Back in the 1980s, when the Hillsborough County Commission boardroom was a high-crime area and corruption was considered a major profit center for officials, the Legislature created the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission. At least part of the mission of the independent commission was to try to thwart some of the graft and bribery.
The primary job for the body is creating and fine-tuning the county's comprehensive master plan. Since that often means putting the brakes on irresponsible development plans, the commission has always had its critics, especially among those who don't want any restraint on paving over paradise and who want to dump all of the cost of growth on the taxpayers.
But beginning with Fred Karl's tenure as county administrator in the 1990s, the commission has been a favorite whipping boy at budget time. The Planning Commission's existence can't be extinguished by county government, but the Board of County Commissioners can hamstring the planners through budget cuts. County government has its own planning department, and that is used as an excuse to whittle away at the Planning Commission's finances. In truth, the real redundancy is in the county department, which has mushroomed from 8 to almost 250 people in the last two decades.
By comparison, the Planning Commission has shrunk from 75 people to 58 over the years.
The current county administrator, Dan Kleman, is on a short leash from his bosses on the County Commission. His survival isn't likely, and many people are hoping a change will be made — among the most popular alternatives is Rob Turner, who currently holds the elected post of property appraiser. Kleman has proposed a budget with a lot of red herring budget cuts — ostensibly to impress his increasingly conservative commission. In reality, the cuts would force the commishes to don the robes of heartless rascals who target the weakest and most needy. Kleman may well find that that scheme will backfire.
The Planning Commission is also in Kleman's gunsights. He proposes a 5 percent cut in salaries — computed on current expenditures. That works out to more like a 9 percent slash based on normal growth for the agency. The Planning Commission budget would go from its current $4.7-million to $4.4-million and then to $4.3-million by 2003.
For citizens who care about sane growth planning, that represents a disaster. The commission's basic planning functions would be crippled. Moreover, decimating the Planning Commission shifts emphasis to the more politicized planning department under Kleman and the county commissioners. That is an invitation to return to corruption that prompted the creation of the Planning Commission in the first place.
The Dignity Killers
Here's a tale about what should have been a dead issue long ago — a mortician who exemplifies the very worst of his profession. Like Dracula, Joseph Salvatore Damiano and his family of unsavory undertakers keep rising from what would be certain death for most businessmen. But, in our business-dominated state government, the regulators who should have pounded a stake into Damiano's heart years ago keep fumbling the hammer.
Damiano, dubbed "South Florida's body removal czar" in 1995 by the Palm Beach Post, came to dubious fame in the Tampa Bay area seven years ago. WFTS-Ch. 28 revealed that a cremation plant owned by Damiano in Palmetto routinely spread "clients'" ashes around a parking lot. To make babies' cremated remains feel heavier, WFTS filmed an employee boasting, "I take a spoon and dig it into somebody else. Nobody ever knew that." Families who thought their relatives had been buried at sea found out the ashes had been dumped down drains.
A Palm Harbor couple, Howard and Patricia Read, sued Damiano and his companies when they found out his mother's ashes were probably dumped in a parking lot. In 1998 the Reads won $33-million. Damiano didn't show up at the trial.
Heather Smith, a Madeira Beach mother, also sued the Damiano clan in 1998, winning $5.5-million. After the WFTS reports, Smith had tests done of the ashes and discovered they couldn't have belonged to her 5-month-old daughter. Damiano skipped that trial too.
Damiano had a simple solution to these debts and to countless other fines and penalties he owes. He simply didn't pay. Considering that as many as 4,400 local families may have had late loved ones treated as garbage by Damiano, it's easy to understand why he never showed up in court and is a deadbeat.
"All we wanted is an apology, and we didn't even get that," Patricia Read told me. "This guy just keeps on going and going, and no one ever stops him."
Damiano and his son Anthony most recently have been nailed for a variety of offenses — some absolutely disgusting — in South Florida. What finally may have buried Damiano and his family was the arrest of son Tony in January on 23 counts that he schemed to take money for pre-need plans without a license. The state has fined Tony Damiano $140,000.
The list of offenses over the years is extraordinary. There were apparently fraudulent signatures on licenses. Cremation fires weren't sufficiently hot for the job — leaving the dearly departeds' remaining fatty tissue to ooze and splash about. Unlicensed people operated facilities. Ashes were commingled. It was impossible to determine who occupied dozens and dozens of bags of ashes. There are accusations Damiano companies provided bodies to a mortician school for embalming practice without families' consent.
What's scary is that Damiano is old, old news. A decade ago he received unwanted press attention when an employee was caught in the very medieval crime of robbing bodies. At about the same time, the state sued Damiano for not paying unemployment taxes.
Through multiple companies, with relatives and other people fronting for him (some not knowing the Damianos were using their names), the family is still doing business in Florida.
Damiano's strength has been that few regulators or news reporters have ever tied all of his offenses together. Stories appear in daily newspapers — as the Reads' case did here — and scribes seldom follow the trail around the state. Recently, that began changing — notably due to the efforts of Carmel Cafiero, a veteran investigative reporter for Miami's WSVN-Ch. 7.
When I started noting his name popping up all over the place, like zombies erupting from graves in Night of the Living Dead, I whistled when I realized that no one other than Cafiero had tied it all together. I then called the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and asked spokesperson Lonnie Parizek about Damiano. Citing rules, she refused to do more than provide me with the public records that detail fines and complaints against the Damianos.
Parizek wouldn't even confirm that the state was trying to force the ghoul to pay what he owes the Readers and others. DBPR lawyer Charles Tunnicliff did tell me he was in negotiations to settle the $33-million award.
Unanswered: How in the world can the state justify letting Damiano and his family continue in business so long with so many offenses? Doesn't protecting the public count for anything?
Contact Editor John F. Sugg at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or johnsugg@weekly planet.com.
This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2001.