By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist
The views expressed are my own, and not necessarily those of the organizations that I belong to
You may have read the report in Saturday’s Tampa Tribune about the Ethics Commission moving forward with a full investigation of County Administrator Pat Bean and County Attorney Renee Lee. As the one who filed these complaints, I can provide more details as to how it originally became a news story and why it’s so hard to go after officials that might be ethically challenged.
My complaint charges Bean and Lee with using the power of their positions in Hillsborough County government to corruptly gain a benefit for themselves that was inconsistent with the proper performance of their respective duties. In effect, they circumvented the approval process to give themselves a salary increase in 2007. They violated what the statute calls a misuse of public trust. But saying that a complaint has been filed is meaningless until the Ethics Commission determines that it is “legally sufficient” to proceed forward. Once legal sufficiency is satisfied and the commission feels that there is enough evidence to indicate a possible violation of statute, it then proceeds to a full investigation. And once it gets that far, it must go through the entire vetting process, including a probable cause hearing. So even though the Bean/Lee case has been in the news in the last couple weeks, the fact that the Ethics Commission has now agreed to investigate it is an important new milestone in this saga.
Ever wonder why you don’t often hear of ethics investigations? You’d think there would be a whole slew of them, considering how many state, county and local government workers and elected officials we have in Florida, right? The reason you don’t see the volume that you’d expect is that the complaint process is complicated and lengthy, as well as, very tricky for the filer. Many people give up on the process when they find out how tough it is to actually get a case investigated. In addition, the cases are confidential and the press is not given access to any information until the whole process has been completed. Typically, if a citizen tells the press that they filed ethics charges against an official, the press will not report it because they have no way of corroborating the facts.
The Bean and Lee cases, however, got into the news even before it was known whether or not the Ethics Commission would investigate the alleged charges.
Here’s what happened. Mike Deeson, the 10 Connects reporter, somehow obtained a copy of my complaint against Lee. With that in hand, 10 Connects TV decided to report on it. Deeson had called me to tell me it was going to be on the 6 o’clock news. I was dumbfounded as to how he could have gotten his hands on my complaint. The Ethics Commission keeps the matter confidential but does send copies to the defendants, which in this case would have gone to the County Center. My guess is that he must have a “mole” in the County Attorney’s office…a county employee that hates the County Attorney enough to leak the evidence and get the story out there. I tried to tell Deeson that it was too early to do a report on it because there was no way of telling if the case would go anywhere. He acknowledged that it might be premature to report on it but the decision had already been made, and it was going to appear on the evening news.
According to Deeson, Lee was absolutely livid when she discovered that someone, possibly a person that reported to her, secretly provided him with a copy of the complaint. As soon as Lee got the call from Deeson on October 9th, telling her the story was going to be on 10 Connects TV news and that the document was going to be posted on their website, she sent a terse, accusatory email (below) to the county commission staff. Basically the note warned everyone that whoever leaked the story to Deeson was going to be caught and punished. I think it’s safe to say that the mole who leaked this story should not expect to receive any (secret award) raise money at the end of the year.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.