HHS headquarters in Washington, D.C. Photo: Matt Bisanz/Wikimedia Commons
Thousands of doctors across the country are billing Medicare for routine medical care at rates far above their peers, potentially costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in overcharges, according to a new government report.
The audit released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General stopped short of accusing the high-billing doctors of ripping off the government health plan for the elderly. But it stated that Medicare’s payment scales for doctors have been “vulnerable to fraud and abuse” in recent years. (more…)
Contrary to expectations, the much-criticized court decisions that gave us “super PACs” have not led to a tsunami of contributions flowing from the treasuries of Fortune 500 corporations — at least not yet anyway.
What the Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling have done is make household names out of a bunch of relatively unknown, very wealthy conservatives. (more…)
Television stations, which have been fighting a government proposal to make political ad data more accessible, came in for some harsh criticism yesterday at their annual trade show in Las Vegas. In a keynote speech Monday at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski unleashed on the industry. (more…)
The recently unveiled immigrant detention center run in Karnes City, Texas hardly looks like a prison at all.
By most accounts, the Karnes County Civil Detention Center operated under contract by The GEO Group of Boca Raton is an improvement over a sprawling U.S. immigrant-detention network, plagued by often horrific conditions and lax oversight, that costs U.S. taxpayers over $2 billion a year. (more…)
A new study by a Washington watchdog group describes how numerous members of the U.S. House of Representatives – including 18 from Florida – have used their positions to financially benefit themselves and family members.
The South Florida standouts in Thursday’s 347-page report by the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar and Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton.
Hastings, a former federal judge and a 10-term member of Congress, paid his girlfriend, Patricia Williams, $622,574 between 2007 and 2010 to be deputy district director of his congressional office. Her most recent annual salary was $166,000, the report says.
“In addition, Rep. Hastings owes Ms. Williams, a lawyer, between $500,001 and $1,000,000 for defending him during an impeachment trial,” the report says.
In 1988, then-U.S. District Judge Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury. He was convicted a year later by the Senate and removed from office.
Hastings is also cited in CREW’s report, titled “Family Affair,” for having been reimbursed $15,647 for travel and event expenses by his campaign committee.
DEUTCH PAYS RENT TO BROTHER’S LAW FIRM
Rep. Deutch, was an attorney at Broad and Cassel before he was elected to Congress in 2010. His brother, Jeffrey Deutch, is a managing director in the firm’s Boca Raton office.
Deutch’s campaign committee, Ted Deutch for Congress, paid rent to his brother’s employer, the report says.
“During the 2010 election cycle, Rep. Deutch’s campaign committee paid Broad and Cassel $14,720 for rent, shipping and telephone services,” the report says.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, is a 12-term Congresswoman and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The report details her campaign’s reimbursements to her and her father, Enrique Ros. For the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, Ros-Lehtinen was reimbursed $76,000 for travel, meal and other expenses. In the same period, her father was reimbursed $1,500.
Some examples in the report involve small amounts of money
For example, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is cited because her campaign paid about $600 fees to her husband’s employer during the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. Steve Schultz is a vice president at Community Bank of Broward, where his wife maintains an account for her campaign.
DID MICA EARMARK BENEFIT DAUGHTER’S CLIENT?
Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, sponsored a $13 million earmark in 2009 for the controversial, 61-mile Central Florida Commuter Rail project “that appears to have benefitted his daughter’s client,” the report says.
Rep. John Mica
His daughter is D’Anne Mica. From 2003-2011 she ran Mica Strategic Communications, a public relations firm. The firm’s web site listed the Florida engineering firm PBS&J as one of her clients.
The report says that PBS&J, acquired in 2010 by the United Kingdom’s engineering and design giant WS Atkins, supported that major rail initiative which is also known as SunRail. A number of Atkins’ employees are listed on a “Sunrail Key Contact List” prepared by Mica’s office and updated earlier this week.
Rep. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, is the House’s longest serving Republican. The report says he “earmarked millions of dollars to his sons’ employers.
Billy Young is a senior coordinator at the National Forensic Science Technology Center in Largo. Between 2008 and 2010, his father earmarked more than $12.2 million to the center, the report says.
Patrick Young worked as a security administrator at Science Applications International Corp. in St. Petersburg. In fiscal year 2008, his father earmarked $4.4 million to SAIC, the report says.
Rep. Young also employed his daughter-in-law, Ashley Abreu Young, as a case assistant in his office. Her most recent salary was $44,000, the report says.
BROWN EARMARKED TO DAUGHTER’S CLIENT
Congresswoman Corrine Brown, a 10-term Democrat from Jacksonville, earmarked money to a client of her lobbyist daughter, the report says.
Shantrel Brown-Fields is a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay and lobbies on transportation and infrastructure issues. Her clients include the Community Rehabilitation Center of Jacksonville.
Between 2008 and 2010, Rep. Brown earmarked a total of $939,000 to the Community Rehabilitation Center, the report says.
The campaign of Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Sarasota, paid the congressman’s sister-in-law a salary and paid two of his private companies for various services, the report says.
Yvonne Buchanan drew a salary totaling $117,000 during the 2008 and 2010 campaigns.
Buchanan’s Jamatt Properties was paid about $76,000 during the same campaign for rent, storage and other services, the report says. Buchanan’s Auto Central Services was paid $6,500 during the same period.
Republican Congressman Cliff Stearns, Gainesville, and Gus Bilirakis, Tampa, were also cited for earmarks in the report.
In 2008 and 2009, Rep. Stearns earmarked $430,000 to his wife’s employer, the College of Central Florida, the report says. His campaign also donated to the college.
Rep. Bilirakis earmarked $350,000 in 2010 to All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg. Bilirakis is honorary chairman of the Greek Children’s Fund for All Children’s Hospital, the report says.
Broward voters who plan to turn out to the polls during the busy 2012 election season better be prepared for changes.
State voter laws approved last year reduce the number of early voting days and locations, make it tougher for organizations to register voters, impose strict identification requirements and make it more difficult for felons to regain the right to vote.
“These laws were designed to further depress elections because legislators want to know ahead of time who will be voting.” said Nova Southeastern University constitutional law Professor Robert Jarvis.
Florida has two elections this year when voters turn out in large numbers – Aug. 14 that features primaries for federal, state and county races and then Nov. 6 when the race for president is decided and turnout is at its peak.
Florida is 1 of 14 states that changed election laws in 2011.
The changes in Florida were approved by a Republican-controlled state Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Rick Scott citing worries over election fraud.
“I want people to vote, but I also want to make sure there’s no fraud involved in elections,” said Scott when he signed the voter changes into law. “All of us as individuals that vote want to make sure that our elections are fair and honest.”
Cost savings has also been given as a reason for the new voter laws.
The changes strike hardest at Broward Democrats, who outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 in Florida’s second largest county. Democrats make up a little more than half of Broward’s 1 million voters. Republicans and independents about equally split the balance of county voters.
Democrats turned out in force during the 2008 presidential election to take advantage of early voting, weathering long lines at some voting locations. Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes expects “long lines in November because of fewer early voting days.”
One of the biggest changes is a sharp reduction in the time allowed for early voting, a period cut nearly in half from 14 days to eight. The 2011 restrictions come after 4.3 million Florida residents voted early by absentee ballot or in-person in the 2008 presidential election.
According to a Florida Senate report that analyzed election records, 52 percent of those who voted early were Democrats compared to 37 percent Republicans. In Broward during the 2008 presidential election 55,038 people voted early — 33,751 Democrats, 14,453 Republican and 6,834 third party/independents. A total of 341, 607 Broward residents cast ballots in that election.
The state’s decision to reduce the number of early voting days is at odds with the desire of voters expressed in an online poll taken last spring by the Broward elections office. Just 21 percent of the nearly 400 people who participated said they preferred to cast their ballot on Election Day. Seventy-nine percent said they preferred absentee ballots, or voting in person at early voting locations.
About a quarter of those respondents said they preferred early voting because of convenience. Another 22 percent said “it fit their schedule.” More than 60 percent of the poll takers identified themselves as Democrats, 27 percent were Republicans and the rest independents or third party.
CLOSED SUNDAY
The impact on voting in Florida is similar to other states that have tackled new limits on voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
A center study last fall reported, “These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 presidential election.
One of the biggest changes in Florida potentially affecting minorities eliminates early voting on the last Sunday before an election. In 2008, nearly 54 percent of those early voters were black, one third Hispanic.
According to the NAACP, that year 33 percent of blacks in Florida and nearly 24 percent of Hispanics in the state voted on the last Sunday before the presidential election.
The change will end the “Souls to the Polls” turnout drive used by African American and Latino churches before the 2008 general election, according to the Brennan report. Obama won Florida by about 200,000 votes that year. Many church goers went directly to the polls once the service was over.
President Obama garnered strong support from black voters and also benefited from a change in political allegiances among many Hispanics, according to a 2009 report from Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank with offices in Chicago, Oakland and New York City.
EASIER TO CHALLENGE ADDRESSES
Voters also face new challenges at the polls if they move outside their precinct and don’t update their voter registration documents.
Previously, voters showing proof that they had moved were allowed to cast their regular ballot. Now those with different addresses will have to cast a provisional ballot that won’t be counted until their new address is confirmed.
Mike Ertel, the Republican elections supervisor in Seminole County, said the hype over provisional ballot equates to “fear-mongering.”
“Requiring provisional ballots for voters who move across county lines is vital to ensure that they vote only once,” Ertel said.
The state’s election clamp down also extends to third party groups who register voters. Statewide trends since 2008 show Hispanics prefer to register as Democrats or independents. In the past three years, 73,000 Hispanics have registered as Democrats and 31,000 registered as Republicans. Another 76,000 registered non-partisan.
Blacks and Hispanics in Florida register to vote through drives twice as often as whites, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
Groups that register voters used to have 10 days to handover registration forms to the state elections office. Now they must do so within 48 hours or face penalties and fines up to $1,000.
Concerned about volunteers being subjected to possible fines, the Florida League of Women voters has ended registration drives for the first time in 72 years, according to Deirdre Macnab, president of the organization’s Florida chapter.
Snipes said her office is working to help churches, community leaders and organizations follow the law so they don’t get into trouble.
“The Voter Education Department has added a couple staff members. Their efforts are expanding,” added Snipes.
Snipes said there were a lot of “mom and pop voter drives around town” in 2008, but that she expects fewer will mount such drives this year.
Felons, many for drug-related offenses, also face a harder time regaining the right to vote.
Gov. Scott rolled back lesser restrictions put in place by former Gov. Charlie Crist, and set a 5-year-time limit for felons to regain their rights.
In a report issued by the Brennan Center, the group suggests the 2011 Florida voting laws “made it substantially more difficult or impossible for people with past felony convictions to get their voting rights restored.”
POLITICS OF ELECTORAL CHANGE
Mitch Ceasar, the chairman of the Broward Democratic Party, says the changes in Florida are politically-motivated.
“The Republican Suppression Act is doing a magnificent job to keep voters away,” he said.
State Republican Party Chairman Lenny Curry said that’s not true.
“The changes are about reducing voter fraud and saving tax dollars,” Curry said.
Professor Jarvis doesn’t buy the Republicans’ argument.
“Voting is where government acts efficiently. We’re talking pennies, slivers of pennies, on what would be saved on elections,” he said.
The Florida League of Women Voters, the Florida Public Interest Research Group and Rock the Vote, a non-profit group that seeks to engage young voters, filed a federal lawsuit in December claiming the state’s new law violates National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and Voter Rights Act of 1965.
In October, a Miami federal judge threw out a similar legal challenge filed by the American Civil Liberties Union saying it lacked standing to sue because it had not been harmed by the new law. Other lawsuits have been filed.
Meanwhile Snipes’ office is caught in the tug-of-war between the parties.
Republicans have accused her of making it more difficult for GOP supporters to vote.
Republicans had been up in arms since November of last year about the decreased number of early voting locations in Broward.
In November, Richard DeNapoli, Broward Republican Executive Committee Chairman Richard DeNapoli fired off a letter to Snipes complaining about a lack of early voting locations in areas represented by Republicans.
After looking into the matter, Snipes recently agreed to reinstate one location, Pompano Beach City Hall, for the Jan. 31 Republican primary.
Reporter Amber Statler-Matthews, who conducted the Snipes interview, can be reached at astatlermatthews@browardbulldog.org
A Fort Lauderdale-based securities firm with a checkered past, and its two principal owners, have been hit with $800,000 in fines related to a pump-and-dump penny stock scheme.
Newbridge Securities Corp. was fined $600,000, censured and prohibited from purchasing or making a market in penny stocks for one year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Newbridge president Guy S. Amico and chief executive Scott Goldstein were fined $100,000 each.
FINRA also suspended Amico and Goldstein from the securities business in any principal capacity – Goldstein for a year; Amico for four months. Amico’s suspension ends Jan. 19, according to reports made public last month.
Nevertheless, Amico remains chairman of the board of Newbridge’s parent, Newbridge Financial Inc. Goldstein is a NFI vice president.
Newbridge operates in South Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, have censured Newbridge at least once every year since 2003 – imposing fines and disgorgement orders on the company that now top $1.2 million.
The alleged violations include overcharging customers, peddling unregistered securities, poor record keeping and failing to properly supervise brokers to prevent high pressure sales tactics and unauthorized trading.
Newbridge is also linked to political controversy involving the campaign of former U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton.
Robert Wexler
Newbridge boss Guy Amico is the brother of Roy Amico, one of the campaign’s former investment managers and a former representative at Newbridge. Last week, Broward Bulldog reported that in the months before Wexler resigned last year federal agents were asking questions about an unusual $150,000 real estate deal between his campaign and Roy Amico.
For years, the Wexler campaign listed Newbridge as a source of income or loss on its reports the Federal Election Commission. In July 2008, however, the campaign amended 25 disclosure reports dating to 2001 to remove Newbridge’s name and replace it with other firms.
A campaign official said the changes were made to correctly identify firms Roy Amico worked for after he left Newbridge in 2002.
Shortly after the campaign began to change its reports, the SEC accused Newbridge and Guy Amico of failing to reasonably supervise a broker in the office who was manipulating penny stocks. In July 2010, the SEC barred Guy Amico from supervising any broker or dealer for at least two years and ordered him to pay a $79,000 civil penalty.
FINRA disclosed its latest action against Newbridge and Amico in reports made public last month. How many people lost money, and how much was not disclosed, said spokeswoman Nancy Condon.
Amico and Goldstein did not respond to a request for comment.
Guy Amico
Newbridge, Amico and Goldstein consented to FINRA’s findings without admitting or denying them. The findings are detailed in signed agreements known as AWCs, or “letters of acceptance, waiver and consent.”
Newbridge’s AWC says that from 2003-2008 the firm committed “numerous violations of FINRA rules and the federal securities laws” regarding “extensive” penny stock trades by its customers.
FINRA said those violations included “market manipulation, improper sales of unregistered securities and the failure to comply with anti-money laundering requirements and failure to supervise” individual brokers. Newbridge also failed to comply with federal disclosure requirements, the agreement says.
The agreement identifies a trio of unregistered Pink-Sheet penny stocks – Hee Corp. (HCCF) OMDA Oil and Gas (OMOG) and Greyfield Capital (GRYF) – that Newbridge allegedly helped peddle to an unwitting public. Each of those stocks is now worthless.
The agreement says Newbridge also helped stock promoters inflate the shares of a fourth penny stock, Global Triad (GTRD), by buying and selling millions of shares. On some days, Newbridge’s trading “consisted of 100 percent of the entire trading volume.” That stock, too, is worthless today.
Amico and Goldstein, who each own 27 percent of Newbridge Securities, were sanctioned for failing to adequately supervise the firm’s two chief compliance officers and anti-money laundering compliance officers from August 2003 to July 2008.
In addition to the fines and suspensions, both men were ordered to complete eight hours of anti-money laundering training.
Months before popular Democrat Robert Wexler abruptly quit Congress last year federal agents interviewed two South Florida businessmen about his campaign’s unconventional $150,000 investment in a real estate venture.
Two sources who also spoke with those agents, including a Republican political opponent whose complaint apparently sparked the inquiry, said authorities were seeking to determine whether the Robert Wexler for Congress campaign had engaged in money laundering. No charges have been filed.
Wexler, a self-described “fire-breathing liberal,” shocked the political world in October 2009 with his unexpected mid-term announcement that he was resigning his politically safe House seat in North Broward and South Palm Beach. Wexler quit to lead a Middle East think tank founded by Slim-Fast founder S. Daniel Abraham. His final day was Jan. 2.
“I’m not under any investigation, my marriage is intact, my health is good and thank God, the health of my family is good,” the seven-term congressman told reporters the day he resigned.
But according to Ken Krefetz, the longtime owner of Miami-based Metropolitan Petroleum Company, agents from the FBI and the IRS came to his office in December 2008 to question him about Wexler and Wexler campaign investment manager, Roy T. Amico.
“They were looking at the real estate transaction that the congressman put campaign money into,” said Krefetz, who provided Broward Bulldog with a copy of an e-mail exchange about the matter between his office and Palm Beach FBI agent Stuart A. Robinson.
He said Robinson and IRS agent Leo Briones characterized the transaction as “highly unusual.”
Robinson declined comment. Briones did not return telephone messages.
Most members of Congress keep their campaign funds in a federally insured bank account. But in recent years election rules have been relaxed to allow campaign money to be placed in stocks, bonds or other investments. An election law attorney in Washington, D.C. said he was not aware of other campaigns investing in real estate.
The FBI contacts Miami oil man
Krefetz said the agents contacted him about a month after he obtained a $455,000 judgment against Amico for allegedly cheating him in the purchase of a Vero Beach gas station.
“I don’t know Wexler. It was a bolt for me, but I thought it was a lucky bolt that these guys were interested in Amico. … It’s a gift if you can get the feds to the do the heavy lifting for you,” he said.
Krefetz said the agents were mostly interested in a deal he knew nothing about: a $150,000 second mortgage the Wexler campaign held on a million dollar waterfront home owned by Amico and his brother, Armand, on South Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach.
Records show the campaign obtained the mortgage in 2004, and after it was apparently repaid, got a fresh one in 2006. The campaign did not record the 2006 mortgage with the Palm Beach County Clerk’s office for more than two years.
Palm Beach businessman David Cohen, the former president of Petroleum Consolidators of America (a publicly traded company now known as CTX Virtual Technologies), says federal agents interviewed him about Wexler and Amico around the same time they talked to Krefetz.
“They wanted to know how I knew Roy, that sort of thing,” said Cohen, whose Petroleum Consolidators sued Amico in April 2008 for breach of contract and fraud in the same soured deal as Krefetz. The lawsuit was closed last month after Cohen decided to drop it.
Cohen was not contacted again, but another source with detailed knowledge of what happened said agents spoke with him more than once over a period of five months in 2008-2009. It is not known whether the inquiry was concluded without charges, or continues through today.
Wexler, president of the Washington-based Center for Middle East Peace, declined comment through a spokesman. He remains active in politics and traveled to South Florida in September to campaign for his friend, Gov. Charlie Crist’s failed independent bid for a U.S. Senate seat.
In December, Wexler’s ex-chief of staff Eric Johnson told Broward Bulldog the campaign took back the mortgage and a promissory note from the Amicos in January 2004 to secure its $150,000 investment in the now defunct Capital Gains Real Estate Consultants.
Capital Gains never held title to the home, but its biggest shareholder and president was Roy Amico. His partners were Palm Beach political consultant Tom Plante, who once worked for Wexler, and Armand Amico.
The campaign did not report the mortgage transaction on its disclosure reports to the Federal Election Commission, whose rules require campaigns to report both disbursements and owing “debts and obligations.”
Wexler campaign taxes a big loss
Today, the $150,000 – money supplied by contributors to Wexler’s campaign – is a total loss, according to those involved.
Roy Amico said last week that he was aware of the FBI-IRS inquiry, but declined to say whether agents had questioned him.
“I’d really rather not comment on that,” he said. “They are making a big deal out of this thing when (Wexler) didn’t really do anything. There was no impropriety whatsoever.”
Amico is a former stock broker who for many years helped Wexler’s campaign manage its investments. Robert Wexler for Congress became his client in the 1990s when he worked for the now shuttered brokerage firm Joseph Charles and Associates. The firm, and the campaign, had offices in the same building at 2500 N. Military Trail in Boca Raton.
He explained that he and his brother purchased the home on Flagler Drive for $975,000 in January 2004 with the intention of flipping it to another buyer. Amico said the Wexler campaign received a 6.5 percent interest rate for the loan to remodel the house.
“They had all this money sitting around and earning no money in the bank so now they got 6.5 percent,” Amico said. “It may be unusual, but everyone was making money in real estate.”
Amico had the right connections to the campaign. In addition to personally knowing Wexler, Amico’s ex-girlfriend of eight years was Daniella Alonzo Howard, the congressman’s aide.
“I had the trust. The campaign was a client of mine for years,” said Amico. “I talked to Daniella and she got Eric. And I talked to, I guess, Wexler a couple of times.”
A pair of damaging hurricanes and the meltdown of Florida’s real estate market combined to sink the financial plans. The home is now in foreclosure.
“Suffice it to say I lost a lot of money, too,” said Amico, who filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection this year but was denied a discharge for a technical reason.
But Capital Gain’s principals and the Wexler campaign weren’t the only ones who lost big money on the deal.
Amico and Capital Gains told to pay
Three weeks ago, Palm Beach Circuit Judge Robin Rosenberg ruled that Amico and Capital Gains defrauded $330,000 from one of Amico’s former clients, elderly Chicago resident William Reczek. Amico and Capital Gains were ordered to pay Reczek $454,000 in damages.
Reczek’s lawyer, Kenneth Johnson of Palm Beach Gardens, sued in 2008 claiming his client was duped to “invest” in Capital Gains by Amico’s bogus promise to deliver a mortgage on the Flagler Drive home. In fact Amico could not deliver on such a promise because Capital Gains never owned the property and after May 11, 2005, neither did he because he had transferred his interest to his brother Armand, the lawsuit said.
Amico did not defend the case, but called Reczek’s accusation “totally unfounded.”
The Wexler campaign never sought to attempt to reclaim its $150,000 investment via litigation against Amico. Rather, last year it voluntarily released the mortgage it held as collateral after the property fell into bank foreclosure.
Roy Amico was involved in another controversy involving the Wexler campaign regarding his work at Fort Lauderdale’s Newbridge Securities – a company co-owned by another brother, Guy Amico.
In July 2008, the campaign amended 25 FEC disclosure reports dating to 2001 that it said had improperly reported Newbridge as the source of investment income or loss. Amico was a broker there in 2000-2002, and campaign officials later said the amendments were made to properly identify the firms Amico was affiliated with after he departed Newbridge.
The FBI-IRS inquiry was apparently touched off by a complaint to the FBI by Ed Lynch, a Republican foe who lost to Wexler in 2008 and this year ran unsuccessfully against Democrat Ted Deutch.
Lynch said he became suspicious in early 2008 after reviewing election records that showed thousands of dollars in payments to the Wexler campaign from companies associated with Roy Amico, including Capital Gains, and Newbridge.
“My campaign manager went with me to the FBI,” said Lynch.
Lynch later sought to exploit the FBI’s interest with the news media in mid-campaign, but was largely ignored absent independent verification of the bureau’s interest.
Hardly anyone noticed last month when Independence Day arrived for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Broward’s powerful but obscure transportation agency.
No politicians made speeches; no one marched in a parade. But it turns out that there were plenty of fireworks behind the scenes at the agency that largely decides what county roads get built or improved.
As the MPO was breaking away last spring, county employees filed a pair of whistleblower complaints accusing top MPO officials of mismanagement, unprofessionalism and cronyism. (more…)
Campaign contributions typically go to politicians, but timeshare owners in Broward, the state and across the country will soon split $562,000 – an amount equal to the illegal contributions collected by the political fundraising arm of the U.S. vacation industry from 2003-2007.
The payout is part of a deal between the industry and the Federal Election Commission to settle civil allegations of wrongdoing in the solicitation and distribution of millions of dollars in political contributions.
The American Resort Development Association – Resort Owners Coalition PAC will also pay a $300,000 civil penalty. It is the largest fine imposed by the FEC since 2007. (more…)
