The Political Whore

I attended a recent sprawl battle down at Collusionville Headquarters the Hillsborough County Center (see my post on that here), where I asked Commissioner Ken Hagan to recuse himself from a vote at hand.  I asked because the applicant, Stephen Dibbs, was listed as hosting a campaign fundraiser for him, according to this article.

Sure seemed to me that if one of your fundraisers is asking you to change the rules for his financial benefit that would be a conflict of interest. [Editor's note: A Commission on Ethics opinion has ruled that receiving campaign contributions does not constitute a legal conflict of interest for a public official.] Hagan not only flat-out denied that Dibbs ever held a fundraiser for him but he did it on the record. His exact words, according to the transcripts, were “Mr. Dibbs has never held a fundraiser for me and even if he had that would be a ridiculous standard to try and enforce.” I guess that is why they are called puppets, right? As a review, 5 of our 7 current Commissioners have financial contributions from Dibbs.

After the meeting I did some more digging and was appalled to find out that not only was Dibbs on that invitation listed as a host but so were many of the other players selling sprawl that night. In fact, all of them were.  There were two sprawl amendments for the same piece of property: one had Dibbs name on it and one had a usual sprawl-pushing land use attorney, Vin Marchetti.  Strangely, Marchetti wasn’t pitching the amendments that night but consultants Todd Pressman and Steve Allison were. A quick review of the host committee for Hagan’s fundraiser revealed a Todd Pressman, a Steve Allison, a Stephen Dibbs and say it with me kids………….a Vin Marchetti. All of them were asking to have the rules waived on their behalf, yet Hagan sees no conflict.

Also disturbing is that Pressman is a board member of Swiftmud.  Guess he didn’t get the memo of our water crisis since he is asking for extension of public water utilities to support this sprawl!

Oh it gets worse. During the meeting, a man who was speaking in favor of sprawl made a threat to a citizen speaking in opposition to the sprawl amendments. The thug, Todd Scime, was not removed by Hagan, who in my opinion should have asked the guards to remove him, but that is for another post.  Why was this person given favorable treatment?  I never heard back from Hagan when I asked him that question via e-mail but guess what I found with another review of that invitation to Hagan’s fundraiser?  A Mark Scime……………the SOE site has him listed as a Hagan contributor and it looks like the same address Scime used during public comment.  We don’t call it Collusionville for nothing people.  Some more digging revealed that Scime contributed to only one Commissioner ………..The New Blair Higginbotham!

Another potential conflict of interest that night is the black cloud over Commissioner Jim Norman and his fellow Sports Authority Board member who also just happens to be a regular paid sprawl-pusher down at Sprawl Central County Center, Vin Marchetti (shown here in a photo posted to Norman’s campaign Facebook account). They are responsible for recently forcing out the executive director of the TSA and opponents of this move (who are also TSA board members) are questioning the Sunshine Law on this one. Ya think?  If fellow TSA board members think Norman and Marchetti disregarded the rules over at the TSA, then why whould we county residents have any reason to think they don’t do the same thing regarding land-use decisions?  Usually Marchetti is pushing sprawl for others (asking the board, including Norman) to change the rules for his clients.  In this case his name was actually on one of the amendments as the applicant. Did Norman recuse himself? Yeah, right!

Residents showed up in force against these two amendments so no politician would want to touch them with elections nearing for several of the Gang of 4.5 but my guess is that it would have been very different if we were not there ushering in the Sunshine on their sordid ties. The moral of the story Team Sprawl, is that while it isn’t illegal to take contributions from thugs, paid sprawl-pushers and bottom-feeder developers, be prepared to take the heat when they ask for your blessing to change the rules because it doesn’t look or smell good when you don’t recuse yourself regardless of which way the vote went.

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