There could be a meeting with the feds in Steven A. LaBrake's future. If there is, the G-men and G-women will have questions for Tampa's former director of business and community services. Downright insulting questions. Like, how'd you like to do five to 10 years in federal prison?
Before answering those kinds of questions, LaBrake would do well to pose a few to himself. Like, what do I have for these fine sworn officers of the law that could keep me out of a zebra suit?
When and if that date with the feds comes to pass, some in City Hall no doubt hope LaBrake will have the decency to remember — at least a little fondly — those hazy, lazy, crazy summer and autumn days of 2001.
For a moment, Steve, block out the dreadful visions of nosy news reporters and self-righteous ethics commissioners who were on your ass.
Instead, concentrate on those big paychecks that kept coming from the taxpayers of Tampa. Remember, too, they kept coming despite the facts that you ran out of vacation time and that you didn't do a lick of work to earn much of that money.
LaBrake, who turns 51 on March 1, finally left the Tampa payroll last month. He was on it for more than 16 years. He left under a bit of a cloud.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are still asking around about sweetheart employees under him and sweetheart-deal approvals above him.
LaBrake already gave his former bosses a little taste of what could happen if the feds squeeze him.
After Tampa City Council members woke up last summer and started taking rhetorical potshots at him, LaBrake happened to be chatting with a local television news crew. LaBrake mentioned that some of those same council members used to ask him for special favors. Sitting before the camera as his vacation time was expiring, LaBrake had to confess that he wasn't quite sure all of that stuff they asked him to do was perfectly legal.
When the end came in January, the disgraced LaBrake didn't exit his $105,000-a-year job empty-handed. Tampa taxpayers wrote LaBrake one last check. This one was for $46,174.
Amazingly, city officials say LaBrake still had paid leave to cash out, even after burning through about six months of it during the past year. The cash value of the leave he used between March 18 and Jan. 4 was $53,789, according to a Weekly Planet analysis of city records.
LaBrake retained more than 10 months of sick leave. Remarkable, considering LaBrake was paid for almost six weeks off last spring while he recovered from heart surgery. Prior to his April 24 quadruple bypass, LaBrake must not have taken a single sick day since he came to work for the city in 1985.
Under the city's personnel policy, departing workers get half their sick-time balance in cash. That figured out to be $42,855 for LaBrake. Private-sector employees seldom enjoy the same benefit. But municipal employees believe they are entitled to more than just a retirement proclamation from the City Council (though LaBrake likely didn't get one of those, even from Tampa's very tolerant city fathers and mothers, following that crack about the favors). The public employee argument goes like this: As government workers, we cannot get an employer match in a 401k plan, so at least let us cash out our unused sick time. As for vacation, LaBrake's annual-leave account was run down to zero by October. He had taken off almost two months, wishing and praying that the heat would cool down and a federal grand jury would forget about all those subpoenas it was issuing.
No such luck. There was a temporary savior for LaBrake, though, in the merciful Mayor Dick Greco.
That ol' softy signed an executive order Oct. 5, coincidentally, the day that LaBrake was to run out of vacation time. The order gave Greco the power to grant paid administrative leave to city employees as he saw fit.
Greco saw fit to grant LaBrake 90 days. After that, Greco kindly excused LaBrake from further service to the city and taxpayers from further obligation to LaBrake.
City officials tried to attribute the new order to Greco's desire to compensate Tampa firefighters who spelled their New York City counterparts from grim clean-up duty at the World Trade Center.
Political whiz though he is, Greco couldn't pull that cover story off. The mayor made a point of making himself unavailable to reporters on the day that they figured out LaBrake was the executive order's chief beneficiary.
Greco's signature on that piece of paper was worth another $24,091 in leave payments to LaBrake.
While on mayoral leave, LaBrake's barren vacation account was replenished. By his Jan. 4 severance date, LaBrake had about a week-and-a-half in there. There was no 50 percent discount this time, like with the unused sick leave. So LaBrake received the full $3,152.
Finally, LaBrake took a longevity bonus of $167 home to Palma Ceia and that spanking-new house that he had to put on the market last week. LaBrake shares the place with P. Lynne McCarter, his former aide and mistress who bore him a child in December and is now his fiancee.
What will become of LaBrake and his $46,174 farewell present from city taxpayers?
The latest press accounts report that LaBrake is unemployed. It's a tough economy out there. On the brighter side, he hasn't been indicted yet.
Before there is a criminal trial, there could a touchy civil proceeding to get through. That would be LaBrake's divorce, scheduled for trial in March.
Barbara LaBrake, his wife of almost 28 years, isn't real happy with her soon-to-be ex-husband right about now. One reason is how Mr. LaBrake handled what Mrs. LaBrake considers the martial asset that was his old city leave accounts.
"The husband was employed with the city of Tampa and received vacation and sick time," Mary E. Quinn, Barbara LaBrake's divorce lawyer, has stated in court filings. "It is believed that the husband has dissipated, transferred and wasted this asset."
Barbara LaBrake filed for divorce in 1999. In 2000, the couple agreed to a number of temporary conditions, including one that stipulated marital property would not be dissipated. Quinn stated in a court filing last November: "As a result of the criminal investigation as well as the ethics commission investigation, the husband was suspended from his employment and used his vacation and sick time in violation of the non-dissipation of assets restriction."
As of Jan. 4, there was at least the residual $46,174. Barbara LaBrake wants half of it — and half of what is left of the rest of the $377,765 net worth that Steve LaBrake claimed last March.
Mrs. LaBrake will see Mr. LaBrake in court, one way or the other.
Contact Staff Writer Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or e-mail him at frangilpin@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Feb 13-19, 2002.