14 Big Hairy Ass Goals for Lake County, FL Legislators - presented at Legislative Delegation Jan. 15, 2019

The five members of the Lake County, FL Legislator's Delegation met today, Jan. 15, 2019, to hear public input and funding requests from perhaps 35 local groups, government bodies and individuals.

Then I didn't ask for funds, but for them to consider setting one or more of 14 "Big Hairy Ass Goals" as shown below.

Attending the meeting were Senator Dennis Baxley, Senator Kelli Stargel (who chaired the event), Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, Rep. Anthony Sabatini, and Rep. Brett Hage.  

The event was held at Lake Sumter State College in Leesburg, FL.

 

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14 “Big Hairy Ass Goals” like These Should be Implemented by Legislators!

Jan. 15, 2018 - by Vance Jochim

www.FiscalRangers.com         [email protected]        352-638-3578

This is my year of BHAG – “Big Hairy Ass Goals” to transform and improve Florida and local government operations, and here are my BHAG recommendations for your action:

1. Florida, the Huckster State Issues: PLEASE allocate 5-10% of your time to fixing STUPID Florida bureaucratic practices, loopholes and potential mis-management.  I have created an expanding list of them, titled “Florida the Huckster State – 100 Florida Government Oversight & Liberal Issues to be Fixed”.   The list is growing, and now has over 40 Florida Huckster Issues on the above webpage for Florida Legislators or local government officials to fix.   Examples include:
   1. #1 – “Lack of Fiscal & Operational Oversight of County Constitutional Officers” – NONE of the statutes governing practices of County Level Constitutional officers require periodic operational audits, public budget hearings or posting of detailed budgets on websites. That is in contrast to many other local County, City or Special Districts where they are required to do so.  The big elephant is the County Sheriff, which consistently refuses to even consider any of those improvements.
   2. #12 – Cronyism is not illegal in Florida, and it should be.
   3. #17 - Consolidation of services between cities, county’s and special districts should be mandatory to reduce overall costs vs running separate functions. Examples are procurement & dispatching.  Studies to evaluate new areas for consolidation within counties should be mandated every 3-4 years.

Recommendation 1:  READ the entire Huckster list, pick two issues, and devote 5-10% of your time to fix them.  Or, survey local constituents about similar problems, and work to fix them.  Remember, President Trump set standards to eliminate two regulations for every new one, and the Office of Management & Budget (OMB) ended up removing 5-10 times that many.

2. Voting and ballot controls should be as tough as those used by banks over cash collections.

As a former Fortune 500 Internal Audit manager, I started work at the County of Los Angeles in the 1970’s when many payments were by cash.  The County Cash Management officer ran $16-billion of cash, checks and electronic payments through the bank accounts.  I led a team auditing them for a year, including cash collections like parking lots, golf courses and tax payments while learning many cash control techniques that should be used over ballots and voting.  

Then in the last three Lake County three elections, I was a poll watcher in Groveland.  Even though I asked, I could not decipher any similar controls by the precinct workers over voting ballots or vote counts.   Yes, they had some procedures, but there did not seem to be any SITE controls over ballots used, etc.   Perhaps it was only done at HQ, and I am researching that.  But what I saw indicated that dishonest people could take bundles of blank ballots, and perhaps run them through machines later after polls closed, like the apparent practices at Broward County. 

It is my belief that a full performance audit of WORK processes, ballot tracking and balancing controls is needed by outside, experienced BANK auditors to see if votes and ballots are controlled like cash is controlled.  A public performance audit report should be required of pre and post election processes. In my opinion, the canvassing boards are not effective.

4. Mobile Home Park owners, processes and negative effects of Statute 723 that govern them need an operational audit by the Florida State Auditor General via a request approved by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.  I have investigated many abusive problems caused by some mobile home operators, and Chapter 723 prevents other government agencies, including County or City governments from taking action to protect mobile park residents (who rent the lot their mobile home is using) for fiscal or legal abuse, or even physical intimidation.  A mobile home park owner can intimidate or threaten elderly residents and there is no law to prohibit that. The residents can file complaints with the relevant department but the complaints are not transparent, and the mobile home owner is given a copy and can then threaten the complainant.  The staff has investigators but they apparently NEVER perform physical visits to a mobile home park to discuss issues with the residents.  Florida claims to have elder abuse laws, but not in this type of situation.  I have massive documentation on this, and will be talking to Senator Dennis Baxley, but other legislators should support this request. 
5. A Local Law is needed to close the Lake County Water Authority and transfer all it’s budget, staff and responsibilities to the Lake County Board.

Until this last election, the LCWA has mostly been controlled by well meaning Democrats.  In the last election, ALL Board positions were filled, with a majority being Republican.   However, they are not paid and generally, in my opinion, not motivated to spend time to fix the primary reason for the LCWA, which is WATER QUALITY.   Awhile back. Former Rep. Larry Metz pushed through a local law to at least prohibit them from getting into the tourist business and competing with the County Tourism Development Council.  

But they are still spending budget and staff time on:

1. 1. Buying land to reduce it being used for farming and resulting runoffs of nutrients into the Lakes and Rivers. So, they now have staff managing land, and not water quality.   That land should be transferred to the County into the public lands function so LCWA tax revenue is not spent on land management.
   2. They spend millions buying land above, rather than focus on lobbying legislators to control farming fertilizer use and runoffs. Why not fix the problem at the source? 
   3. I have recommended they hire a lobbyist to 1) Lobby for additional funding to control Algae & Hydrilla in the lakes before it becomes a massive problem, and 2) Lobby to change statutes as mentioned above to mandate significant runoffs by agricultural interests.
   4. LCWA is spending $2-3million of taxpayer funds every year to run the NURF facility to cleanup polluted water flowing from Lake Apopka to the Harris Chain. They should be demanding that Orange County, who causes the water pollution to reimburse Lake County taxpayers.  They should start procedures to publicize how Orange County is damaging our water quality and to hire attorneys to prepare lawsuits to seek reimbursement for the costs.
   5. There are other reasons. I am documenting them on my Facebook page “Lets Fix Lake County Water Authority”.

Recommendation #4:  Start the process for a Local Law closing the LCWA and transferring all staff, budget and responsibilities to the County Board if LCWA does not take action like recommended above.  We need people that think big, and focus on making Lake County’s lakes clear and pure, not spend their time discussing budget allocations for moving NURF effluent, or adjourning for a break to eat chicken while the public sits outside waiting. 

 

6. Common Core standards, renamed as Florida Standards, and resulting liberal biased curriculums and reading materials need to be eliminated from Florida schools, textbooks, SAT tests (from the College Board) and AP classes. You can read my older page on the Dangers of Common Core HERE.     I plan to talk to Richard Corcoran about some of the evidence I have.
7. Unions at Florida Schools need to be prohibited from funding or affiliating with anti-American national unions like NEA or SEIU. There may be reasons for unions to exist for collective bargaining, but not to support or fund anti-American national unions.    Unions are certified when about 50% of teachers vote for them.  They support Democrat Socialist candidates like Andrew Gillum who wants the US to be like Venezuela.  

Recommendation #6: 

1. 1. School teacher or service worker unions need to be independent, local and not affiliated with national unions.
   2. There is no transparency over government unions or the government agency they affect to publish public reports on numbers of union and non-union members by location and title, or total collections and disbursements and how much is paid to outside groups like national unions or campaign funds, etc. Those types of reports should be public and mandatory.  They should also be separately issued for each County level or smaller entity like School Districts, and not consolidated with other unions to mask where the funds are coming or going.

8. Hospital governing statutes that are anti-competitive and prevent easy market entry need to be prohibited. Currently, Florida has a massive bureaucracy preventing competition for hospitals and that needs to change.  Remove barriers for entry for hospitals and clinics like almost every other type of business.  Mandate that Hospitals and clinics provide formal estimates for service before implementing services. 
9. Methods for approving real estate development transportation studies need full review and improvements. For instance, developers usually engage traffic experts to say existing roads are sufficient to handle increased traffic from a development.  But neighbors complain.  At a recent Tavares City Council meeting (which is on video), a traffic engineer admitted the Florida standards for such studies do not require any consideration for how BAD the current or future traffic will be, but only that the roads can physically handle the growth in traffic.   My observations of several recent rezonings and development approvals indicate it is all a sham to allow developers to develop without any responsibility for funding traffic infrastructure.  Counties have the ability to conduct impact studies and set fees for growth related improvements, however in Lake County, the Board has constantly caved to local builders and reduced impact fees to there is no funding to improve roads.   Road quality never gets improved.

Recommendation 8:  State laws are needed to ensure mandated traffic studies are designed to reflect effect on residents and TRAFFIC DELAYS & PERCEIVED TRAFFIC CONGESTION, and not just physical infrastructure conditions. Local cities MUST ensure traffic is not congested, or unsafe due to developments.

9. When cities annex and approve developments on either side of a County road, the state needs to mandate they MUST immediately take responsibility for that road as is, and provide maintenance, not dump it back on the County. If a city is collecting property taxes on one or both sides of a County road, they should be required to maintain 50% or 100% of the road immediately without setting conditions for the County and delaying their responsibilities.
10. Charter School quality needs to be defined and enforced, and not ignored by State approvers.   I have observed several applications for good and weak charter schools at Lake County School Board meetings.  One of them was terrible, and the School Board denied them, but the State, using loophole heavy regulations, approved the Charter School.  NOTHING about that Charter school indicated quality, but yet they were approved by the State over the local School District’s objections.  That should not happen and needs to be fixed.

Recommendation 10:  Higher quality standards for charter schools are needed and School Board recommendations should be given higher weight in decisions.  If a sub-standard charter school is approved, it screws up growth planning, and leaves the local District holding the “bag” when it fails (as two Lake County Charter schools did in recent years). 

11. Internal Audit and Performance Audit Oversight over County local governments, including Cities, special districts, Constitutional Officers and Schools need serious improvement. Currently, only the Court Clerk and the School District have professional internal auditors or Inspector Generals.  But neither have authority over any other agency.   As a former Internal Audit Manager, it is my belief that a County level Inspector General is needed with authority to audit any local County, City or special district government agency.  They should have funding provided by a specified fee paid by ALL relevant agencies (not optional fees), and have authority to initiate audits of any local, County or independent agency within the County that is authorized by Florida State Statutes.  Wide audit authority is common in business and should not be subject to the whims of elected officials, management or staff.

Right now, the Court Clerk’s Inspector General has no authority to initiate audits of County functions without approval of the County Board.  There are no operational audits for efficiency, effectiveness, waste, fraud, abuse or compliance of most agencies.  No one has ever conducted performance audits of the $65-million Sheriff’s operations or any of the cities, or School operations at individual schools. 

This needs to change and a new statute should be created that requires each County have a full authority Inspector General like discussed above in order to receive any State funds.   Why give local agencies Florida taxes, or rights to tax when no one ever audits how efficient they operate?

For background, you can read my eBook draft on performance audit case studies HERE.  

Recommendation 11:  Legislators should approve legislation and starter funding for independent County level Inspector Generals that are Certified Internal Auditors, Certified Public Accountants or Certified Inspector Generals with wide ranging charters to provide oversight on how local taxes and resources are allocated, including professional level performance audits of EVERY operation every 3-5 years.  

12. Special Districts need much improved oversight at state and local level. There are 1200+ local special districts in Florida like water districts, hospital districts, etc.   There is NO OVERSIGHT of how effective, efficient or wasteful they are.   This needs to change.  You cannot rely on locally appointed or elected officials who have no clue how to measure efficiency or detect mis-management. This can be partially corrected by implementing County level Inspector Generals with authority to initiate performance and compliance internal audits of special districts.   It can also be improved by mandating that each special district expires after eight years unless a voter referendum during a Presidential election cycle approves them with a 66% vote. 

Recommendation 12:  Improve performance, compliance and effectiveness oversight of special districts by a) Establishing County level Inspector Generals to audit them, b) Mandate they expire every eight years unless approved by 66% of voters in a referendum during a Presidential election cycle, and c) mandate public performance audits be posted online at both the entity and IG’s websites.

13. CRA’s need to expire after an initial 20 years. No renewals should be allowed.  CRA’s siphon off County taxpayer funds to pay for various, and sometimes questionable projects in cities (mostly) to offset perceived “blight”.  But they are also used for many questionable purposes which are widely documented.

Recommendation 13:  Discontinue CRA’s or mandate they expire after 20 years with no renewals.  If “blight” has not been fixed in 20 years, there is no reason to continue them. 

14. Local Governments like cities & counties should be mandated to use and publicly report standard performance metrics like businesses do. Right now, most only have budgets with activity reports, like number of calls made by code enforcement staff, but they do not run resource based metrics on a weekly, monthly or annual basis that list COST per call, AND describing data analysis to find and reduce the need for some calls.  There is a group at UCF called the Florida Benchmarking Consortium ( https://www.flbenchmark.org/ ) and only Mt. Dora and Tavares are members to implement some common performance metrics.  That is a start. 

Recommendation 14: Local governments must be required to implement performance metrics and management analysis commonly used in business to ensure efficiency & effectiveness to detect and prevent waste, fraud & abuse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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