Commissioner Pat Kemp Running Again But This Time With Questionable Behavior

Commissioner Pat Kemp

Did Democrat Hillsborough County commissioner Pat Kemp violate our Sunshine Laws?  It appears Kemp collaborated behind closed doors last year with fellow Democrat commissioners Kimberly Overman and Mariella Smith to collectively oppose TECO's proposed Big Bend natural gas plant after the commission had already voted their unanimous approval.

Tampa Bay Anti-Car Brigade Candidates on November Ballot - Voters Take Note!

Tampa Bay Anti-Car Brigade Candidates
on November Ballot

Voters take note of the Anti-Car Brigade in Tampa Bay because four of them, Pat Kemp, Harry Cohen, Janet Long and Charlie Justice, are on the November ballot. The Anti-Car Brigade agenda is to force us out of the security of our individual vehicles that keep us healthier and safer. Their agenda requires large tax increases to pay for costly rail and transit few will ever use and road diets to make car travel more painful and traffic congestion worse.

Rewarding the Big Mess Makers

A judge threw out most of the All for Transportation (AFT) transit tax as illegal and unlawful. 

Rewarding All For Transportation who subjected voters to a legally flawed 30 year $16 Billion transit tax last year is unacceptable. 

But Hillsborough County Democrat commissioners Les Miller and his 3 Democrat colleagues decided to reward those who ran amok of State Statutes to get their $16 Billion transit tax passed. 

AFT Tax Hike Scam Puts County Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The All For Transportation (AFT) tax hike may turn into one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on Hillsborough County voters and taxpayers.

We predicted the AFT would create a big mess and more evidence of that played out at a Hillsborough County BOCC workshop held February 21, 2019.

The workshop to discuss how the county could spend $110 million of new AFT tax proceeds quickly turned into a debacle. The commissioners darted in all directions when confronted with the reality the $16 Billion AFT tax hike does not fund new road capacity in Hillsborough County for 30 years.

No More Budget Shell Games - Fund our Roads and Transportation Needs Now!

The county commissioners held a Budget Workshop July 28. The Eye was there. The Workshop was opened to public comment and a number of citizens, including myself, requested the county move now on implementing Commissioner Murman's proposal to use the growth revenues in our existing ballooning budget to fund our roads and transportation needs. 

The dynamics of the Budget Workshop was quite telling. Commissioner Hagan kept insinuating cuts would have to be made for such a plan. That is almost laughable. It does prove some commissioners and unelected bureaucrats do not want to prioritize our ballooning budget, unless, of course, it's to fund a new baseball stadium for another wealthy sports team owner.

Everything cannot be a priority. If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. That is fiscally irresponsible.

Such an attitude is what forces Hillsborough County taxpayers to continue funding pork projects, lower priority items, and subsidize wealthy special interests BEFORE funding our roads and transportation needs.

County Administrator Mike Merrill brought up a concern about our reserves and our AAA credit rating. According to the budget presentation given at the Workshop, the county has been dipping into our reserves the last few years to fund parks, fire stations, service centers, nebulous economic development projects - while holding our road funding hostage.

We do not remember hearing this concern during any of those previous budget cycles. Page 25 of the Recommended FY2017 budget states:

Our reserve funds remain stable, and Hillsborough County remains well positioned to excel in meeting the needs of our residents and our business community. 

So which is it? 

If Merrill is suddenly concerned about our reserves affecting our bond rating, then why did he put the county in such a position to begin with?

Decisions still must be made regarding how the $23 million one-time BP settlement windfall, that has no restrictions on it use, will be spent. Some commissioners want to use the funds for transportation which has the biggest funding gap in our budget. Others prefer the money be used for environmental purposes or for our stormwater infrastructure. 

The FY2017 budget dishonestly includes $30 million of taxpayer money to buy back developer's impact fee credits as "transportation spending". This buy back scheme that benefits developers represents 3/5 of the entire transportation spending for FY2017. That is nonsense. The games being played with our tax dollars must stop.

Merrill is a professional at magically pulling money out of his rabbit hat when he wants to.  

We were at the April 13th Community Transportation Plan and Mobility Fee Workshop where the impact fee buy back program was presented to the county commissioners. Merrill and his staff showed how easy it was to "find" or "reallocate" tens of millions of existing budget dollars to fund this buy back scheme. 

At the same time Merrill and his staff have been telling the public for years there was no money for roads. Outrageous!

The county commissioners need to revisit this impact fee buy back program. Either get rid of it and let the actual free marketplace work or consider using the $23 million one-time BP oil spill money to pay for them so taxpayers aren't on the hook for funding another scheme benefitting special interest developers. 

Then the county can honestly use that $30 million Merrill "found" to fund real transportation projects.

There is another BP oil spill settlement the county expects to receive that will have restrictions on its use while this settlement has no restrictions on its use.

Merrill astonishingly revealed at the Workshop that he can start a procurement process for a project that has not been approved by the commissioners and budgeted for. Perhaps that explains how Parsons Brinckerhoff got their million dollar blank check no bid contract procured so fast for the crony Go Hillsborough campaign. That is not good governance.

We have watched a "go along to get along" county commission for too many years. The commissioners have been led by unelected bureaucrats with little or no questions asked, for way too long. 

It was refreshing to see some commissioners pushing back on the unelected bureaucrat's agenda. Both Commissioners White and Murman are to be commended for their comments and actions taken at the Budget Workshop.

The county should not be addressing flagged items at this Workshop. There has not been one budget public hearing because too much time was wasted on two sales tax hike public hearings. White and Murman want to start addressing our transportation issue now and get to work on actually getting something done. Kudos to them.

The poll done by the Go Hillsborough campaign last April highlighted the issue of trust and confidence for how the county spends what we already have. 

Poll questions regarding trust and current spending
Click to enlarge

County collects enough already – no need to raise taxes – do better job of spending money we already have:  69% agree with 46% strongly agreed

We cannot trust politicians to spend new tax money on transportation problems as they promise – they will divert the money as they did the CIT:  69% agree with 42% strongly agreed  

This should have been a big red flag to the county commissioners. When over 2/3 of voters polled agree there is a lack of trust and there is no need to raise taxes, no sales tax hike was ever going to pass.

The sales tax hike is dead. The rubber has hit the road and we must pursue a new direction. 

Our existing budget cannot be used as a shell game to continue funding everything else under the sun except our roads and transportation, a primary responsibility of local government. 

Thankfully some commissioners understand that and want to move on to Plan B. Other commissioners, addicted to a sales tax hike, appear to be in some kind of denial.

The key to start funding our roads and transportation needs now within our existing growing budget is getting Commissioner Murman's funding proposal approved at the Community Transportation Plan Workshop to be held on August 10th at 1:30pm. 

This meeting will be open for public comment. Weigh in by attending and making a public comment in support of Murman's transportation funding proposal or by emailing the county commissioners here. 

Time to break away from failure.

Time to stop using our budget as a shell game to fund everything under the sun but transportation.

Time for the Chamber of Commerce and our business community to get behind Murman's proposal if they are truly serious about starting to solve our transportation problem. 

Time for our local media to wake up and accurately report what is going on with our county budget because they have been asleep at the wheel. 

Time to put our roads and transportation needs FIRST in our growing budget.

Time for the County to pursue success not failure.

 We demand it!

Commissioners Must Act Now To Fund our Roads

Not only did the county commissioners vote last month at the second sales tax hike public hearing against any sales tax hike referendum, they also voted to pursue Commissioner Sandy Murman's proposal to fund our roads and transportation needs within our growing existing budget. 

We are now in the FY2017 budget cycle and there is concern that county staff is not doing that nor putting forth a budget following the strategic direction they were told. In addition, the county was not providing ample opportunity for the public to weigh in with public comment on the FY2017 budget. That would be wrong at this critical juncture where the county must start appropriately funding our roads and transportation.

Below is the public comment I made at last weeks BOCC meeting:

I am Sharon Calvert and I live in Lutz, FL. I am concerned with the 2017 budget. After two public hearings, a majority of this Board said that transportation will be a top priority in our budget.  

Five weeks later I am concerned that the recommended budget does not do that. The Board voted, you gave direction, County staff must work to do that.
For your vote to be meaningful, this Board needs to follow through and do what you said you would do, fund our roads and transportation now, starting with our FY2017 within the growth of our existing budget. 

This is a critical budget cycle. Yet there are no budget public hearings until September, way too late for the public to weigh in on changes to be made for this budget cycle. 

A budget workshop is scheduled for next week. I ask that the Board open that workshop to public comment. Otherwise, it appears there is lack of transparency and our critical budget process cannot be orchestrated and manipulated outside of Sunshine.  

The Administrator’s budget must stop growing by double digits. It is absurd that tens of millions of dollars of impact fee buybacks benefiting developers are somehow considered transportation funding. That is simply not being honest. 

Stop funding pet pork projects, stop funding those questionable and nebulous economic development projects, stop handing our tax dollars to special interests, or adding more parks to maintain, no more money to filmmakers and stop subsidizing the millionaires and billionaires - but start funding our highest priority - roads and transportation needs that have been neglected for way too long.  

For over three years, the county spent untold resources, time, effort and over $1.3 million telling the public that transportation is a priority.  

Now is the time for the Board to act and prove it. 

This budget cycle will confirm whether this Board has the fiscal discipline to reign in unnecessary spending and start appropriately funding our roads.  

The time is now to start enacting Commissioner Murman’s proposal to use the growth of our existing budget to fund our roads and transportation. 

Because continuing to hold our road funding hostage must stop now. 

Thank you.

Checking the BOCC calendar, we now find that the Budget Workshop scheduled for Tuesday afternoon and the Transportation Workshop scheduled for Wednesday afternoon have been cancelled. A Budget Workshop is now scheduled for Thursday, July 28, at 9am.

BOCC Calendar

The agenda and presentation for this meeting can be found here. From the agenda, it appears the county has opened this meeting up for public comment. 

Why is the county giving non-union county employees a 3.5% raise? That is a pay raise unheard of today in the private sector. Many of the county commissioners own constituents, who were negatively impacted by the last recession, are still playing catch up and are not receiving such pay raises. 

Our existing revenues have been growing at a rate of well over 6% per year the last few years, yet the county has refused to fund our roads. In FY2016 the county had over $100 million of new revenues, including over $40 million of new recurring revenues and the county refused to fund our roads. 

A previous budget workshop held earlier this year, County Administrator Mike Merrill presented:

Where is the almost $23 million of BP oil spill settlement money going? Those funds have no restrictions on their use and can be used for transportation that has been neglected for almost a decade. The BP oil spill settlement money and the almost $62 million of estimated new sources of funds together add up to almost $95 million of new revenues for FY2017.

There is no excuse for not funding our roads and transportation.

Yet it appears the budget proposed by County Administrator Mike Merrill does not follow the direction given by the county commissioners last month. As our county revenues continue going up and up and up, Merrill again is refusing to appropriately fund our roads and transportation. 

Merrill continues to hold our road and transportation funding hostage while he has been growing his bureaucracy for years by double digits. This is fiscally irresponsible. 

The nonsense needs to stop. In the private sector, when the Board of Directors provides specific strategic direction to company management, management must follow the direction. If management does not follow the Boards direction, they are fired.

There is a problem down at County Center that must be addressed. Merrill and his staff must work to accommodate the direction the commissioners gave him to start funding transportation within our growing existing budget. The entrenched bureaucracy must stop being obstructionists and do their job.

The county administrator is an unelected bureaucrat not a policy maker. We do not have an elected county mayor. The county administrator cannot collude with a couple of commissioners to push their own or some special interests of theirs agenda. 

If county staff refuse to follow directions given them by the elected county commissioners, then the commissioners must find the proper staff who will.

The county has wasted years doing absolutely nothing to fix our transportation. 

That is unacceptable. We demand better. 

It is time for the county commissioners to act. They must produce a FY2017 budget that starts funding our roads and transportation within our existing growing budget. 

The commissioners must rein in unnecessary spending and fund our roads and transportation needs first.

If they refuse, transportation is not a priority for THEM.

If they refuse, it confirms THEY cannot fix our transportation issue.

If they refuse, the solution to the out of control ballooning budget and bureaucracy must come from the voters themselves. 

And We the People have the power to do it.

Legal but Ethical? Go Hillsborough's Highly Paid "Insider" Busybody

The Go Hillsborough law enforcement investigation report was released on the Monday afternoon of the day before our Tuesday Primary Election. That's a convenient way to change the media coverage……get it drowned out by our Primary Election coverage. 

All of the media reporting from the Tribune and the Times basically focused only on the 12 page summary from State Attorney Mark Ober. The Tribune/Times reporters, to my knowledge, have not read the almost 2000 page investigative report. They should. Only WTSP's Noah Pransky, who broke the story last fall, appears to have actually read through the details according to his latest reporting, The 3 most damning things in Go Hillsborough investigation.

Our local print media refuses to report on the details. Why? Because they are part of the "Insiders" and as economist Larry Summers once told Senator Elizabeth Warren: 

Outsiders could say what they want, he told her, but people on the inside don’t listen to them. 

Insiders get more access to push their ideas to powerful people.
“But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders,” Summers told Warren

Our local media, except for WTSP's Noah Pransky, made a conscious decision to be Insiders because it corroborates their own agenda for a sales tax hike and that end justifies any means for getting there. Shameful!

Most reporting also fails to include there are Ethics complaints being investigated by the Ethics Commission in Tallahassee. 

The big news (or not) is that State Attorney Ober found no criminal wrong doing. That was what we always expected because the legal bar is low, no forensic investigation was conducted and the investigation was contained within a very narrow focus.

Cronyism does not equate to illegal and we never stated it did. Just because something is not illegal, does not mean it is ethical, moral, virtuous, honest or has any sense of integrity.  

But thanks to County Administrator Mike Merrill who asked for the investigation. The bigger news is the detailed investigation report confirms much of what the Eye has stated about the Go Hillsborough debacle. The cronyism is obvious and the timeline of events are not coincidental. 

The entire investigative report can be found here. Read it because it is "Eye" opening. It's a pdf file so use the "Find" tool and search on the words Parsons, Beth Leytham, lobbyist, or the names of those interviewed which included all the commissioners, Mayor Buckhorn, Mike Merrill, Bob Clifford. A Pepcid or antacid may be needed before reading to prevent heartburn or nausea. 

We are trudging through the almost 2000 pages. Here's a glimpse of some of what we have read, learned or confirmed:

Confirmed: Go Hillsborough was always about a sales tax hike…..stupid……

The county used the guise of public engagement to orchestrate and create a taxpayer funded Go Hillsborough campaign to specifically sell another sales tax hike. Go Hillsborough was not about doing engineering work - there was never an engineer provided by Parsons nor any certified engineering documents produced. We did get branding, electioneering focus groups, electioneering polling and colluding with the media to create their "message".

What is in this report? 
Confirms Beth Leytham's massive access. Pages 147-158 of the report contains Leytham's phone records for the time period of 8/1-9/5. That was the time period leading up to the County handing Parsons their no bid million dollar blank check. WTSP's Pransky added up the number of calls for that time period in his last report:

As reported by WTSP's Noah Pransky,
# of calls from/to Beth Leytham
between 8/12014 and 9/5/2014

Below are Leytham's phone records just for the day of the August 12 Policy Leadership Group (PLG) meeting where suddenly the PLG was voting on hiring a consultant to do public engagement.

Leytham calls day of August 12, 2014 PLG meeting  (click to enlarge)

What really happened between June and August of 2014?

Merrill stated at the May 2014 PLG meeting that the transit projects were to be presented to the PLG members at the next PLG meeting in June. Roads had already been discussed during previous months meeting. Merrill cancelled June and July PLG meetings. Instead of picking up where they left off in May and presenting transit projects to the PLG in August, all of a sudden the PLG was voting to hire a "transportation expert not a PR firm" to do transportation public engagement.

Obviously a decision was made between the May and August PLG meetings, outside of Sunshine and behind the scenes that the direction of the PLG changed. Who made that decision and/or who influenced that decision? From those interviewed, the county or Merrill or someone(s) felt there was a sense of urgency to getting this public engagement done so a vote could be taken by the commissioners to put another sales tax hike on the 2016 ballot. It was all about getting a referendum on the 2016 ballot. The transit projects, as promised by Merrill, were never presented publicly to the PLG. 

What else is gleaned from the report?

• Page 95 - Commissioner Hagan and Leytham text each other during county commission meetings, including text messages related to agenda items (ironically the agenda for county commission meetings provided the public clearly state ALL CELLULAR PHONES AND PAGERS MUST BE TURNED OFF WHILE IN THE BOARDROOM.) Are they exempt from their own rules? 

Every BOCC agenda contains this
statement regarding cell phones

Text messages between Leytham and Hagan
during 10/7/2015 BOCC meeting (click to enlarge)

• We know who sends potty mouth text messages (text at 11:43:02)
• We know who cannot sneeze without speaking first with Leytham
• We know who writes Commissioner Hagan's scripted soliquoy's
• We know the sequence of events were not coincidental
• While apparently not illegal,the county abused the CCNA procurement process which is governed by Florida Statute 287.55 to procure "professional engineering services". This Statute must be reformed by our state legislators so the abuse of using it to procure taxpayer funded campaign work for a referendum never happens again - as that is using taxpayer money against the taxpayer - a post for another day.

One of the biggest issues the Sheriff's investigation seemed concerned about was all the gray matter surrounding what constitutes a lobbyist (or not).

Page 47 of the report includes Parsons Brinckerhoff's "Political Consultants" agreement with Beth Leytham dated April 2014. Parsons paid Leytham a $5000 a month retainer fee to use her politically well connected relationships to obtain business for PB in the Tampa Bay area. 

Parsons/Leytham "Political Consultants" Agreement
dated April 2014 (click to enlarge)

Leytham was working for Parsons when all those calls above were made. Common sense indicates Parsons Brinckerhoff was paying Leytham to exploit her access, especially the massive access she has with electeds. She was being paid $5000 a month by Parsons to obtain "prospective opportunities" during those months leading up to the county handing Parsons the public engagement "opportunity". It was well worth Parsons investment because four months and $20K later, Parsons was handed the $1.35 million campaign with Leytham "in tow".

Leytham and Parsons Brinckerhoff have had contracts working together for years. Her website highlights Parsons Brinckerhoff as one of her clients. As we posted here, Leytham and Parsons worked on Buckhorn's $1.2 million InVision Tampa. Everyone knows who Leytham is as she has had plenty of media coverage over the years (another post for another day). Don't kid yourself that there is anyone down at County Center who suddenly got amnesia and feigns ignorance of who Beth Leytham is. 

Leytham's clients highlighted on her website

A concern that appears to have been brought up in the report  is the numerous hats Leytham wears. She wears so many - "friend", campaign consultant, consultant, advocate, close associate, lobbyist, political consultant, information traffic cop, political ally, intelligence gatherer, media conduit, personal Google alert….How did those decision makers, who she had massive access to and was in constant communication with, know what hat she was wearing whenever they were communicating or she called or texted?

It is apparent that Leytham likes to stick her nose into county and city business while wearing all her hats. But Leytham was not just a nosy busybody like Mrs. Gladys Kravitz of the old TV show Bewitched. Leytham is a highly paid "Insider" busybody who has been on the receiving end of lots of money, including lots of taxpayer money. Exploiting her massive access to electeds and decision makers, it certainly appears her "Insider" busybody nosiness has benefited her. 

Nosy Busybody Gladys Kravitz from "Bewitched"

A common question throughout the investigation asked of those interviewed under oath was whether Beth Leytham was a lobbyist. Many of those interviewed conveniently used the same terminology to describe Leytham (as if coached) - she's an advocate, a consultant and an "intelligence source". But asked if she was a lobbyist - almost all said no.

County Administrator Mike Merrill admits that "depending on who you ask, yeah she was a lobbyist" and how "clever" she was because she never disclosed who she was representing. He throws it back to Leytham's responsibility to register as a lobbyist, which of course, she did not. He throws his hands up and says it's not his or the county's responsibility to enforce anything. Nice, huh? No wonder she wanted that lobbying ordinance presentation from Hagan on the day that item was on the county commission agenda. Think she wanted to weigh in on it?

From HCSO Interview with Merrill
 (click to enlarge)

In Commissioner Murman's interview that begins on page 734, she cearly stated Leytham was a lobbyist:

From HCSO Interview with Leytham
(click to enlarge)

Here’s some definitions for lobbyist:

dictionary.com: a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest

vocabulary.com: A lobbyist is someone hired by a business or a cause to persuade legislators to support that business or cause.

businessdictionary.com: The act of attempting to influence business and government leaders to create legislation or conduct an activity that will help a particular organization.

If lobbying before the state legislature, below is FL Statute 11.045 Lobbying before the Legislature which defines lobbying and lobbyists:

(f) “Lobbying” means influencing or attempting to influence legislative action or nonaction through oral or written communication or an attempt to obtain the goodwill of a member or employee of the Legislature. 

(g) “Lobbying firm” means any business entity, including an individual contract lobbyist, that receives or becomes entitled to receive any compensation for the purpose of lobbying, where any partner, owner, officer, or employee of the business entity is a lobbyist. 

(h) “Lobbyist” means a person who is employed and receives payment, or who contracts for economic consideration, for the purpose of lobbying, or a person who is principally employed for governmental affairs by another person or governmental entity to lobby on behalf of that other person or governmental entity.

Leytham never registered as a lobbyist. 

If it walks, talks and squawks like a lobbyist, what is it?

Do we expect our electeds and powerful decision makers to tiptoe around and tiptoe over the legal bar or be leaping over the ethical bar? 

Read the investigative report and you decide. 

More to come so keep a big supply of antacid.