Fiscal Rangers

Minneola City Council Oct. 1, 2019 Meeting Transparency is lacking due to poor online agenda!

Tonight's Oct. 1, 2019 Minneola, FL City Council meeting is not very transparent because they only posted a 4 page agenda online, have no meeting videos, and don't tell citizens that you have to email the City Clerk and specifically ask for a link to scattered documents (not in one pdf) supporting agenda items. That is not very transparent. Is this agenda method intentional to obfuscate what is happening at meetings? Read more →

The new Lake County 2019/2020 Property Tax TRIM Notices are Out - and you need to analyze them

The 2019-20 Lake County, FL property tax TRIM notices are out. We provide an example and some analysis, and tips how to analyze YOUR rates to understand if hidden increases are included. Read more →

Tavares, FL property owners should attend this budget workshop, or open your wallet for higher taxes

Tavares, FL residents need to read this about pending millage rate tax hikes at a City Council workshop on July 24, 2019 at 4pm. These issues of escalating taxes are affecting ALL city and county residents in Lake County and the rest of Florida. If you don't act now, then hold out your wallet for tax day. Read more →

Florida City gets hit with ransomware demands and pays $600,000 to regain access to their computers and files

A Florida City just paid $600,000 in bitcoin ransom to get access to their computer systems and files after a police department employee opened an email with ransomware code in it. I hope no Lake County, FL city or government agency wastes taxpayer funds by being a future victim of ransomware. Read all about it HERE. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

More Lake County, FL Cities and government agencies need to provide Live or uploaded meeting videos!

Local cities and government agencies in Florida, including Lake County, FL, are reducing public transparency by removing most published documents, even for upcoming meeting agendas and staff packets, or annual financial reports or budgets. They are doing it to avoid nuisance lawsuits by roving bands of attorneys suing them for not spending thousands of taxpayer dollars to comply with Federal ADA laws related to "accessibility" for sight and hearing limited users. Read more →

A Florida homeowner's guide for coping with surprise real estate developments next door.

Florida homeowners may be blindsided by developer requests for questionable projects next to them like the proposed 4-story rental apartment complex on the shores of Lake Saunders near Tavares, FL next to the single story, single family residences. So we created a 36 minute Florida Homeowners guide to the land development process to understand how to make your voice heard or oppose outlandish land use developments. Read more →

Tavares, FL City Council April 3, 2019 Meeting & the Great Debate over Dumpster Enclosure Rules. See our video.

We reported on the April 3, 2019 meeting of the Tavares, FL City Council, plus a link to our video of the meeting. See the description for topics and links. Highlights were gripes about not allowing public input on upcoming development proposal hearings, update on the Tavares Performing Arts Center and the Great Dumpster Enclosure Debate. Read more →

Clermont, FL City Council votes to spend taxpayer funds to appeal a legal decision they lost.

The Clermont City Council lost a legal action to allow a charter school to build on a five acre lot with terrible traffic issues and neighbor complaints. Neither city staff or the Lake County School District wanted the project approved. Now the City attorney convinced the clearly vague Council to approve an expensive appeal of the legal decision. Neighbor opposition leader Dani Page made a video of that meeting which you can watch. The saga continues at taxpayer expense. Read more →

The Process inherited by the new Florida Governor to process appointments is convoluted and non-transparent!

We created a watchdog blog video of the convoluted, confusing and non-transparent process used by the Florida Governor's Appointments office to find filled and vacant positions and apply for them. Watch it - it took us 44 minutes to explain the whole bureaucratic "we always have done it this way" process. Read more →

Federal & Florida ADA Compliance laws are wrecking local government transparency and incurring huge costs

Tavares, FL March 11, 2019 Federal and Florida regulations on compliance with the American Disabilities Act (ADA) are causing excess costs and reduced public transparency over local government meeting videos, agendas, budgets and even annual financial reports (CAFR's). Essentially, some scummy lawyers found that ADA requirements can be interpreted to require that any local government has to provide online information in a format that can be read by ADA software tools used by the disabled, such as vision limited or hearing limited. Apparently, the tools use screen "scanning" to find text or picture captions that can then be converted to audio so the disabled can "read" or "hear" the online information. We wrote an earlier story about this in January 2019 HERE, after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about it. It contains more about the scummy lawsuits, so I did not repeat it here. The Jan. 6, 2019 Orlando Sentinel story is here. And very few local governments have the funds to revamp their websites and file systems to comply with the lawsuit demands. Now, a city like Orlando could afford to get the software and modify all their files so they can be read by the ADA tools,... Read more →

60 Local Government Employees based in Tavares, FL Earned $100k or more in 2017 per OpenTheBooks.org database

A government spending watchdog, OpenTheBooks.org, tracks wasteful government programs and also tracks local, state and Federal employee wages over $100k. We examined their reports for local cities in the Lake County area, and found 60 employees working in the Tavares, FL area for government that earned over $100k. OpenTheBooks.org also launched an initiative to encourage the Congress to launch a "War on Waste" by listing wasteful, stupid Federal programs and asking the government to publish budget details for transparency, and then eliminate the uncovered, wasteful programs. Read more →

Transparency over local government meeting agendas, minutes, videos, etc. is being damaged by ADA compliance lawsuits

Local governments like cities are being sued because their websites are not completely designed to comply with ADA requirements that were written before the internet was created.  For instance, cities cannot post meeting videos if they don't incur the expense to provide captions that software for the blind or deaf can read and translate so they can understand it.  Thus the benefit of transparency for 97% of the populations are shut down for 3% who complain. Read more →

Wunderbar - the new Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General

Wunderbar - the newly elected Lake County, FL Court Clerk, Gary Cooney, has Appointed a new, QUALIFIED, Inspector General, Terri Freeman. Read more →

Project Veritas uncovers a Deep State Federal Auditor working on anti-Capitalist campaigns at work - Call your Congressman

Project Veritas uncovered on video a FEDERAL GAO staffer and card-carrying member of the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) admitting he works to destroy capitalism using work time. As a retired internal audit manager this makes me really angry so I submitted this video link and other information to Trey Gowdy's US House Oversight & Reform Committee and asked for a public investigation. Read more →

Who will be running the Lake County Court Clerk function after November?

At the last moment, a new candidate filed to run for Lake County, FL Court Clerk vs a favored insider who was named by the retiring Court Clerk AFTER potential candidates could collect and submit petition cards to qualify for the ballot. Instead, the new candidate will have to pay over $8000 in fees to qualify. We tell you all about it. Read more →

Tavares, FL City Council Meeting VIDEO - Mar. 7, 2018 - More admin screwups postpone Shirley Shores Annexation AGAIN

Tavares, FL Mar. 11, 2018 I uploaded a video to YouTube of the Tavares, FL City Council meeting held on March 7, 2018 which is HERE: https://youtu.be/AWMAe7TYQC0. The agenda location is on the 2nd slide. Length is 1 hr, 17 min. The short link to THIS blog page is: https://tinyurl.com/TavaresFLMarch7 I have decided to write some comments about the actions seen in this meeting video which are below. Tab 7 - Annexation and Rezoning related to Shirley Shores Road / Hidden River Lakes proposed 222 acre development. THIS WAS POSTPONED DUE TO IMPROPER NOTIFICATION OF THE PUBLIC BY THE DEVELOPER'S REPRESENTATIVES. See overview starting at 3:55 on the video then more later. Probably at least 60 neighbors were there for this issue and for the 3rd or 4th time, the procedures were botched, so the issue was postponed to a future meeting. Apparently the developer representatives must follow certain steps and the city staff does not ensure they are followed, then the opposition attorney raises the issue and ONCE AGAIN, the issue is postponed. I am flabbergasted the City staff has no sanctions or fines to apply when zoning/land use change requesters don't follow the rules. So everyone will have... Read more →

Yippee! Lake County, FL & Three Cities try to increase efficiency by measuring performance metrics

Florida is home to the largest consortium of cities and counties tracking performance benchmarks, called the Florida Benchmarking Consortium. The Lake County government, plus three cities, Mt. Dora, Tavares and Clermont joined FBC last year (2017). The first annual FBC report showing performance measures for more than 30 members was just published in Dec., 2017 for fiscal year 2015-16 and they are in it. We review the overall program here, and will cover specific results in a future article. Read more →

$70-million Lutheran Refugee Administration Group Explodes in Fraud & Mismanagement Accusations

Know any Lutherans? Their national group, Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Serices (Lirs) managing about $70-million in mostly Federally funded refugee resettlement programs just exploded in accusations of fraud, mismanagement, etc. Read more →

Updated: Eustis, FL City Council overpaid for historic building, sell it for much less to Mayor's friends

The Mayor of the City of Eustis, FL pushed through a $250,000 city purchase of a historic building and adjacent lot appraised at $175,000 and over paid $75,000 for the buys. Then the city will keep the lot valued at $35,000 and sell the building for $160,000 to friends of the Mayor without advertising for any other buyers at the sweetheart price. AND, the city will finance the $160,000 (plus imputed interest of $27,000) sale of the building over five years and only require $500 down and no credit checks or due diligence to ensure ability to pay the taxpayer funded mortgage. This is small town cronyism at it's best. Read more →

Lake County Republicans Recommend NO on Nov. 8 Ballot Initiative to "Renew" 40 year old 1 mill North Lake County Hospital District tax

The election ballot for Nov. 8, 2016 for Lake County, FL will contain a referndum item that asks voters to vote Yes or No to continue the 1 Mill North Lake County Hospital District property tax for another 10 years. The Lake County Republican Party held a forum of proponents and opponents of the ballot issue, and members voted over 2/3 to recommend a NO vote on the ballot. This article describes the issue and forum in more detail with links to the formal resolution to vote NO, the REC press release, video links, etc. Read more →

BAD US Senator Harry Reid blocks Federal Inspector General Transparency Bill S.579

April 10, 2016 Tavares, FL BAD Democrat Sen. Harry Reid even has a poster about how bad he is.. BAD Senator Harry Reid (D), the US Senate minority leader, has been blocking a bill, S.579, to allow Federal Inspector Generals to access all records and employees of Federal Agencies in IG inspections and audits. This is the same Senator involved in bad land deals in Nevada and who blocked many Senate bills from being voted on. Due to Reid's efforts to block S.579, the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), named Reid as "Porker of the Month". As a former Internal Audit manager in Fortune 500 firms, and an anti-corruption manager in Iraq, I fully believe that Inspector Generals should have full independence and have full access to all records and employees of the agency under their jurisdiction. Reid's actions are a flagrant disregard for proper transparency needed over government activities. But GOOD Sen. Chuck Grassley has still been pushing the bill, S.579, that would mandate transparency and openess for IG activities, even with Reid blocking the bill for 5 months. So a Las Vegas newspaper wrote a story about it on Mar. 27, and here is a 15... Read more →

Today's Daily Commercial published an AP story on open record law status in "every state". Then the editor chopped it off after only describing status in Alabama, Alaska and Arizona. They left out all the other states including Florida. So here is the intro, the Florida section and a link to the entire article Read more →

Lake County, FL Candidate Meet & Greet Notice: Feb. 18 in Tavares

The North Lake County Tea Party and the Lake Federated Republican Women’s Club is hosting a local candidate election meet and greet event on Feb. 18 at 6:30 pm in Tavares, FL for ALL new and re-election partisan and non-partisan candidates for any party or office in Lake County. The event is open to all voters. Read more →

Education Journal investigation shows Florida State University waived admissions criteria for connected students

Following a University of Texas admissions scandal, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an investigation into admissions favoritism at 13 top public universities Sunday. They found Florida State Unversity to be dropping entrance admission criteria for connected students, and up to 40 times, connected leaders or alumni contacted the admissions office to "follow up" on specific admissions, unlike several universities which did not allow such actions. Read more →

Florida the Huckster State Update: Florida's Tourism Promotion Agency Refuses to Disclose payments to promoters

Florida has a tourism promotions agency, Visit Florida, funded with tax money that promotes tourism in Florida. They paid a rapper, Pitbull, to promote Florida tourism on his Twitter account, but will not disclose the payments. Here are links to an Orlando Sentinel article and editorial, and our comments. We consider this to be another example of Florida as a Huckster State, with low level oversight and transparency. Read more →

Lake County, FL Legislators Delegation Summit - Dec. 9, 2015, Leesburg, FL

Every year the five Lake County, Florida Legislators hold their annual Lake County Legislators' Summit to hear three minutes of public input from local agencies and citizens. Yesterday, Dec. 9, 2015, they held the annual meeting for three hours with 53 speakers. They use the input to set their priorities for the upcoming Florida legislation session that starts in January, 2016. Read more →

Lake County School Board and Superintendent Restrict District Audit Director from Auditing Certain Functions

Today the Daily Commercial published a front page article about recent actions by the Lake County School Board to restrict the ability of the District Internal Audit Director from reviewing "teaching and learning" processes. We comment on why that is a bad idea. Never forget that government is a monopoly, so extra oversight and transparency is needed to ensure operations are efficient, effective and economical. One way to do that is have an independent internal audit function with full and unfettered access to all employees, vendors, and records. Read more →

How to Use Common Law Grand Juries to Investigate Government Officials

Who knew there is a method defined in the US Constitution and descended from the the British Magna Carta on how citizen activists can convene a Common Law Grand Jury (CLGJ) to investigate local Governent corruption. A well known conservative talk show host and author, Jason W. Hoyt, visited Lake County, FL recently and explained how to setup a CLGJ. Read more →

Florida Gets a D- and is ranked 30th in National State Integrity Investigation Report

Florida ranked a D- in a new, national study comparing all states in 13 "integrity" or accountability categories. A well known national watchdog, Center for Public Integrity ( http://www.publicintegrity.org/ ), published their annual "State Integrity Investigation" report comparing how each state ranks in 13 categories related to transparency, oversight and accountability. A partner, www.GlobalIntegrity.org was also involved in the report development. Florida, like MOST states, ranked near the bottom with a D- and only three states had higher C or B rankings. Based on points, Florida "achieved" a 61, and was 30th out of all 50 states (or 57 states if you are Obama). Read more →

Blogger Article takes down Chicago Schools CEO Indicted for Funneling No-bid contracts to former employers for kickbacks

Tavares, FL Oct. 13, 2015 "Last Thursday, former Chicago Public School CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett was indicted by a federal grand jury for funneling $23-million in no-bid CPS contracts to former employers in exchange for kickbacks." Here is a local, Chicago TV video report. The CEO was appointed by Democrat Rahm Emmanuel Read why watchdog bloggers, internal audits and oversight are needed on all government agencies. A blogger's article was read by the Schools' Inspector General, who investigated further, and then the FBI took over. "Beginning in April 2012, the federal indictment says, Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Vranas “knowingly devised, intended to devise, and participated in a scheme to defraud and to obtain money and property from CPS” by fraudulent means. Byrd-Bennett is said to have agreed to accept bribes and kickbacks that would be paid by $127,000 being deposited into each of her twin grandsons’ “college tuition accounts” when she returned to SUPES as an employee–even if for just a day." VJ Read more →

10+ Reasons to Vote AGAINST Lake County, Florida's $800-million "Infrastructure Sales Tax" Referendum on Nov. 3

On Nov. 3, 2015, the ballot in Lake County, FL will have a referendum asking voters to renew an existing one penny sales tax for another 15 years that will generate between $450-800-million in taxes. The funds will be for capital spending like buildings or computers or vehicles and split in thirds for each of these three groups: 1) Lake County government, the 14 cities in Lake County, and the School District. This article covers 10+ reasons to vote NO on the referendum and conditions needed to save taxpayers $100-million plus by prohibiting use of bonds to run up government debt. Read more →

FiscalRangers Alert: Lake County Board to approve CDBG grant Tuesday morning that requires compliance with Obama's HUD AFFH program to shift poor residents into wealthier existing communities

The Lake County Board of Commissioners meeting agenda for Tuesday, August 4, 2015 contains a consent agenda item to approve a Federal CDBG grant plan. That plan contains a condition to comply with AFFH or Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing which can result in damage to existing property values of full neighborhoods. The Board should pull the agenda item and schedule it for a full staff presentation at a public workshop with public input to understand all the negative implications. The CDBG grant should be rejected due to the requirement for AFFH implementation. Read more →

Our Take of Yesterday's Lake County Legislators' Delegation Forum & Video Posted

Leesburg, FL - Jan 5, 2012 Yesterday, Jan. 4th, Lake County's three Florida Representatives ( Larry Metz, Bryan Nelson & Marlene O'Toole) and two Senators (Alan Hays & Dorothy Hukill) held their annual "Lake County Legislators' Delegation" meeting to listen to "pitches" from over 20 people from different government and other agencies asking for funds, legislation changes or other Florida State Support for their issues. The publicity for the meeting was so bad that hardly any members of the public attended. Details on meeting locations were confused with three different sites being described by different people. Agendas were stacked at the side and there was no table to greet attendees or get their names to send out follow up documents. I only found out about the meeting in the morning and had to cancel a dental appointment to attend. Hardly any members of the public or press attended. The only member of the press there was from Lake Sentinel. The picture shows you what I mean - this was halfway through the meeting after first speakers all left. If taxpayers and conservative groups don't attend these types of meetings and make their positions known, don't cry when nothing is done.... Read more →

Orlando CFO Screws Up and Awards 8.7-million Contract WITHOUT Competitive Bidding

Tavares, lake County, FL - Thursday, Dec. 20,2012 The City of Orlando CFO, Rebecca Sutton, signed a major software contract for $8.7-million without requiring any bids on the new software project. Then she flew with several other staff members to Las Vegas using $20,000 in City funds to announce the contract at the software developer's conference. All this without any bidding. The Orlando Sentinel provided many details HERE. (Note - READ the comments, which are more blunt than I am). I was a software developer for seven years, and before that I was an internal audit manager in large firms like Nissan, ARCO (the oil company) and the County of Los Angeles. A big red flag to an auditor is lack of competitive bidding, called sole sourcing, for large contracts. The Orlando CFO completely skipped that process because some sales people got to her and convinced her there was no need for competitive bidding. YOU NEVER DO THAT IF YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. You always go through the bidding for several reasons: - The competitors ask questions and flush out details or issues you did not consider. Picking just one vendor allows them to snow you with only favorable features... Read more →

Boca Raton Watchdog Group Complains about Excessive Firefighter Benefits & Pensions

Tavares, FL It seems that the CITY of Boca Raton, FL (not County) is slipping into heavy deficits, and like Lake County, the elected officials are ignoring the steep costs of pension and benefits for employees. In this case a new watchdog group was formed to disclose facts about excessive pensions and benefits and wages for city firefighters and EMS employees. We also added a link at the bottom of this posting to a story about how San Diego and San Jose referendums were passed to drastically reduce government employee pensions costs. Here is the Boca Raton story: http://www.bizpacreview.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.details&ArticleId=738070&returnTo=dale-king And, attached below is a VERY GOOD graphic 12 page Powerpoint that clearly shows the effects of excessive pensions and benefits for the firefighters. Watch the Powerpoint first - it is very good, then read the story. This is very clear analysis that should be an example of the type of visual analysis required of EVERY government agency about the effects of their pension, wages & and benefits. Download 2012_BCFRGoalSetting AND, here is a story how both San Diego and San Jose citizens pushed through referendums to drastically reduce government employee pensions. One city eliminated "pension spiking" which is the common... Read more →

This is Bilderberg 2012 Week - We Tell you about a Secretive International Group Affecting Freedom

Tavares, FL - Tuesday, May 29, 2012 - (Updated June 3rd with video links) Since this is a holiday week, neither the Lake County School Board or Lake County Board met last week, and the County Board is not meeting on Tuesday. So, I decided to cover the secretive Bilderberg meeting in Virginia, with an article each day on our Facebook page ( FiscalRangers ) through the weekend on this secretive "One World Government" group behind many international decisions affecting our banks, freedom, support for sustainable development, etc. The annual Bilderberg secret meeting will be held this weekend, May 31 to June 3 in Chantilly, Virginia. Yes, normally you probably want to watch FoxNews or Glen Beck this weekend, but I suggest you also watch some of the online coverage on Bilderberg, which is one hub besides the United Nations in the One World Government plan. Your local "mainstream media" outlets rarely challenge or cover Bilderberg, although many of their media leaders attend the actual meetings. This will be educational, since many independent online videographers are attending the meeting this weekend and will be live streaming what they find. After the "What is Bilderberg" section, I provide a link to... Read more →

Lake County Government Website Receives "Sunny Award" for good Website Transparency

Tavares, FL - March 13, 2012 This is National Sunshine Week, and Lake County received an award for how the County website provided information to improve "transparency" over local government actions. Congratulations to Lake County, FL Government for receiving the "Sunny Award" from Sunshine Review, a journal on government transparency located in the Washington D.C area. They ranked 6000 government websites and only 214 received the Sunny Award, and Lake County's website was one. Lake County's website was scored an "A" transparency grade on Sunshine Review's Transparency Checklist. It goes to show, that Lake County will do anything to keep me from providing public input at a Board meeting!! I notice that their winners list also included many School Districts, including nearby Orange County. Here is the website page listing all 214 "A" Sunny Award winners, including Lake County: http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/2012_Sunny_Awards Here is the webpage describing the "Transparency Checklist" and method used to determine Sunny Awards and rankings. They have checklists for cities, countys, school districts & state agencies: http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Transparency_checklist However, I couldn't help notice that one of the checklist items isn't followed much at Lake County. They post financial audits, but not performance audits and there are no evaluations of... Read more →

New Federal Report Indicates Teacher Pay is DOUBLE the pay for private sector

Tavares, FL - Dec. 23, 2011 - A Sunshine State News article describes a new Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics report indicating that nationally, teachers pay, including benefits, is significantly more than the private sector or other government employees. The first half of this article discussed national figures, then they discuss Florida, where we do know teachers are less paid because this is a right to work state, but then so are all employees in Florida. Read and understand - much blame is put on the unions for focusing on rewards for seniority vs competence. "Two surprising new reports show that hourly pay and benefits for public-school teachers are higher than the compensation received by other government employees or similarly qualified private-sector workers." Meanshile, in Lake County, the teacher and SEIU unions are already in negotiations to lock in wage or benefit increases before the School District Board finds out how little money they have for next year. Watch and see the Lake County Board approve either wage or benefit increases in a closed meeting early next year. Then they will cry that they don't have money to pay for teaching the kids and other services. It is my belief... 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 →