Will Anything Change? Broward’s Future To Be Planned By Political Insiders
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Broward’s future government will be planned by a newly-created board dominated by political insiders.
On Tuesday, Broward County Commissioners are expected to name the usual suspects to the Charter Review Commission. This is the group that will recommend changes to Broward’s government for the next decade.
Voters must approve any changes.
Below is the list of folks they plan to name. Can we really expect any change from people who have gotten very comfortable with the status quo?
*Cynthia Busch, Broward Democratic Party First Vice Chair, appointed by Commissioner Marty Kiar.
Cynthia Busch
*James Grey Kane, a political pollster and University of Florida professor who is a lobbyist for the Forman family of real estate investors, appointed by Kiar. He also is a pollster and writer for this website.
*Roslyn Greenberg, Coconut Creek condominium leader, appointed by Commissioner Mark Bogen.
*Katherine Richards, Deerfield Beach condominium resident, appointed by Bogen.
*Thomas McDonald, a Parkland engineering company owner and long time Democratic insider, appointed by Commissioner Stacy Ritter.
*Marilyn Leto, wife of über lobbyist Mike Moskowitz, appointed by Ritter.
Stacy Ritter (on left), Mike Moskowitz and Marilyn Leto (his wife)
*Cynthia Guerra, former head of the Broward Republican Party, appointed by Commissioner Chip LaMarca.
*David Di Pietro, GOP campaign activist and fund raiser for LaMarca, appointed by LaMarca.
*Monica Navarro, long time executive with health care organizations and charities, appointed by Commissioner Lois Wexler.
*Carlos Reyes, Davie real estate lawyer and Hispanic activist, appointed by Wexler.
Carlos Reyes
*Larry Davis, veteran Democratic activist and Hollywood lawyer who represents many politicians in trouble, appointed by Commissioner Beam Furr.
*Suzanne Gunzburger, former county commissioner and Furr’s chief campaign supporter, appointed by Furr.
*H. Collins Forman, Jr., lawyer and one of the heirs to the Forman real estate empire, appointed by Commissioner Tim Ryan. The Forman family has been among the most politically influential insiders in Broward since the 1940s.
*Grant Smith, lawyer/lobbyist and son of former Hollywood Democratic U. S. Rep. Larry Smith, appointed by Ryan.
*Anil Apana, Miramar homeowner, appointed by Commissioner Barbara Sharief.
*Lori Moseley, former mayor of Miramar, appointed by Sharief.
*Suzette Maylor, broadcaster active with the South Florida Black Journalists Association, appointed by Commissioner Dale Holness.
Suzette Maylor
*Burnadette Norris-Weeks, government attorney and member of a previous charter commission, appointed by Holness
UPDATE:
A 19th member was appointed by all the commissioners on Tuesday, several days after this post.
Former Attorney General Bob Butterworth of Hollywood has been actively lobbying for that job. In the end, Butterworth didn’t apply for the job.
County Commission sources say Butterworth counted votes and realized he wouldn’t be appointed, so he never formally applied.
Among those Browardbeat.com was told applied for the 19th position are lawyer Joseph Goldstein, who has extensive work representing vendors doing business with the county; Gordon Weekes, a chief assistant at the Public Defenders Office; Debby Eisinger, former Cooper City mayor; Dan Lindblade, CEO Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce and Levi Williams, a Jamaican-American downtown Fort Lauderdale lawyer with lengthy experience in business law and state GOP politics.
Commissioners didn’t pick any of those well-known folks. Instead, they picked criminal defense attorney Jose Izquierdo, a past president of the local Hispanic Bar, according to Brittany Wallman of the Sun-Sentinel.
Jose Izquierdo
May 29th, 2015 at 3:55 pm
Looking at this list, I can only presume Bernie Friendman, Dennis Mele, John Milledge and Debbie Orshefsky had scheduling conflicts.
FROM BUDDY:
Ha ha ha. Good one.
May 29th, 2015 at 4:58 pm
Friends,
The 2000 charter review commission proposed 13 amendments to the county charter, resulting in a near total rewrite of the document and all of the revisions were approved by the voters. I was a member of that committee and remain amazed at how much we were able to accomplish because we went at the task in the right way.
Our Chair, Dan Lewis, had the sense to begin our work together by holding a “Consensus Summit” in which Broward residents from all walks of life were invited to participate. The goal was to draw out from them the priority issues and concerns residents had. It was a huge success. Public hearings were then organized in key areas. We took lots and lots of testimony before meeting in any substantive way.
Revising the charter of a large county like Broward is an incredibly important task that sets the tone and governing dynamics of county government for decades to come. The stakes involved for residents and businesses are huge. If this group follows the established format, they are likely to enjoy success similar to what we had. I hope they will and I wish that for them.
Angelo
FROM BUDDY:
The Sun-Sentinel, in a story NOT written by me, said the following about the Charter Review that Angelo Castillo refers to above:
FIRE-RESCUE PROPOSAL TOPS LIST OF ISSUES – MOST OF THE REVIEW BOARD’S 13 AMENDMENTS WOULD HAVE LIMITED IMPACT.
The intent was to dramatically change county government.
The Charter Review Commission started its work nearly two years ago with an $854,000 budget, advancing proposals for establishing a strong-mayor form of government and a major overhaul of county and city fire rescue services.
Neither happened.
Pressured by politicians and lobbyists, the charter members watered down their proposals for county charter changes. On Nov. 5, voters will be called on to decide the fate of 13 amendments with limited impact.
Some revisions address housekeeping matters such as making the charter gender-neutral. A few, though, address serious issues, including how many signatures are needed on a petition to call a special election and instituting new rules for a semi-independent county auditor.
The most controversial involves an effort to streamline fire-rescue services.
The fire-rescue charter change calls for establishing a countywide communications infrastructure, such as improved radio equipment, which would help to ensure that the closest fire-rescue unit responds to emergencies.
Charter revision members say the change creates a funding mechanism to pay for improved radio communications equipment, replacing equipment that sometimes blocks different agencies from talking to each other and hinders emergency response.
Proponents say current fire-rescue systems are fragmented, and fire trucks and ambulances from one station pass closer stations on the way to an emergency scene.
XXXX
By the way, the commission ignored approval of the fire-rescue proposal for more than a decade. They recently addressed it.
May 29th, 2015 at 5:19 pm
So I guess that Bob Butterworth is lobbying hard for a position that he didn’t actually apply for.
But who cares about truth, Buddy?
Print the legend.
FROM BUDDY:
Butterworth talked to commissioners about applying. He reportedly told commissioners he wouldn’t apply unless he had the job in the bag. He obviously didn’t believe he had the votes on the commission to be appointed, thus didn’t apply, according to several different commission sources.
May 29th, 2015 at 6:59 pm
It’s ironic that not ONE member of this board is under 40.
I would love to hear the excuses the county commissioners will make to justify this. Why would you put members on the board that have the longest term interest in the direction of the county?!
But one thing I know for sure, most of the commissioners will be quite friendly with the BYD’s now that they need young legs for the upcoming election season.
FROM BUDDY:
Actually, Suzette Maylor appears to be under 40 years old.
May 29th, 2015 at 7:18 pm
The Commission’s first and highest priority should be to totally obliterate the Ritter amendment which crippled the Broward County Inspector General’s office:
… the Broward County Ethics Commission, created by the mandate of voters, created an inspector general’s position to police corruption by commissioners. The ethics appointees — who did an amazing job — gave the general broad powers to investigate commissioners, allowed complaints from anonymous whistleblowers, and specified that published reports could be the basis for investigations as well.
Basically they gave the position the powers that any other law enforcement agency might have, from the FBI to BSO.
In short, the [Stacy] Ritter Amendment dictates the inspector general will only be able to investigate based on a complaint from a person who is willing to be publicly identified. The inspector general wouldn’t have the authority to initiate investigations on his or her own. Investigations by newspapers … will be verboten. The Ritter Amendment actually bans using them as part of any complaint.
While it diminishes the general’s power, it also gives the ethically bankrupt county the power to go after the complainant if his or her complaint is unsubstantiated and is deemed to have been filed with malicious intent. Then the county can go after all investigative costs and legal fees.
In other words, Ritter’s amendment takes power from the general and puts all the onus on the citizen who files a complaint. The identified complainant will even have to state, under penalty of perjury, that he has have “personal knowledge” that everything in his complaint is true. Sounds like they want the citizen complainant to do the entire investigation beforehand. …
It’s clearly designed to reduce the number of complaints by taking out anonymous whistleblowers and newspaper reports.
Now you might be thinking, well, it would protect the commissioners from erroneous complaints. Wrong answer. Erroneous complaints will fall by the wayside; that’s the job of the inspector general.
May 29th, 2015 at 11:01 pm
The charter review is a joke. The County commission picks and chooses what rules they are going to follow. The county never followed the 2000 Fire-rescue charter change.
Nothing was done for year with the fire-rescue change, until Debby Eisinger as president of the Broward League of Cities, & Mike Ryan as chair of the league’s public safety committee spearheaded the regionalization of the 911 system in 2011.
It took over 12 years after it was passed, for the county commission to some-what honor the the only significant charter change.
FROM BUDDY:
Unfortunately, some cities still refuse to take part in the new 911 system.
May 30th, 2015 at 6:44 am
The exchange of views perfectly demonstrates the views of south Florida n especially Broward co elected n appointed officials they are hard at work doing serious things and the opinions of both professional observers n the general public they are over indulged and funded ribbon clerks if not re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or weeding a garden in Pompeii around 75 AD certainly planning a skying trip to the Carpathian mountains for the winter of 1939.
May 30th, 2015 at 7:26 am
I find this quote quote appropriate for use in most governmental happenings in Broward County:
“Politicians are like warts on the body of society. And the only thing worse than warts are lawyers and lobbyists. ”
― Jarod Kintz
So, to answer your question, Buddy, status quo (SNAFU) will continue. The list of appointees is mainly politicians, lawyers, and lobbyists.
May 30th, 2015 at 11:00 am
No so fast. Any radical changes would have to be approved by the voters. Esp. w/ a strong mayor etc. Any pics from Moskowicz shin-dig w/ Hillary Clinton’ fundraiser -love to see the who’s , who of whoville that attended…
May 30th, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Cynthia Busch once told a colleague of mine that because she did not have children she was not entitled to an opinion of our school system. Well Cynthia Busch has lived here just over 15 years-does not know the history of our county. Does she have a right to make decisions for people who have lived here longer? She is playing politics in too much to be concerned about the good of this county.
May 30th, 2015 at 4:48 pm
Buddy,
As to your comment on #2, we indeed were very heavily lobbied. I won’t name nakes, but I’ll give you one guess how all that lobbying affected my votes — which are, by the way, a matter of public record. However your point is very well taken. And I don’t believe charter revision commission members have to disclose lobbyist contacts per the county’s ethics rules.
The good thing about the charter commission is whatever they vote on goes directly to the voters. It does not require county commission approval first but the commissioners can place items of their own on the ballot to amend the charter at any time.
Angelo
May 30th, 2015 at 4:59 pm
Buddy,
The 2000 charter board did pass the regional communications charter provision in the charter. That mandate took the county 12 years to implement. They simply did not want to do it and nobody sued them though the language in the charter was very clear that the county was required to pay for this regional service.
Ultimately cities held them to the language and the mandate was satisfied. You are correct that two cities have held out of the regional system so far. They pay county taxes for the regional service nonetheless, they get no discount for not participating, but also pay for their own 911 system. Effectively, they are paying “twice” for the same service per their own choice I think in time they will join but that’s for them to decide.
The best we could muster on the county Mayor front was changing the name of Chair of the county commission to Mayor. I voted for it because it was a step in the right direction. But even then I realized that Broward would be left behind — as we have already seen — Dade used to be a laughing stock but those days are over — without an elected CEO to run the county government.
We can run from evolution. But we can’t hide, sooner or later the inevitable happens.
Angelo
May 31st, 2015 at 2:14 pm
Unfortunately, Mr. Nevins it is politics as usual. The county needs an Executive Mayor form of government. It want happen because some of the commissioners will never accept blame for their voting mistakes and apparently they don’t want to share leadership power with a strong mayor. Another right direction step would require all commissioners to be selected by a county-wide vote but must live in their district. NONE of this will happen because courage by some elected politicians can be found about as often as you see hen’s teeth.
June 2nd, 2015 at 1:14 pm
As far as insiders go and will things change etc. Doesn’t matter because when a lot of us work as a team(demonstrated in the Paper(local) today there is no stopping us. No matter what “insiders” we have to deal w/ as long as we are a network(many of us)there is no stopping us. Good work. Hang in there, hold on, relax, things take time we will get justice….
June 2nd, 2015 at 3:15 pm
I see Gordon didn’t come close to being the last member of Charter Review. Proves yet again, Howard has little influence and no one is afraid of him anymore.
June 2nd, 2015 at 6:38 pm
I was the only female commissioner on the original 1973-74 Broward Co Charter Commission appointed in Oct. 1973 by the Legislative Delegation. I continue to follow the needs of the citizens of Broward and offer my services at this time.
I can be reached via above e-mail address.
June 9th, 2015 at 3:42 pm
When I heard about who had applied — why bother? There was no way anyone who wasn’t asked to apply was going to be appointed
June 20th, 2015 at 3:32 am
Looks that the Broward Workshop, in large part, has bought off the supposedly Democratic County Commission. Everyone knows that they have been pushing strongly for a strong mayor for years. Why on earth would a Democratic county commission appoint all of those Rs? Well, justfollow the campaign money train to see who is bought and who is not. 2 commissioners are former Rs and may as well still be. 3 are completely bought off. 1 is a Dem but now says publicly that she may as well be an R. There is one official R but he is in really good company with a majority of the commission who allow themselves to be controlled by the Rs that they chase around for money.
June 20th, 2015 at 3:38 am
I disagree this group will be business as usual. Broward is headed right with this gang.