By George Niemann
CL/Daily Loaf contributor and R-LAND, UCAN, FSP activist and eternal Florida Hometown Democracy believer. The views expressed are my own and not necessarily the same as the organizations to which I belong.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman may be planning on decorating the District 12 state Senator office that he just won, but those pesky ethics laws are going to follow him to, and through, his new term as state senator.
On November 11, 2010, I filed ethics charges with the Florida Commission on Ethics. Two other citizens have already filed complaints. Mine will be the third publicly announced filing. It will probably take 2 weeks or longer to find out whether or not they have been accepted. If, after reviewing the complaint, the commission accepts it as being “legally sufficient”, they will begin a (long) process which starts with an investigation. The way I see it, the more citizens that file, the better the chances that the Captain of Team Sprawl will get his just deserts. When I was asked by a reporter as to why I filed and what I hoped to accomplish, I responded by saying that, no matter how small the penalties may end up being, his unconscionable behavior should become part of his permanent resume.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2010.
