Lake County Fiscal Rangers

Florida County Activists Ask Lake County FiscalRangers for Help to Resolve Corruption

Activists and TeaParty members in other Florida Counties are aware of FiscalRangers.

We just got a query from one County activist group asking how they can stop corruption in their County.   They listed a number of officials and issues, so here is what I sent them, and I expect to talk to them later.

Vance Jochim

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 The Florida Grand Jury published a big report on Corruption in Florida last December and Pam Bondi has done nothing to market it to the legislature to get the recommendations implemented, even though her Attorney General Dept. runs the Grand Jury investigations.

The Florida Auditor General has no “resources” to initiate citizen requests for audits.   They mostly focus on CPA type financial and regulatory compliance audits, and not audits for efficiency, effectiveness or to detect and fix corruption.   Almost all local government oversight is left up to local County agencies and officials.

The legislative Audit Committee will not initiate citizen requests for audits, which are sent to the Auditor General, BUT they will do so if asked by a legislator.    So, you need to have a legislator request an audit like what you want, and the AG may do it .   But, the problem with the Auditor General is they only have CPA’s, not Certified Fraud Examiners or Certified Internal Auditors, thus really don’t have the skills I would want them to have.

There is no Florida "audit" or oversight agency authorized to initiate performance audits of either State or County level agencies and programs.   Florida State has over 1500 Special Districts and no department has authority to initiate audits of them (water districts, hospital districts, CRA's, etc.)

At the local level, see if the County Court Clerk for the County has an internal auditor, and whether they would initiate something.  Keep peppering them with details on your concerns, plus copies to the County Board members and County manager.  Determine if the School District has an auditor and review their reports for quality.

County governments have poor oversight on non-financial issues.   They can get awards for how pretty and accurate their annual financial reports (CAFR's) are, but there might not be any reports showing efficiency, effectiveness or oversight to prevent corruption.  In Lake County, the controller and "auditor" are in the Court Clerks office and neither has authority to go into the County government or other Constitutional offices and review internal operations to improve efficiency, etc.   In corporations over $200-million, they usually have one or more internal auditors with a full charter to review any records or interview any employees and initiate audits on their own.

Search the internet for public internal audit reports by local governments on the issue you are concerned with.   For instance, you might find just one Florida Auditor General performance audit on the specific function (like CRA's), and it will give you ideas of what system procedures should exist in your local departments to prevent fraud, waste & abuse.   it is my opinion that most local government officials and staff have no clue how to implement fraud detection and efficiency tracking systems like business has, so you have to find articles of screwups elsewhere to point out local improvements are needed.

Research the corruption in Boca Raton and Palm Beach County.   It was so bad the citizens led a referendum to create an independent Inspector General, who is now issuing some reports and has authority to initiate investigations in all the cities, school districts as well as County operations.

Try to initiate getting a petition to create a similar Inspector General for your County.

 

If the targets of your questions get federal funds, then you could find out which department they get funds from, and send complaints to the Inspector General for that Federal Department.

You might also create a blog like I did at FiscalRangers.com , and report this stuff in the blog with copies to all elected officials.  Then give public input at public meetings and they start listening to you.  I have been doing it for six years.  I also send copies to about 30 press members – in the County, in the nearby major TV market (Orlando) and also to key press people (print, tV and online blogs) in Tallahassee.   This has helped start stories, such as several articles all over Florida about our initiative to reform the North Lake County Hospital District and then get HB-1299 passed to reform it.   That bill was signed last Friday by Gov. Scott. 

If there are Florida government committees of appointed officials, send email copies of articles to them.  I did that with Gov. Scott’s Commission to review the Hospital Districts in Florida, and several of my suggestions made it into their recommendations (and into HB-1299).

Also, if you can get Tea party or other public groups to attend a key local government meeting like County Board meetings or the annual meeting of the County legislators forum, with signs, etc.  – it gets on the TV and also shows officials they can’t keep avoiding your issue.

Attend Tea Party and other groups and give presentations, with a list of actions for them, such as three questions to ask politicians running for office this year on local corruption examples and what they would do to fix it.   Video them, and post it on websites or YouTube, so you have it in case they do not follow through.

Elect smarter officials.  It is hard to get an official who is a high school graduate to spend time to understand governance issues, etc.   Many don't even read documents given to them by staff.   The more educated the official is, the less they might be open to corruption plus they are used to reading professional reports and would understand your issues better.  If they have a Master's degree and some type of professional certification or license, that is even better, because they have been exposed to ethics policies, etc.

The key is to keep bringing up your recommendations publicly – using public input, website, blog, emails, Facebook page, send to press, send to elected officials, get people to attend meeting with signs and give public input.   Once they know you are watching and asking questions, some officials might start backing  your efforts to improve transparency, accountability and oversight.

I even got the local County Board to hire outside auditors to review the local EMS rather than use an inexperienced auditor in the Court Clerk’s office. 

You can call me at anytime to discuss this.

 

Vance Jochim

Lake County Fiscal Rangers

Chief Fiscal Watchdog

Volunteers Searching for Ways to Improve Local Government Fiscal Management, Efficiency & Effectiveness

PO Box 1042

Tavares, FL 32778

Mobile:  352-638-3578

FiscalRangers@comcast.net

www.FiscalRangers.com   

TWITTER:  @FiscalRangers 

Fiscal Ranger's page on Facebook

CLICK HERE to see recommended internet links related to Local Lake County government fiscal issues.

 

 

Palm Beach Schools inspector general position draws 23 viable candidates

Schools inspector general position draws 23 viable candidates.

Jim Krakowski Comments on Apr. 2 Lake County School Board Meeting

Guest Columnist: Jim Krakowski

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My comments / observation regarding April 2, 2012 Lake County (FL) School Board Meeting.

(Jim Krakowski 4/4/12)   -  Krakowski is active in the South Lake County 912/Tea Party

April 2nd “special” school board meeting focused on three issues … one dealing with finances, one with operations and one with education.

Finance:  There are approximately $16 million of bonds funded by sales taxes that can be “re-financed” at a much lower rate.  According to the districts CFO (Carol MacLeod) these bonds have a current interest rate of 3% - 5% and can be refinanced at 1.22%. 

The district currently has over $39 million of funds that are earmarked for capital projects.  Impact fees generated these funds.  I asked “… is it possible to

Voter Fraud Method Disclosed by Ft. Myers NBC TV Investigation - May Exist in ALL Florida Counties

FiscalRangers.com Alert   -  Tavares, FL    April 4, 2012

Florida Voter Fraud Method Detected by Ft. Myers NBC TV station investigation, which finds County Elections Departments not preventing NON-US citizens from voting.   Problem could exist in ALL Florida counties.

Note:  We will post updates here on this page as we get them. vj

A TV investigator for NBC Channel 2 in the Ft. Myers area found that there was no prevention technique to prevent non-citizens from registering to vote, and he found over 100 who had told the courts they could not be on a jury because they were non-citizens, but they also VOTED.   Then he checked the voter roles and found over 100 who claimed non-citizenship to get out of jury duty who HAD voted, some for many years without detection by the Elections Supt.

 

The reporter asked the Elections Supt. If they did any cross checks with the courts to verify addresses, or to detect non-citizens, and apparently it is not done in Florida.  He discussed the issue with Election Superintendents of Collier and Lee Counties.

 

The TV report was dated Feb. 2, but we just discovered it.

 

The reporter did not investigate whether the people actually lied when registering to vote, or someone else registered them without their knowledge.  But some admitted to voting while being a non-citizen.

 

This is why I think a major investigation is needed of all County Elections departments because they are in the stone ages in using computers to detect voter fraud.  (More articles coming).   The days of basing voter registration and voting on "trust" need to end.  Apparently, according to part two, no one asked voters for proof of citizenship to get a driver's license until two years ago, and now they do, so NEW voters might have a harder time registering because it is harder to get a driver's license if you  are a non-citizen, but the prior registrations need to be verified.

 

The reporter said "While we only looked at Southwest Florida two largest counties, this absolutely affects other counties in the state."

 

Here is the original NBC 2 report with a full text and video version:

http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16662854/2012/02/02/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud     

 

AND, here is PART TWO:

http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16666098/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud-part-2  

 

And, here is a Feb. 8th follow up article saying that the illegal voters were referred to the Sherrif for investigations and possible prosecutions.  Fines could be $5000 for lying on voter registration forms.

http://www.abc-7.com/story/16772858/voter-fraud-investigation-update-law-enforcement-sec-of-state-taking-action 

 

HERE is a LIBERAL editorial from the News-Press, a local paper in the area, saying Voter ID scares voters away and shouldn't be used:

http://www.news-press.com/article/20120321/OPINION/303210021/0/BUSINESS/-Fighting-fraud-limits-voting?odyssey=nav|head    

 

"Our investigation revealed county supervisors of elections have no way to verify citizenship and are not required to ask for proof.

Our method got the attention of Florida's secretary of state. Its office sent us a letter saying, "...we will be exploring how many of the state's clerks of court and supervisors of elections could work together to verify that persons excused from jury duty, because they are non-citizens, are not illegally registered to vote."

The Collier county election's office expects to turn over more names to law enforcement. Voter fraud carries a $5,000 fine and up to five years in prison."

 

The issue is now appearing on national blogs related to illegal alien activities:

http://usopenborders.com/2012/04/video-illegal-alien-mass-voter-fraud-discovered-in-fl/ 

Vance Jochim

 

 

Complexity of State Ballot Measures Affects YES votes, But Is Florida Affected?

An interesting study says that many ballot measures are written at the Master's Degree level and voters skip them due to the complex wording.

Wyoming requires that a majority of ALL voters must say yes to pass a referendum, not just a majority of those who voted on the issue.   They figure if a voter skips an issue, it is worded too hard to understand since the average American has an eighth grade reading level.

Here is an excerpt from the Wall St. Journal's review of the issue:

Another totally different new study rates the readability of ballot  measures.

The study is part of the plain language movement.

Note to Floridians:  "When Charlie Crist of Flordia took office as governor in January 2007, one of his first acts was to issue a plain langugage executive order. Florida now has an entire site devoted to plain language."  HOWEVER, the links now go to Gov. Rick Scott's website and go to an error page.  We did find that the FL DCS has a Plain Language page HERE.  We could not find if the Plain Language movement is required for State ballot measures, however.

Researchers with the Plain Language Action and Information Network ( http://www.plainlanguage.gov/  ) examined  1,112 ballot measures from states from 1997 to 2007. They were trying to find  out if the readability of the ballot language affected voters’ behavior.

They found that, regardless of the topic, the more difficult the ballot  measure was to understand the less likely citizens were to vote for it.

Wyoming voters have demonstrated the same reaction.

A ballot measure must get yes votes from a majority of the voters who cast  ballots in an election. Getting a majority of votes on the measure itself isn’t  enough to pass it.

When a tally shows that a large number of voters skipped the ballot measure  entirely it probably was too confusing.

According to an article in State Legislature magazine, the average reading  level for Americans is eighth grade.

The reading level of Wyoming ballot measures between 1997 and 2007 was at the  master’s level, grades 17 to 18.

So it’s not surprising that many voters here gave up on the measure and  didn’t vote.

Help is available, though.

Now the Legislature and staff members who write the ballot explanation have a  guide — the Flesch-Kincaid scale — available to Microsoft Word users.

The scale assigns the grade level needed to understand the reading.

Of the 45 states that had statewide ballot initiatives in the 10-year period  studied, none had measures at the eighth grade reading level.

Only three came close. The states of South Dakota, Oklahoma and North  Carolina had ballot measures with high school reading levels.

More than a dozen states had doctorate reading levels.

Anyway, Wyoming citizens will find proposed constitutional amendments on the  ballot when they go to the polls in November.

Read more: http://trib.com/news/wyoming-gets-f-for-corruption/article_72dec1f2-7cef-11e1-806b-001a4bcf887a.html#ixzz1r1AZxUmv