Fiscal Rangers

Update on North Lake County Hospital District & Rep. Metz Reform Discussions

Tavares, FL - Nov. 29, 2011 - Below is an article from today's Orlando Sentinel by Steve Hudak giving an update on the issues and tomorrow's meeting. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/lake/os-lk-hospital-district-appeal-20111129,0,6986031.story Constitutionality Lawsuit: As the article mentions, local tax reform activist Marilyn Bainter has had her attorney file an appeal of a recent decision from the court regarding her lawsuit that the North Lake County Hospital District is not Constitutional. Some say the judge ruled in favor of the Hospitals because the Judge is a LOCAL judge and made a "rationalized" decision benefitting the local Hospitals and Leesburg establishment. That decision might not be supported by an appeals court outside this area. This appeals process would be out of the area, and may take two years, so don't expect much activity until then. NO Pink Flamingos The "NO Pink Flamingos" logo represents that fact that the current regulations authorizing the existence of the North Lake County Hospital District has NO SPENDING RULES, thus the District collects about $10-million of tax funds, and splits it amon the two large local hospitals, which can legally spend it on anything, even pink flamingos for the lawn. Tomorrow's Meeting: Below are my comments regarding tomorrow's meeting of... Read more →

Lauren Ritchie Skewers Leesburg Stealth Program to Blow $30-million Plus on Smart Meters

Tavares, FL - Nov 20, 2011 Leesburg City's attempts to blow through tax money on a smart meter boondoggle has been covered several times in Lauren Ritchie's columns. It seems it is easy to be the City Commissioners to consider such programs - so be warned - it could happen to you: Read Lauren's article from today's paper AND read all the comments first HERE. Here is my comment posted on the website, including "bonus" comments not on the OS site: Lauren is right. (egads...)! Leesburg City Manager Jay Evans seems to be practicing methods to ramrod staff supported spending or policy programs through elected official boards much like socialists teach city planners to do for "green" programs really designed to remove property rights. He seems to use the "Delphi" fake consensus technique of holding meetings with no formal votes and one sided facts to get "public support". He hides or downplays or delays the true costs (or any costs), allows last minute contract modifications to increase benefits to the contractor, fails to go for public bids again after making significant changes in the contracts, provides one sided back door information to apparently lazy elected officials using emotional pleas. Another... Read more →

Bi-Weekly Report to the North Lake Tea Party on Local Government

Tavares, FL - Nov. 16, 2001 - Twice a month I give an update to the North Lake County Tea Party which meets on the first & third Wednesday evenings at 7pm at the Tavares Civic Center, 100 E. Caroline St., Tavares. Check their website to verify details: http://www.northlaketeaparty.com/ So, here is my update, and I may add more after tonight's meeting. Lake County Government & Board of Commissioners (see meeting agendas HERE) - Poor Meeting Transparency Continues: Chair Jennifer Hill continues to indicate she doesn't like public input and is hiding issues from the public. She controls the agendas and meeting rules like allowing public input. Out of an average of four public meetings on Tuesday mornings each month, TWO never allow public input, but yet there are business issues decided and the public is NOT allowed to provide input. Those are any meeting billed as a "Workshop" or the "Zoning Meeting", yet you will always find political and business decisions on the agendas and decisions made. The worst example was LAST week, on Nov. 8th, when the workshop had five items on the agenda that used vague, nebulous terms and no explanatory attachments on the website agenda. I... Read more →

North Lake County Hospital District Features Matrix of Existing & Proposed Regulation Reforms

Tavares, FL - Nov. 6, 2011 - We have written previously about Rep. Larry Metz's proposed reforms for the regulations governing the existence and operations of the North Lake County Hospital District. Well, here is a side by side comparison matrix of issues related to the existing and the proposed regulations. It is very clear. Metz will be presenting this tomorrow to Gov. Scott's Commission to Review Hospital Districts, AND on this Wed. at 5pm at the Lake County Round Admin building in Tavares. After you read it, you will understand why reform is needed and Metz's bill "fills the bill". We often say the existing regulations are so loose on spending rules that they could buy pink lawn flamingos with the money LEGALLY. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B7LFf94Dawq1OGY0MDFiMTEtODU1ZC00NzdkLThmZWEtZDY2N2I5MTIxYTM0&hl=en_US vj Read more →

Gov. Scott Removes Madison County, FL Elections Super due to Voter Fraud

Tavares, FL - Nov. 6, 2011 - Some of our readers have been asking how secure the voting system is in Lake County, and whether voter fraud can occur like that in Houston two years ago. Well, I don't know about Lake County, but here is a case where the Madison County, FL Elections Supervisor AND a School Board members were arrested along with several others in a documented voter fraud scandal. We then found another article about absentee voter fraud in Daytona Beach, FL. It appears they manipulated absentee ballots, and did a lot of work to order absentee ballots sent to third location addresses, had the ballots marked to favor the one candidate, then mailed them in. The losing candidate filed a complaint due to the excess number of absentee ballots, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated, and got a bunch of people. I have no knowledge whether the same manipulation of absentee voters is possible in Lake County. HERE is the link to the SunshineStateNews.com article about the Madison County voter fraud case. And, HERE is a link about a 2010 Voter fraud case regarding absentee ballots and a Daytona City Councilman. And, HERE is an... Read more →

Illinois Revokes Hospital Property Tax Exemptions & Congress Asks Why not the same for Federal exemptions?

Tavares, FL - Nov. 6, 2011 - The Illinois State government just revoked property tax exemptions for some hospitals there because they were not providing enough indigent care. This New York Times article describes the question why the Federal government is lax and also not doing the same thing regarding Federal tax exemptions. We had reported in the past about a GAO audit report HERE that questioned the continued tax exempt status of non-profit hospitals that were not providing enough in offsetting indigent care required as a condition of being a non-profit. Gee, maybe the local two hospitals in Lake County might be shaking over this issue? Ya think? Maybe if the Feds saw the AHCA report that shows the local hospitals do not have much indigent care? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/business/congress-asks-irs-about-oversight-of-nonprofit-hospitals.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 vj ===================================================== Here is the article text: October 31, 2011 Congress Questions the I.R.S. About Delays in Its Oversight of Nonprofit Hospitals By STEPHANIE STROM In August, the Illinois Department of Revenue moved to revoke the property tax exemptions enjoyed by three major nonprofit hospitals after a court ruling determined that a fourth hospital in the state did not provide enough charity care to justify the tax benefit. Those hospitals, however,... Read more →

FiscalRangers.com Rebuttal to Biased Eustis Chamber Email Regarding Hospital District Reforms

(Note: This is slightly revised from our origianl email response to clean up some typos, etc). We might add more information soon. Tavares, FL - Nov. 4, 2011 - This is my reply to emails today from the Eustis Chamber of Commerce to their members where you sent out a biased flyer from the President of Waterman Hospital regarding his efforts to KILL upcoming proposed taxpayer reforms for the North Lake County Hospital District. You included a biased petition in the original email, and then after receiving complaints, won’t send out another viewpoint until Monday after uninformed readers might react to the biased email. On Nov. 9th, at 5pm, in the Lake County round administration building, the Lake County Legislators Delegation will hear arguments for and against implementation of proposed tax reforms from Rep. Larry Metz. You sent out an email that is biased towards only one viewpoint. If you are going to send out BIASED political information, you should include BOTH sides in the SAME email, and not split them up. I resent your sending out a PRO Hospital corporate welfare notice that is against the best interests of North Lake taxpayers and your Chamber members. Who is preparing... Read more →

Lake Appraiser and Lake County Tax Collector Improve Transparency over Tax Authorities

Tavares, FL - Oct. 2, 2011 - FiscalRangers has achieved an improvement in transparency over tax authorities listed on property tax notices. We recently heard at a meeting of the North Lake County Hospital District that a taxpayer had a terrible time finding out what that Hospital tax on their property was about. She looked at her Tax Trim notice from the County Appraiser, Ed Havil, and the Tax Notice from County Tax Collector Bob McKee, and the only information for the Hospital District tax was the location and date of the final hearing to approve next year's taxes. No phone, no email, no address and no website was provided. Sure, she could call either office and they could provide a phone number, but no info on what the tax was or phone number listed on the notices or on the two agency websites (we thought). In contrast, if you look at THIS Wisconsin based website, it focuses on improved transparency over taxes there. And, if you visit THIS website from Milwaukee County, you find they have provided a "Milwaukee County Accountability Portal" which "allows the publci to view detaild data on SPENDING by Milwaukee County Government. And, look at... Read more →