Showing posts with label Financial Disclosure Forms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Financial Disclosure Forms. Show all posts

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Some informed perspective on the City of Miami from Al Crespo of The Crespogram, and what's behind his ethics complaint against Comm. Ken Russell

May 26, 2016

Many if not most of you from previous emails and my blog posts that I have cheered many of the reforms that new City of Miami Commissioner Ken Russell has called for and pushed since he got into office.
In District 2, he replaced ethically-challenged Marc Sarnoff, himself a one-time reformer who, predictably, like so many other "reform" candidates in South Florida I could name who got elected, eventually went the way of the "Dark Side," with a CRA playing a co-starring role.

I've applauded Russell's efforts to infuse more genuine transparency and a sense of accountability in the way Miami govt. works and its employees actually do their jobs and interact with citizens, long a very sore point with taxpayers and South Florida observers with any sense of history.
That change in attitude has been especially noteworthy with respect to his positive votes and public comments regarding the City of Miami's sports authorities, and specifically, that it's the public and taxpayers to whom they will faithfully strive to best serve now, not the powerful, deep-pocked private interests that routinely seek to gain their favor.

Things were out of whack there for a LONG TIME, which explains a lot about why the local sports scene is the way it is. 
Screwed-up but good.

Here's what I wrote about Comm. Russell and this matter on February 28, 2016, in a blog post titled, 
After DECADES of #SoFL sports fans & taxpayers getting the shaft, City of Miami Comm. Ken Russell demands MORE reform, transparency and oversight over #SoFL's crony-laden sports Establishment: Is #Broward next? Let's hope so for taxpayers' wallets and sports fans' best long-term interests, after YEARS of Broward Commission caving-in to powerful special interests -read Florida Panthers!

Still, all that said, since I returned to South Florida from DC, I've come to know from experience and results that Al Crespo is someone who is not just a very savvy and well-informed person, a true South Florida resource, but also someone who takes public accountability of public officials and old-fashioned notions of civic engagement as seriously as I do.
There aren't a lot of us.

Plus, like me, he truly appreciates elected officials and govt. employees who are willing to honestly engage with the public, to to do the hard work necessary to be properly prepared before meetings start to actually demonstrate some oversight, not just faking it, and using staff as a crutch.

I hardly need remind most of you that has been a longstanding problem in Hallandale Beach, and South Florida in general. 
Everyone wants to glad-hand, but far fewer people want to stay up late reading binders and trying to master often obtuse material. You know, to properly do the job they ran for?

Certainly Al Crespo is in a far better position to know what's really going at Dinner Key and environs, and at the Miami CRAs, than I am, so I'm sharing a recent column of his with you today, below, so that you can read it and gain something from his perspective on what's what.





http://www.crespogram.com/index_public_html/THE_THRILL_IS_GONE_-_MY_ETHICS_COMPLAINT_AGAINST_COMMISSIONER_RUSSELL.html

An ethics complaint filed against Commissioner Ken Russell for a failure to provide a public document.

For the record, I follow both Al Crespo and Comm. Russell on Twitter, and they follow me as well.

This story about disclosures and the need for them to be both timely and accurate, not surprisingly, reminds me of yet another Hallandale Beach City Hall ethics story, where, typically, Mayor Joy Cooper, exercising power and discretion she did not actually have, seems to have decided that she alone got to decide who got what gifts and freebies deposited upon City Hall 
by contractors and lobbyists, or, if food or drink, who got what portion of them -or the best quality.

As IF anyone who has any experience with HB City Hall and the people who run it could ever have any faith that any FORM 9's filed would be either accurate or timely!

This in a city like Hallandale Beach where a city commissioner like Anthony A. Sanders voted to have the city/CRA buy his property -for more than it was worth- despite the fact that: 
a.) the city had no written or commission-approved plans as to what they would do with the property once they took possession of it, and
b.) Sanders didn't have the good sense or ethical duty to recuse himself from voting on the issue.

(Not that local South Florida newspaper Editorial Boards have ever asked about these matters that Sanders still can't explain years later!)

Not that the go-along-to-get-along City Attorney at the time, David Jove, even thought to publicly suggest Sanders' recusal -he didn't!
Surprise!

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Broward County Ethics in Action! Sometimes the gravy train of cronyism leads you and your family to a yacht vacation to The Bahamas; Local10 investigative reporter Bob Norman asks Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel to answer questions about his family's yacht vacation after the Sheriff claimed paying $1,500 settled the matter. But websites say the value of that yacht trip is MUCH MORE!; @CityEthics

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player


Local10 News video: Broward Sheriff Scott Israel won't talk about yacht vacation
Sheriff didn't disclose vacation, claims $1,500 footed bill
Bob Norman, Reporter, bnorman@Local10.com
Published On: Jul 23 2013 05:35:26 PM EDT   
Updated On: Jul 23 2013 11:00:00 PM EDT
http://www.local10.com/news/broward-sheriff-scott-israel-wont-talk-about-yacht-vacation/-/1717324/21129710/-/im030b/-/index.html

I love a good story as well as the next person, more than most, actually, but that said, there's no way that five days on a top-of-the-line yacht for Scott Israel, his wife and three kids to The Bahamas cost Broward's Sheriff less than twice the cost for me -alone- staying at a very nice B&B -with absolutely delicious breakfast but without elevators to my 3rd-floor room- for four days in the Södermalm neighborhood of expensive Stockholm.
In January, the coldest month of the year, and, yes, definitely off-season!
Just saying...

A well-informed friend writes me that after watching this video and thinking about the high level of endemic corruption and longstanding culture of wink-wink back-scratching attitudes among elected officials and their bankrolling friends here in Broward already, the most-corrupt county in the country's fourth-largest state, their sad prediction is that Sheriff Israel will be making a lot of headlines in the coming years for all the wrong reasons.
I tend to agree, absent something big happening in the next year that causes his judgement to fundamentally get better.

I sent an email with most of this info to lots of people throughout the state to get their take on it, as well as to blogger Robert Wechsler of cityethics.org up in Connecticut, hoping that he will consider giving this matter that at first blush fails the smell test, his usual careful ethical scrutiny and give it the column inches it deserves, which he has given other Florida ethical situations, including a few I first alerted him to.

Check out his blog on the website at: http://www.cityethics.org/Blog-RobWechsler

Robert's blog posts re Broward County: http://www.cityethics.org/search/node/Broward

The City Ethics Twitter feed of @CityEthics is at https://twitter.com/CityEthics

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

ProPublica: Check Out the Obama Team’s Financial Filings

Great very interesting news today from the fine folks at
ProPublica.com, Journalism in the Public Interest:
financial disclosure information on the Best and Brightest
of 44.
H-m-m-m...

I wonder how City of Miami mayor Manny Diaz would've
explained that whole curious restaurant deal of his on
these forms if he'd been named to the Obama Administration,
as the Herald kept suggesting for months?
Guess we'll never know now.
And good thing, too!

The idea of a mayor who governs a sleepwalking downtown
and a city without even one general interest bookstore,
being someone in charge of Urban Affairs, was laughable on
its face, and would've likely have been the most laugh-filled
congressional confirmation hearing in years.
At least since Sally Adams was confirmed as U.S.
Ambassador to Lichtenburg.
And we all recall how that ended, don't we?

The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce really dodged
a PR bullet with Diaz being over-looked!
----------------------------
http://www.propublica.org/article/check-out-the-obama-teams-financial-filings-408

Check Out the Obama Team’s Financial Filings

by Christopher Weaver, ProPublica - April 8, 2009 1:30 pm EDT

Alex Wong/Getty Images
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Administration officials and high-ranking executive branch employees are required to disclose the intimate details of their financial lives. The disclosures made include stock holdings, previous salaries and even book deals, such as Assistant Treasury Secretary Alan Krueger's advance of at least $180,000 (plus royalties) from MacMillan, the publisher of his textbook, "Explorations in Economics." ProPublica is collecting these disclosures, and today, we're sharing what we've got.

We've flipped through the disclosures of 179 officials, ranging from the White House social secretary to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the documents are rich with interesting details. Help us parse the disclosures and post your discoveries in the comments section below.

Here's an example of what we've found so far: On paper, Susan Rice looks like she belongs at the Treasury, rather than the State Department. The new United Nations ambassador's disclosure lists 10 individual stock holdings, largely in Canadian companies, that total at least $4.25 million.

The disclosures are a matter of public record. But the government insists on giving them out by request only. We’re cutting out the middleman: Dig into the documents yourself.

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Last link above is at: http://www.propublica.org/special/the-obama-teams-disclosure-documents-407