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A Rotten Crop of Oranges in Tamarac, Florida
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
I talk a lot about poor ethics environments, probably the single most
important element in unethical conduct. But since loyalty is the
strongest force in such environments, a great deal of work is done to
hide the existence of poor ethics environments. After unethical conduct
is discovered, it is rare for anyone to set out just how bad things
were.
But sometimes things are so bad, it becomes clear that there aren't just a couple of bad apples, but a whole bad crop. Tamarac, Florida, a city of 60,000 in Broward County (home of Ft. Lauderdale) is such a place. In fact, southern Florida itself seems to have been one big rotten crop of oranges, at least during the boom years.
According to Michael Mayo's column in yesterday's Sun-Sentinel, four out of five Tamarac commissioners from the crop of 2006 have been arrested. In just the past year, three Tamarac politicians have been arrested. Yesterday it was the turn of the mayor, on counts of unlawful compensation, bribery, and official misconduct (the warrant and affidavit to arrest are attached; see below).
She is accused of having indirectly taken money from a developer to fund attacks on her campaign opponents, and then very soon after voting on a matter involving the developer. The same developer was implicated in the arrests of the three other Tamarac politicians arrested in the past year.
Getting Around Government Ethics Laws
Mayo calls the scheme, which involved a 527 political committee, "convoluted," but this is what people do to get around the laws. No, let me phrase this more accurately: This is what lawyers do to get around the laws. That is, their special kind of cleverness is required to do things that may be legal on their face, but are clearly unethical.
As is so often said, laws cannot stop unethical conduct, only make unethical conduct more complex, providing more work to clever attorneys. What is less important about this is that it is hard to enforce laws. What is more important is that officials are less likely to accidentally participate in unethical conduct, and those who do things like this clearly have made a serious effort to help themselves at the expense of the public. They may plead non-illegality, but everyone knows the official and her colleagues were scheming something awful.
It's not worth going into the details. You can read them in two columns of Bob Norman's Pulp, yesterday and today, and in Buddy Nevins' Broward Beat column, as well as in the attached affidavit to arrest.
The Players
But it is worth listing the people involved in this relatively small matter, recognizing that when officials are arrested for one such matter, it is usually only the tip of the iceberg. Rarely does anyone put together one scheme like this, and then call it a day.
Besides the father-and-son developers, there is a county commissioner who mentored the mayor, a campaign manager who was hired last year by the county commissioner, two lobbyists, one of them a prominent financial figure in national campaigns, another local mayor, a political firm that produced attack mailers, two development subcontractors who helped hide the source of the funds, a 527 political committee created to do the dirty work, and a party "operative" who helped put the 527 committee together.
These schemes are not the work of lone wolves. Many people are involved, and any one of them could have stopped the whole thing. But this all occurred in 2006, and back then no one thought they would be caught. And why else would someone think of putting a wrench in the works?
The Conflict
According to the affidavit, the county commissioner told the mayor-elect (still a city commissioner) that she had a voting conflict because the developers had made such a large contribution to the 527 committee, and there was a vote on their project eight days after the election. The mayor-elect said that she was still going to vote "because she had made a commitment."
And there's the rub. Yes, she did have a commitment. The problem is that she had two commitments, and they were in conflict. But the only commitment she recognized was the one to the people who had given her money, not to the people who had elected her as city commissioner and as mayor. All she had to do was recognize that she had these two commitments, agree with the county commissioner, and recuse herself from the vote due to the conflict between her commitments.
In short, if you promise to vote because someone gives you money, you have a choice whom to betray, the contributor or the public. If you choose to betray the public, you are acting in your self-interest. If you choose to betray the contributor, you'll have two angry people from whom you have fraudulently taken money. Whichever you choose, you have to accept the fact that you betrayed someone's trust in you. That's the nature of a conflict.
What Lawyers Could Do
The mayor's lawyer, of course, has said about this situation, "When and if this case goes to trial, we will prove that the mayor received no illegal compensation whatsoever." Screw the public. All that matters is the law.
A lot of the people involved in this scheme were lawyers. No one does these things without lawyers. But lawyers are not supposed to involve themselves in unethical schemes. They know this.
However, the lawyers who participate aren't the only problem. They do it knowing that other lawyers, who understand what they're doing, will not lift a finger to stop them, unless perhaps they're prosecutors. Other lawyers sit on their hands, or say that nothing illegal was done, as if legality was the only thing in the world that matters. As if they think it's fine when their trust is betrayed except when it's illegal.
No lawyer has been charged in this matter, and it is unlikely that one will be. If the Broward County bar association and other bar associations, as well as individual lawyers, were to say that such schemes are unacceptable and that they will deal harshly with such behavior, that would make an enormous difference. Otherwise, Americans will continue to have as little trust in lawyers as they do in government.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
But sometimes things are so bad, it becomes clear that there aren't just a couple of bad apples, but a whole bad crop. Tamarac, Florida, a city of 60,000 in Broward County (home of Ft. Lauderdale) is such a place. In fact, southern Florida itself seems to have been one big rotten crop of oranges, at least during the boom years.
According to Michael Mayo's column in yesterday's Sun-Sentinel, four out of five Tamarac commissioners from the crop of 2006 have been arrested. In just the past year, three Tamarac politicians have been arrested. Yesterday it was the turn of the mayor, on counts of unlawful compensation, bribery, and official misconduct (the warrant and affidavit to arrest are attached; see below).
She is accused of having indirectly taken money from a developer to fund attacks on her campaign opponents, and then very soon after voting on a matter involving the developer. The same developer was implicated in the arrests of the three other Tamarac politicians arrested in the past year.
Getting Around Government Ethics Laws
Mayo calls the scheme, which involved a 527 political committee, "convoluted," but this is what people do to get around the laws. No, let me phrase this more accurately: This is what lawyers do to get around the laws. That is, their special kind of cleverness is required to do things that may be legal on their face, but are clearly unethical.
As is so often said, laws cannot stop unethical conduct, only make unethical conduct more complex, providing more work to clever attorneys. What is less important about this is that it is hard to enforce laws. What is more important is that officials are less likely to accidentally participate in unethical conduct, and those who do things like this clearly have made a serious effort to help themselves at the expense of the public. They may plead non-illegality, but everyone knows the official and her colleagues were scheming something awful.
It's not worth going into the details. You can read them in two columns of Bob Norman's Pulp, yesterday and today, and in Buddy Nevins' Broward Beat column, as well as in the attached affidavit to arrest.
The Players
But it is worth listing the people involved in this relatively small matter, recognizing that when officials are arrested for one such matter, it is usually only the tip of the iceberg. Rarely does anyone put together one scheme like this, and then call it a day.
Besides the father-and-son developers, there is a county commissioner who mentored the mayor, a campaign manager who was hired last year by the county commissioner, two lobbyists, one of them a prominent financial figure in national campaigns, another local mayor, a political firm that produced attack mailers, two development subcontractors who helped hide the source of the funds, a 527 political committee created to do the dirty work, and a party "operative" who helped put the 527 committee together.
These schemes are not the work of lone wolves. Many people are involved, and any one of them could have stopped the whole thing. But this all occurred in 2006, and back then no one thought they would be caught. And why else would someone think of putting a wrench in the works?
The Conflict
According to the affidavit, the county commissioner told the mayor-elect (still a city commissioner) that she had a voting conflict because the developers had made such a large contribution to the 527 committee, and there was a vote on their project eight days after the election. The mayor-elect said that she was still going to vote "because she had made a commitment."
And there's the rub. Yes, she did have a commitment. The problem is that she had two commitments, and they were in conflict. But the only commitment she recognized was the one to the people who had given her money, not to the people who had elected her as city commissioner and as mayor. All she had to do was recognize that she had these two commitments, agree with the county commissioner, and recuse herself from the vote due to the conflict between her commitments.
In short, if you promise to vote because someone gives you money, you have a choice whom to betray, the contributor or the public. If you choose to betray the public, you are acting in your self-interest. If you choose to betray the contributor, you'll have two angry people from whom you have fraudulently taken money. Whichever you choose, you have to accept the fact that you betrayed someone's trust in you. That's the nature of a conflict.
What Lawyers Could Do
The mayor's lawyer, of course, has said about this situation, "When and if this case goes to trial, we will prove that the mayor received no illegal compensation whatsoever." Screw the public. All that matters is the law.
A lot of the people involved in this scheme were lawyers. No one does these things without lawyers. But lawyers are not supposed to involve themselves in unethical schemes. They know this.
However, the lawyers who participate aren't the only problem. They do it knowing that other lawyers, who understand what they're doing, will not lift a finger to stop them, unless perhaps they're prosecutors. Other lawyers sit on their hands, or say that nothing illegal was done, as if legality was the only thing in the world that matters. As if they think it's fine when their trust is betrayed except when it's illegal.
No lawyer has been charged in this matter, and it is unlikely that one will be. If the Broward County bar association and other bar associations, as well as individual lawyers, were to say that such schemes are unacceptable and that they will deal harshly with such behavior, that would make an enormous difference. Otherwise, Americans will continue to have as little trust in lawyers as they do in government.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
---
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