know that it is not unheard of to find people who have direct contacts with members of our Florida legislature, who also have an alarming disregard for fiduciary responsibilities in their civic or community leadership roles. They seem to know that these kind of political connections just paralyses most people with fear and intimidation, so they abuse their power as if it's a perk. There should be a board set up in Florida to report people to turn them in.
I don't know why everyone thinks that our legislators are the only ones that should get investigated. You do know that all corrupt legislators have their beginning in corrupt societies? So why aren't we taking a closer look at the societies from where they are hewn?
If we ever get to this level of study, I have a distinct head start. I had the advantage of being here when it all began, though it took me about fourteen years to put all the pieces together. I was able to see the corrupting nature of the networks in this county and city when both were involved with large public works projects. Remember, this is a Republican area. They don't have the proper discipline or political framework to spend the money in a way that doesn't involve cronyism. When you get right down to it, small-government is a form of public administration that removes everyone but the decision-makers from the process. And Republican decision-makers are not by nature altruistic.
This is what I discovered in the late nineties when I got to see, firsthand, the damaging effect from the over-exuberant networking that went on between a couple of the county commissioners and the county manager and some of our city officials.
In short, in the late nineties there was a full-fledged governmental collapse when the county was pushing for a Seminole County trailways and expansion of 434. The city wanted to piggy back a few projects with all that money and political connections coming in. They were particularly interested in putting together a town-center and also, annexations of land.
The most incriminating evidence that networks in the community had galvanized and were running rough-shod over everyone's rights was a photograph that surfaced that had both county and city officials posing together for a ground-breaking of a private, residential community. It was evidence of corruption because this photograph was taken two and a half months before the city held its first public meeting for this residential project--and, thus, it was proof that the legal rights of the homeowners living on the older phase of the property were completely undermined before they even set foot in city hall to hear the first official meeting.
I lived in this older phase and I can tell you that what we observed was a Kabuki dance from the mayor's buddy, who lived in our community. This resident, a neighbor, led us to believe that we had no legal rights to exercise in this proceeding. This belief was reinforced by the city.
In fact, the mayor's buddy had signed the turnover papers of our community ten years earlier, but kept this information from us, and the city did not do the due diligence that would have exposed this lie. I believe that his omission was intentional and that we were defrauded. The reality is that we had legal rights that we could have asserted, but allowing us that kind of involvement in the proceedings would have assuredly slowed down the approval of the development and this was not desirable to several city officials and their good buddies in the community--because they had their own private agenda regarding this property.
This is what happens when you allow the private sector into the decision making process of government. Hidden agendas are given the power to work undetected, until it's to late to stop them. In this case, this group was highly motivated to have the property approved quickly in order to keep it away from another developer who they bitterly detested. He was in the process of taking the city to court because of interference with his development projects and an injunction was a real possibility. So the group felt that if they rushed the project through the city process and managed to release building permits, it would make it nearly impossible for the courts to rule in favor of an injunction.
I don't see how a reasonable person could read the evidence any other way.
This is just the beginning of my awakening. Since then I have been able to observe a way of life that uses relationships that are able to cross the line from the public and private sector. The city government allows it to happen because it reinforces their relationships. What cannot be accomplished alone by the city is passed on to one of the city's many "ambassadors." And that often means selecting a good buddy to pass on false information to members of the public or our private communities. Anyone who stands in their way, or asks a relevant question is discredited and bullied. It is a classic good ole boy community.
It has been going on for so long that now we have copycats inside our own Associations, and many of the networks are inter and intra familial. The one that I am personally aware of involves patriarchs who have connections into the legislature, or have a good relationship with police departments.
Everyone always says that once you remove one corrupt person from office, it only creates a void that will be filled with another corrupt individual. So maybe the answer is to dig deeper and study the communities that these people are coming from.
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