local <a href="http://www.myactsofsedition.com/" target="”_blank”">gadfly-blogger
named Chaz Stevens</a> filed a complaint against the Deerfield Beach
commissioner in June 2009 and has been going after her ever since, it must
have taken a great effort to bring charges against the other sixteen
officials in the county. There must be many more officials whose
antagonists have not yet been successful.<br>
<br>
But more to the point, the difficulty of bringing charges points
to two problems. One is that other officials are doing little or
nothing to create a good ethics environment. Loyalty is apparently more
important than ethics.<br>
<br>
Two is the very fact that the commissioner was criminally indicted.
It's difficult, expensive, and excessive to have an official indicted
on charges of not disclosing a conflict, so that she is forced to
surrender herself at the county jail, and have an ethics matter turned
into a circus.<br>
<br>
And in Florida the circus has a ringmaster, the governor. This time,
the ringmaster threw the act out of the tent, that is, he suspended the
commissioner from office.<br>
<br>
What this does is heighten the loyalty (who wants to turn another
official into a criminal), heighten the feelings of discrimination (the
commissioner is African-American, the governor white), and heighten the
partisan tensions (the commissioner is a Democrat, the governor a
Republican). How is this going to increase the public's trust in local
government?<br>
<br>
<b>A History of Questionable Behavior</b><br>
<a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/16/2171161/deerfield-beachs-poitier-…; target="”_blank”">A
column by Fred Grimm in Saturday's <i>Herald</i></a> sets out the long history
of the commissioner's ethics problems, which at one point were enough
to prevent her re-election to county office. It's a sad story that is, sadly, not
nearly atypical enough. It started with the use of city stationery for
personal business purposes, and moved on to unauthorized junkets, a
phantom campaign worker, an undisclosed conflict that might have led to
criminal charges had a <i>Herald</i> reporter not forced disclosure, approval
of an overpriced land purchase, and involvement with free tickets and
missing funds at local festivals.<br>
<br>
And then the commissioner apparently turned a local business
association into a family affair. First, she worked for it and arranged
for a sizeable loan to the association from her brother. Now her
daughter is the association's president. The commissioner allegedly did
not disclose these conflicts and voted on matters involving the
association, including a grant that would have helped pay back her
brother.<br>
<br>
She doesn't seem to be a criminal. But she does seem to be an
individual who does not separate the personal from the public. She
seems to be a popular community leader and, at least at the local as
opposed to county level, what she has done hasn't hurt her reputation.
The indictment probably came as a big shock.<br>
<br>
<b>Commissioner's Choice</b><br>
Her attorney says she's going to fight the charges. Assuming the truth
of her relationship with the business association, she shouldn't. If
she really wants to be a good community leader and leave a lasting
impression on the community, beyond all she's done for it as an
official and otherwise, she should use this occasion as a chance to
tell her community the whole story about her personal use of her public
office, and use that story to help change the way officials handle the
relationship between their public role and their personal and business
roles.<br>
<br>
Or she can cost the community many thousands of dollars trying to clear
a name that will get murkier and murkier as the news media rake through
the history of her misconduct.<br>
<br>
This is the moment when she has to decide whether to cap her long
public service with a grand gesture or a tough fight.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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