U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta
The Southern District of the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami, headed by R. Alexander Acosta, can be reached here:
Fort Pierce: (772) 466-0899
Citizen complaint hotline: (305) 961-9173
E-mail: usafls-citizencompla@usdoj.gov
With four Palm Beach County politicians in prison or on their way there, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is ramping up its investigation into local public corruption.
The South Florida district, which extends from Key West to Vero Beach, appears to be a bountiful field for federal prosecutors, who say they’re swamped with “good, corroborated allegations.”
U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta isn’t naming names yet. But he’s delivered convictions of two Palm Beach County commissioners and two West Palm Beach city commissioners in the past year.
“We are continuing to pursue and prosecute these types of cases,” Acosta told the Palm Beach County Bar Association last month. To get the job done, the FBI shifted six agents and one supervisory position from Miami up the coast to root out public corruption.
Most of the cases involved land deals — and more are said to be in the works.
Timothy Delaney, assistant special agent in charge of investigating white-collar crime, told the Palm Beach Post that the current real-estate slump has had no effect on the level or pace of corruption investigations.
“You see a thread and pull it out. We’re in that mode,” he said.
Delaney adds that those threads don’t just string up public officials. “Public corruption” can snare real-estate developers, shifty land-use attorneys and special-interest lobbyists. After all, public officials don’t act in a vacuum.
For all its open-government laws, Florida has a shady reputation. An analysis of federal prosecutions between 1993 and 2002 ranked Florida ninth highest in the nation in per-capita share of public corruption convictions.
NOT SO STUPID?
The recent convictions of Palm Beach County Commissioners Tony Masilotti and Warren Newell show that things haven’t improved. Along with their guilty pleas, lobbyist William Boose admitted to participating in Masilotti’s kickback scheme that involved dealing in county property.
Two West Palm city commissioners are already serving time in federal prison. Ray Liberti pleaded guilty to mail fraud and witness tampering while Jim Exline admitted to tax evasion.
Most politicians aren’t so crooked, or at least not so stupid. But Treasure Coast residents should not be so naive to think such tawdry behavior can’t happen here. Simply because Florida’s state attorneys and ethics commissioners seem congenitally incurious or complacent about corruption doesn’t mean everything is hunky dory.
Indeed, there is growing voter skepticism about the interplay between public officials and the private sector — especially when it comes to developer deals involving zoning decisions, density bonuses, “clustering” schemes, comp-plan changes, etc.
This month in Sarasota, voters ousted every pro-growth council member by landslide margins. In the face of strong lobbying by business interests, voters also enacted $200 limits on individual political donations and banned corporate contributions.
Populist rebellion isn’t confined to Florida’s Left Coast. The statewide Florida Hometown Democracy initiative has gained traction precisely because people sense that the state’s development machine is out of control.
Even honest public planners admit there’s a problem.
Last week, at a Florida Atlantic University seminar on the challenges involving land-use policies, Frank Pelan spoke of the “cultures of corruption.” Plural.
“It’s like a dysfunctional family, where the prevailing attribute is denial,” said Pelan, an attorney and an executive with the Palm Beach County Planning Congress.
‘HONEST SERVICES’
To pierce the veil of secret dealings, federal prosecutors are employing a long-standing though little-used federal statute called the “Honest Services Law.”
A descendant of the mail-fraud law, the Honest Services Law declares that constituents have a right to officials upholding the public’s fiduciary interests. Offenses needn’t be tangible violations, but simply an intangible breach of public trust.
What’s more, the law that prosecutors have dubbed a “celebrity statute” extends beyond public officials to anyone who attempts to improperly influence government officials.
Look around your community. Do these guidelines bring anyone to mind? Is there good-faith representation by your elected leaders? Do you know how much cash they receive, and from whom? How much do you know about the people who lobby them, who they represent and how much they earn for their efforts? There may even be an ex-con among them.
Of course, campaign-finance laws — even Sarasota’s — can be manipulated. Masilotti dutifully filed all his necessary paperwork with the state. What exposed the commissioner was his messy divorce in which his financial dealings became public record. That story made the papers and all the U.S. attorney’s office had to do was pull at a few of those loose strings.
“Perhaps what matters more than strong laws is a strong political economy — reporters, citizen groups, prosecutors, judges, religious leaders who are willing to speak out about the rampant corruption in our midst.”
Those are the words from a 2004 report, “Public Corruption in the United States,” issued by the Corporate Crime Reporter. They remind us that good, clean government is everyone’s responsibility.
ken.ward@scripps.com