Fiscal Rangers

FiscalRangers Defines the ONLY Real Republican County Commissioner Candidates You Should Vote For and Why

Updated 8/3/10 at 10pm - I revised the wording to better reflect who is a Republican, and who is a RINO. To my Republican friends: This cartoon about Clinton political games reminds me of other Democrat back door games going on in Lake County RIGHT NOW. Send this to all your Republican friends if you care who wins the Lake County Commissioner race, approves budgets and controls (or expands) spending of your tax funds for the next four years. A recent snubbing of a Republican event by two "Republicans" has resulted in my decision to recommend the only Republican candidates running for County Commissioner that should get your Republican vote in the August 24th primaries, and I will describe why. Below is a memo distributed by Alan Winslow, an officer in the Lake County Republican Executive Committee (REC), after a candidate debate organized by Winslow on behalf of REC was held for Lake County Commissioner, Dist. 2. Candidates Elaine Renick and David Yeager canceled at the last minute and went to a different "meet & greet" event and basically snubbed the Republican Party in Lake County. This happened even though Renick attended an REC monthly meeting just earlier this week.... Read more →

Orlando Sentinel's Lauren Ritchie Uncovers Lake County School District Boondoggle.

If you haven't read it, go HERE and read the article about how the local Lake County School Board staff, apparently without Board knowledge, sent over 80 staff to an EXPENSIVE hotel in Orlando for a conference rather than have them commute each day for a training conference, or rather than booking rooms in much lower cost nearby hotels. I disagree with about half of Ritchie's articles, but this is a true gotcha article and very illuminating. I know at least one Board member is steaming over this. At prior Board meetings I have attended, the Board spent time analyzing travel costs and implemented a number of spending caps, but I think... they missed this type of spending loophole. In my opinion, the Board AND staff have been much better at analyzing and cutting costs than the County Board of Commissioners. So, here are some background stories about government travel vs business travel practices, followed by my conclusion & recommendations about this incident: In the 1970's, I worked for five years as an auditor for the County of Los Angeles. At one time, I was in charge of auditing all County concession agreements, which meant any cafeteria "renting" space in... Read more →

Is the Lake County Board or Staff trying to pull a fast one and Add People to Pension Plan?

EMS is the organization that provides Emergency services and ambulances for both Lake & Sumter Counties. EMS (Emergency Medical Service, Inc.) has a good reputation in Lake County. But, Is the Lake County administration staff trying to pull a fast one and get approval from the County Board at Tuesday's Board meeting to add 267 EMS employees to the County's employee benefits program (which may or may not include the pension plan) without ANY acceptable justification documents or any public discussion? You can find the Tuesday agenda HERE and click on tab 1 to see the "agenda request" document which fails to provide any details on this issue. You can find the website for EMS here - they are not listed on the County website as a County agency. This is the EMS that... recently approved the County Manager's plan to use about $1-million of their separate property tax income to help pay for the unfunded Motorola radio maintenance cost of over $1-million. The County may (decision still pending? ) get to use $1-million of EMS funds to offset un-budgeted radio maintenance costs without complaint. Is this request to add all the EMS employees to the County employee benefits programs... Read more →

Lake County School Board & Superintendent Announce Improvements in Transparency

About 2-3 weeks ago, I published a commentary about how the School District staff needed to start providing public copies in printed format or online for agenda items at District "workshops", which are usually held at 2 or 3 pm on some Mondays. They already provide good copies online in the "Board Docs" section of the District website for regular Board meeting agenda items (usually held at 6pm on alternating Mondays). But, they had not done the same for the workshops, which was the issue. In many cases, the workshops are where the real work is done, but the public had no access to documents supporting agenda items. At today's Jul. 19, 2010 "Special Meeting" held for the Lake County School District, School Supt. Moxley announced that supporting files for workshops would be posted in the "Board Docs" section of the website like those posted for regular meetings. She also said they are looking into installing wifi in the District conference room so the public and attendees can look up the supporting documents on the website. Additionally, a link to the meeting documents will be featured prominently on the home page of the District website. Additionally, all workshop presenters today... Read more →

Lake County Commissioners Should Reject County Counsel's Request to Hike Consulting Attorney's Fees by 13.6% Until More Justification is Provided

Revised 7/19 - I removed information on a separate matter related to the County Counsel and posted it in another posting on 7/19. The interim County Counsel, Melanie Marsh, is requesting Board approval at Tuesday's (Jul. 20, 2010) Board meeting (agenda tab 15)to increase the hourly rate of a labor law consulting attorney by 13.6% without much justification (in my opinion) except to include the attorney's letter saying they wanted to increase rates. You can review the meeting agenda HERE for the Lake County Board of Commissioners July 20th meeting, and click on the tab 15 to see the details about this issue. My opinion is that the requested rate increase should be rejected by the Board until better justification data is provided, like described below. (More details below) So, what about the fee increase for the attorney described under tab 15? The only supporting documents are an "agenda request" document, and the rate increase letter from the attorney, Fisher & Phillips, LLP. The documents said the firm has not received a rate increase since 2007. I am not questioning the skills or reputation of the attorney involved, or the merit of the rates they receive, but I am questioning... Read more →

FiscalRangers Opinion: Lake County's County Counsel Dept. Needs to Improve Business Contracting Skills

Revised: This article was rewritten on 7/19 and removed from the earlier post on a request for increased attorney's fees. I just posted an article about weak cost justification data for increasing the hourly rate of an outside law firm used by the Lake County County Counsel. That situation provides a good reason to review the public track record of the Lake County legal department from a business and business contract viewpoint. This issue has been bouncing around in my head for weeks. I have audited contracts up to $600-million in size, and have learned a thing or two about preventing contract disputes. It seems that the County Counsel department needs to beef up their skills in writing business contracts. This is about the County Counsel's department... within the Lake County Board's office. The current interim County Manager is Sandy Minkoff, who was the head County Counsel until he took that position. The current interim County Counsel is Melanie Marsh. So far, we have been told that once the County hired a County Manager, Minkoff (who has said he does not want the County Manager position permanently) will return to his prior position, and so will Marsh.Most of the duties... Read more →

Lake County Commissioners Should Reject County Counsel's Request to Hike Consulting Attorney's Fees by 13.6% Until More Justification is Provided

Revised 7/19 - I removed information on a separate matter related to the County Counsel and posted it in another posting on 7/19. The interim County Counsel, Melanie Marsh, is requesting Board approval at Tuesday's (Jul. 20, 2010) Board meeting (agenda tab 15)to increase the hourly rate of a labor law consulting attorney by 13.6% without much justification (in my opinion) except to include the attorney's letter saying they wanted to increase rates. You can review the meeting agenda HERE for the Lake County Board of Commissioners July 20th meeting, and click on the tab 15 to see the details about this issue. My opinion is that the requested rate increase should be rejected by the Board until better justification data is provided, like described below. (More details below) So, what about the fee increase for the attorney described under tab 15? The only supporting documents are an "agenda request" document, and the rate increase letter from the attorney, Fisher & Phillips, LLP. The documents said the firm has not received a rate increase since 2007. I am not questioning the skills or reputation of the attorney involved, or the merit of the rates they receive, but I am questioning... Read more →

Lake School Board turns down property tax vote

Here is some good background below by the Orlando Sentinel's Denise Balona on the School District's history of sales tax requests, and their recent decision by the Board to NOT pursue a possible 1/4 mill (.00025% or about $25 per $100,000 of assessed valuation on property). That was a surprise to me, because I figured the Board would cave to the unions and ask for the tax in order to make up for increased wage costs from the recent wage increases passed by the Board. But, the Board didn't do that, so kudos to them for holding the line on tax requests for this year. This article below also discusses some possible future requests for a sales tax increase in 1-2 years for schools. In my opinion, however, if the property tax valuation drops, then Schools should... live within their means since their constituents have lower income and asset bases. Why should the schools be allowed to continue living at a higher rate than the taxpayers by increasing taxes. If unions demand wage increases in good years, they need to take reductions in bad years. By the way, once again, the quotes below are about possible future maintenance problems with... Read more →

Updated: City of Tavares to Fire Three Employees for Hacking Emails of top staff

UPDATED 5PM: I added a couple of war stories about a similar experience I saw while in Baghdad, Iraq. Is this too good, or what. It seems the IT Director and the network administrator at the City of Tavares hacked into management's emails and read them. Then, the department assistant used the information to send out anonymous emails slamming the city. Recently, there were articles in the press about the Tavares, City Manager, John Drury, requesting a salary increase, and apparently the articles were based on the anonymous emails sent out. Somewhere, someone got suspicious and the Administration hired a consultant to track down who was using the inside info, and they... got em in a 41 page report. Government workers need to watch out for, and RESPECT email privacy rights, and kudos to City Administrator John Drury for tracking down the culprits. However, keep in mind that in Florida, emails are subject to sunshine open records laws, and anyone could have filed an open records request to get all emails from specific people, and would have gotten them. However, there are rules to redact or edit out certain subjects, and salary discussions could have been one of them. Thus,... Read more →

California City to repay HUD $1.3-million due to Improper Use of Federal Affordable Housing Grant

Guest what - Lake County has an affordable housing grant - I hope they are better at following the rules than this city, Montebello, California, which LIED about the project being complete when construction had not even started. One reason to worry is that Lake's Board of County Commissioners make it very hard for the separate Auditor in the Court Clerk's office to do performance audits of programs, AND they don't have their own controller type person to ensure accurate accounting is used. Yes, they have a budget manager, but not a Controller. The accounting is done separately in the Court Clerk's department, and their manager does not exercise Controller functions over the BCC. Remember the RECENT problems with the SHIP program (grants to remodel houses of poor people). That got in the news when the manager of the program was letting relatives and criminals get the loans? However, another issue could also be the cause in Montebello - many cities in that area are now run by Mexican immigrants, and they hire their own relatives to do much of the work in the cities. I used to live in Southern California. The hispanic officials are not educated and do... Read more →

Illegal Immigrants in Kansas cost their taxpayers $442-million

A Kansas Watchdog group provided a summary of a report on the cost of illegal immigrants in Kansas, and reported they cost Kansas taxpayers $442-million. And that is a state that has nowhere the high percent of illegal immigrants that Florida does. Here is a good quote which is probably the same situation in Florida: "Officials from several State agencies told us that although they have the authority to ask program participants if they are here legally, they generally don’t ask. For example, because the Department of Education is required to provide education services regardless of the child’s immigration status, they don’t inquire about students’ legal status." My main suggestion to help identify the true cost of illegal immigrants is to demand of elected officials that they establish policies (i.e. in the School District, County government, Elections Dept, etc) to mandate that staff identify illegal immigrants, and then track the added costs for them, not only just... the fact they are getting free education, but all the extra services caused by their lack of prior education (requiring remedial training), lack of English skills requiring added staff to translate and coach them, etc. Right now education departments and many government service... Read more →

Brooksville, FL City Council Decides NOT to Continue Red Light Cameras

Cities in Lake County are being approached about installing red light cameras like those in Orlando. Here is an instance where another Florida city tried them, and the City Council decided the main feature of the cameras was excess revenue generation for the State and City, and they did NOT renew their provider agreement, essentially turning off their red light cameras. It is interesting to note that the fine for a red light camera offense is $158, and $83 goes to the State, then the vendor keeps about 25%, or $37.50 and the city keeps... the remaining $37.50. One Councilman said that the city was already starting to be dependent on the income, which was becoming the motivating factor, not increasing safety. So, when your local City Council gets approached by that well connected local Lake County attorney who represents the vendor, go speak at the meeting if you don't want to become another revenue source and over react each time you see a red light camera. PS: My local audio installer, who installs high end sound systems in houses, tells me that the parts and systems for red light cameras are all off the shelf items he could assemble... Read more →

Rhode Island State Police Get Tough & Report ANY Illegal Immigrant to ICE for possible Deportation

It seems Arizona gets most of the press these days about illegal immigration regulations, but in the State of Rhode Island, the head of the State Police has his troopers reporting and deporting ANY illegal immigrant they find during traffic stops, etc. The article below contrasts that practice with nearby Massachussets, which only... fines them for any transgressions. Maybe Florida and Lake County should adopt Rhode Island's procedures next. vj from Boston.com HERE R.I. troopers embrace firm immigration role In contrast to Mass., they report all who are present illegally By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | July 6, 2010 SCITUATE, R.I. — Rhode Island State Trooper Nuno Vasconcelos was patrolling Interstate 95 a few months ago when he came upon a two-car accident in heavy traffic. The trooper pulled up, stepped out of his cruiser, and asked one of the drivers for his license. The man said he did not have a license, and under questioning, confessed that he was here illegally from Guatemala. If the accident had happened 15 miles north in Massachusetts, the man would probably have been arrested for driving without a license, which carries a fine of up to $1,000 and 10 days in jail, then... Read more →