Fiscal Rangers

Florida Grand Jury Report Recommendations on Public Corruption

One of the last reports issued by the Florida Grand Jury under outgoing Attorney General Bill McCollum was this report issuing anti-corruption recommendations regarding State and local government. Much of it focuses on public corruption related to elected or appointed officials. Update June 4, 2011: Local Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell wrote a column on this same Corruption Report HERE. I have summarized the findings of the Corruption report below, since they did NOT provide a summary, index or table of contents in the 127 page report. "Since 2000, Florida’s three federal United States Attorney’s Office districts had more public corruption convictions than any other state’s combined district totals. Florida led the nation in the number of federally convicted public officials from 1998 through 2007. According to this testimony, Florida leads the next closest state, New York, by over an 8% margin. (pg 120)". In a chart on page 120, Florida had over 800 "Convicted Public Officials from 1998-2007" compared to almost half the other states had less than 100 convictions in the same time period. (Ed note: However, that could mean the laws in some states made it HARDER to convict or prosecute public corruption.) One press article denounced... Read more →

DROP Program in Florida Keeps Reducing Employment

Here is an Orlando Sentinel editorial on Florida's DROP program which lets Florida government workers "retire", then take their old job again while collecting full retirement PLUS the State puts an amount for more pension contributions into a fund that earns a HIGH rate of interest. Most people call this double dipping. The result is that one person is receiving both full pay, and a full pension, when if they REALLY retired, another person could be employed. This program is automatic, and not based on a rationale justification system where only truly needed employees are granted the DROP beneifts. So, the DROP program shovels more taxpayer funds at senior and high paid Florida government workers and prevents another person to fill the briefly vacated position, which keeps unemployment higher than necessary. You wouldn't find anything like this in the private sector. About the only comparable method would be hiring of retired staff as consultants, and definitely for a contracted FIVE YEARS. And, in the private sector, there is a complete separation of the former and future employing firm's benefits programs, and usually the re-hiring is based upon cost justification analysis. In the case of Florida's DROP program, it eliminates the... Read more →

Florida Government Workers gripe about paying 3% towards Pensions, but in Louisiana, it is 11%

Florida Governor Scott recently passed a budget that included a requirement that Florida State and most local employees, who all belong to a central pension fund, finally start contributing 3% of wages towards the pension fund. Maybe they haven't checked other states before they gripe - Louisiana government employees were paying 8%, and now it has been bumped up to 11% in a budget plan by the Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal. They also stopped giving automatic 4% merit increases. Both changes are in the budget plan, but we don't know if it will actually pass. "Under the ( Louisiana State ) plan, state workers would pay more toward their pension plans, with their contribution rising from the current 8% to 11%, a move anticipated to save $24 million.[18]" vj http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Louisiana_state_budget Read more →

We Visit the First Tallahassee Meeting of Governor Scott's Hospital District Tax Reform Commission

Tavares, FL - May 29, 2011 - You might call it Vance and Stan and Marilyn's "Excellent Adventure" driving up to Tallahassee on Thursday for the first meeting on Friday, May 27th of the Florida State Commission to Review Taxpayer Funded Hospital Districts (FSCRTFHD ?). We will refer to it as the Commission or HDC (Hospital District Commission). The Commission was established by Gov. Scott in an Executive Order. (Updated below on May 31 to add clarifying text and indicate audio recordings have been posted to the official website) Most website links we found are listed below in the text, or a links section at the bottom. Note: Due to the holiday weekend, only one news article has been published on this meeting as of Sunday. I will add updates to this page after more appear. They will be in the LINKS section at the bottom of this page. Summary: You can read a news article HERE about the Commission meeting, with quotes both from Lake County's Marilyn Bainter, a member of the North Lake Hospital District, and Vance Jochim, writer of this blog. Bainter and Jochim were the ONLY parties providing public input at the end of the meeting.... Read more →

Florida Hires Louisiana Based Firm to Help Reduce Medicaid Fraud & Costs

If you are concerned about Medicaid fraud and costs, this article might be of interest. It describes the firm who was hired for a $50-million contract to reduce the problems. http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/company-helps-fight-medicaid-fraud-one-visit-at-1488373.html?page=2&viewAsSinglePage=true vj Read more →

How do Lake County Schools Compare to South Carolina in Spending Transparency?

Updated 8:30 pm with new information from the CFO of Lake County Schools. Tavares, FL - May 24, 2011 - A South Carolina blog just reported that South Carolina last year required that School Districts disclose their budget details and spending details, and now, all but two districts are doing so. One of the two holdouts has a $195-million budget, but refuses to pay the $2000+ setup and $2000+ annual costs to produce the reports unless the State Controller pays the costs. In comparison, until last year, Florida had not implemented any such budget or spending transparency requirement of School Districts, although a pilot program was being planned. Before March of this year, the last time I asked, the Lake County School District's (LCSD) CFO refused to even provide us a DETAILED electronic version of the pending budget or the final version from the current year. She only published a short budget summary about 20 pages in length. She would only SELL you a printed version of the pending or final budget details at a cost of over $100. I wrote an earlier article on the lack of local School District transparency and provided examples of other Districts that WERE... Read more →

Lake County School Board Will be Asked to SUPPORT the Orlando Sunrail program, considered to be a tax boondoggle by many

Updates added at 5 and 8pm Friday. Tavares, FL - May 20, 2011 - The Lake County School Board has been asked by the local MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) to discuss issuing a resolution at their Monday evening meeting (May 23) supporting the Sunrail railroad corporate welfare program (my opinion) and sending it to Governor Scott. Lat night, the City of Eustis killed a similar resolution brought to them. Here are the details and what you can do about it, if you have concerns about Sunrail. The Lake County School board posts the agenda for their next meeting on their website in the “Board Docs” section. That agenda can be found by clicking the May 23 date HERE: http://www.boarddocs.com/fla/lake/board.nsf/Public Some members of the Tea Party, who do not support Sunrail, noticed that agenda item 4.04 was for a resolution related to supporting Sunrail, which is not favored by many locals. If you use Board Docs, and click on agenda entry 4.04, you will see some background, plus a cover memo and a draft resolution are attached. READ them first to understand what the Board is being asked to approve. Update 8:30 pm: If you want more background on why Gov.... Read more →

Update on Florida Septic Tank Issue from Florida's Tea Party Network

I provide this update on the Florida Septic Tank Issue Courtesy of Dave Von Gunten and the North Lake County Tea Party. There is now the Florida wide "Tea Party Network" of over 170 Independent Tea Party organizations and our own Lake County activist, Patricia Sullivan is Chair of the network. They had established Florida wide issue coordinators and this information is from the one for the Florida Septic Tank issue, which is a previous, very onerous law that would require every home owner with a septic tank to have it inspected and incur excessively high expenses. The law was pushed through by environmentalists and septic tank cleaning firms. Be sure to read the consumer tip below: vj ================================================================= Septic Tank Issue: Here is the latest on the Septic Tank Issue from Sharon Glass, the Tea Party Network coordinator on the issue Dear Patriots, Current Status of SB550 and the Ban on Treated Septage SB550: I am sorry I have not sent anything to you on what happened to SB550 the last day of session. I have been out of town, arrived home yesterday and have just now been able to wrap my brain around all that happened. I am... Read more →

Our Thoughts on Hurricane Readiness in Lake County

Tavares, FL - May 7, 2011 - The Daily Commercial just published an article about the need to plan for possible Hurricanes in the coming Hurricane Season. It is at: http://www.dailycommercial.com/localnews/story/050711shelters I have two thoughts regarding Hurricane readiness in Lake County: 1. What is amazing to me is that the County Government is in Tavares, but there are no public hurricane shelters in Tavares. The article had a whole listof shelters in Lake County, but nowhere is there a shelter in Tavares. Where are all those Tavares restaurant customers and visiting Seaplane owners supposed to go between meal courses when a hurricane or tornado is expected? 2. Also, the article talked about weaknesses of mobile & manufactured homes. There have been three major changes in mobile or manufactured home "tie down" procedures since the 1970's, so the latest are much less prone to being flipped, shifted, moved or damaged. But, the County has no program to publicize upgrades or encourage older mobile and manufactured home owners to upgrade the tie down systems on the home to prevent shifting and flips. Builder magazine had a long article on that subject about 2-3 years ago. I asked a Lake County building inspector... Read more →

We Launch Campaign to Get Serono Labs officers Prosecuted

We normally focus on Lake County or related local government issues. This issue doesn't really affect most regular Lake County Fiscal Rangers readers, but if you want to see details of what can be done with social media to get government to actually prosecute wrongdoers, instead of just paying a fine, read on. I am separately involved in research related to a new "CCSVI" treatment for multiple sclerosis - MS (I don't have it). This week, the US Dept. of Justice (DOJ) posted a press release about a drug company Serono Labs, that had paid unreported bribes and other expenses for many doctors to market an MS drug called Rebif. The press release said bribery, money laundering and kickbacks were involved to get doctors to push Rebif to MS patients. Most MS drugs are REALLY expensive and many prescriptions are paid by Medicare or Medicaid, thus the Federal involvement. DOJ issued a press release that they had settled with Serano paying a fine of $40-million, but NO officers were prosecuted. This has upset the MS "community" evidenced by many postings on MS related Facebook pages around the world, especially since Serono was the subject of an earlier prosecution that resulted... Read more →

Florida Jumps to 3rd Best State to Do Business in this Study

Florida leaps from 6th to third best State to do business, Chief Executive magazine says . All we have to do now is knock off Texas and North Carolina. California is DEAD last. http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-states-for-business vj Read more →

Today's Lake County School Board Meeting Covers Important Issues

Tavares, FL - May 2, 2011 - Below is an early alert I sent out to FiscalRangers insiders. The topics at today's Lake County, FL School Board meeting are School Uniforms (at left is one option for school uniforms -our nomination), Budget Updates & new staffing levels, the "no body will say the true cost" wellness centers, and new Charter school policies where staff also fail to disclose how much they have lost per kid in charter schools by not charging for various services. (At left is one option for school uniforms -our nomination). I since have been able to review attachments on the District website for some of the issues, and have added updated comments in RED below. I will post more comments AFTER the meeting in GREEN. vj Here is a link to the agenda: http://lake.k12.fl.us/lakeschools/lib/16511033164838940%5C_CalAttachments%5CAGENspecial2011.05.02.pdf If you want document supporting the agenda items, you have to go the the Board menu, select Board Docs, ( http://www.boarddocs.com/fla/lake/board.nsf/Public )then click the agenda for today’s meeting. Any supporting documents (not always provided) for the agenda items will be available as attachments. I have NOT had a chance to review the supporting documents, so my text below might not match what... Read more →