By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist

In April 2009, former Hillsborough Commissioner Brian Blair opted to go for a full hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to settle the charge of accepting illegal campaign contributions from Hillsborough Planning Commissioner Hung Mai and another political supporter. In February 2009, the Florida Elections Commission found “Probable Cause” that Blair intentionally violated campaign laws.

The final hearing was set for Wednesday in Tallahassee before ALJ Jeffrey B Clark. But a source there tells me that a one-time 30-day delay may be granted in the case. [UPDATE: On Wednesday we learned that is exactly what happened. The judge in Blair’s case just issued a ruling on the motion filed to send the case back to the elections commission.  He denied the motion and set the new court date for Sept. 9. And get this, the trial is being moved to Tampa!!!]

The prosecution has been gathering evidence to show “willfullness” to violate the law. The evidence includes testimony of many witnesses in the case, in addition to the financial evidence of the money changing hands. As the state prepares to go to trial “loaded for bear,” Blair’s attorneys have now begun filing numerous motions to stop the trial from happening. It’s apparent that the tactic they’re following is, let’s hit ‘em with every motion we can possibly think of and if that doesn’t work, we’ll dazzle ‘em with bull****! Oh, and for those that are wondering, the law firm that Blair picked Is not Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe. As it happens, all of their attorney’s were tied up with traffic court and slip and fall cases, so he has decided to go with attorneys from a legislative/lobbyist group called Tidewater Consulting.

Some of the B.S. that’s been filed:
Copy Submitted of Commissioner Half-Truth Hagan’s campaign violation case -
Blair’s attorneys have even sent the judge a copy of the results of Half-Truth Hagan’s campaign finance violation case, in which the Elections Commission had to dismiss the case because they couldn’t sufficiently establish “willfulness”. What’s up with that tact? He’s, in effect, saying to the judge, “Hey, they dismissed my buddy’s case, so why can’t you dismiss my case?” Huh?

Motion to Relinquish Jurisdiction -
Basically he’s asking the judge to send the case back to Elections Commission to let them decide his fate. As a defendant, he was given a choice to allow his fate to be decided by either the Elections Commission or an administrative law judge. He chose the administrative law judge (possibly thinking that the prosecution would not be able to build a solid case against him). Through the legal process of discovery (the disclosure of information held by the opposing party in an action) Blair has, in all likelihood, learned that his goose is cooked based on the evidence. So now he wants to revert back to being judged by the Elections Commission, or shall we say, his peers (commissioners that hold appointed positions by way of politics). As Church Lady would say, “Isn’t that con-v-e-n-i-e-n-t”. It ain’t gonna happen, though.

Prosecutors Response to the Relinquish Jurisdiction Motion –
The prosecutor calls Blair’s motion to send the case back to the elections commission “forum shopping.” He refers to the idea of asking to go back to the previous step just as you’re about to go to trial a “second bite at the apple.” Which the law does not allow.

By George Niemann
PoHo contributor and R-LAND and UCAN activist

Since we’ve got such a budget crunch looming that we have to close public facilities and lay off Hillsborough County workers, I wonder if Hillsborough’s economic development “donations” to the many chambers of commerce ended up paying for the Tampa Chamber’s trip to Washington, D.C.? And if so, how much did it cost to send this delegation to the capital to discuss legislative business impacts on our dime?

The picture above was distributed by Sen. Mel Marinez in his e-mail newsletter. The caption in the newsletter says, “Pictured Above: Senator Martinez meets with members of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce in Washington to discuss issues pending in Congress and the potential impacts on the Tampa business community”.

We are spending a fortune on funding the chambers in our area. We’re calling it economic development. The tab for various chambers and other economic groups/activities in 2010 is a whopping $10.9 million, according to a figure buried deep inside County Administrator Pat Bean’s proposed budget. (The Tampa Chamber is slated to get its annual $361,000 allotment against in 2010 and 2011 (its Committee of 100 gets another $89,000 to lure biotech companies here), while the Brandon Chamber is seeing its haul doubled, from $15,000 last year to $30,000 in each of the next two years.)

I checked with the Tampa Chamber to see who paid for the Washington boondoggle. Most of that trip was paid for by “sponsors” (generous business members with money to burn), although the specific names of the sponsors weren’t shared with me. Some of the cost was paid for out of the chamber’s budget and some picked up by those doing the traveling. I was assured by a staff member that they don’t mix Hillsborough’s “donated” money with boondoggle money. And they don’t like the term “donated,” either. They prefer to call it an investment in “economic development.” That has a more sophisticated ring to it, and doesn’t connote the idea that it’s costing us anything. This was the first time they went out of state to do lobbying. Apparently they must have had a good time because I was told that they are planning to do out-of-state lobbying twice a year from here on in.

While our “donations” cannot be tied directly to in-state or out-of-state lobbying efforts, it does raise questions about how much funding our local government should be providing during these hard economic times. If the chambers have enough ready cash to take lobbying trips to Tallahassee and beyond, maybe they should be funding economic development locally, at no cost to tax payers.

If we let Bean have her way, we’ll have to close our parks and cut back on service to our families so that we can keep funding the chambers at the level to which they’ve become accustomed. In looking at her proposed budget, it’s obvious that she will never seriously cut this type of funding. The BOCC better think long and hard about these “donations”, going forward. Can we afford to continue giving such large contributions to organizations that, operationally, don’t seem to be feeling any crunch in this downturned economy? If they’re not feeling the pain, then maybe they don’t need the gain (of our heavy funding)?

After thinking outside the box for about 20 seconds, I’ve got a possible solution that will allow the chambers to continue taking their boondoggles while, at the same time, helping our families deal with not being able to visit the parks that will be closing.

Yes, let’s ask the chambers to take our kids with them when they take their boondoggles to DC and other places. Then the chambers can lobby for business, and the kids can get to see how government works, or at least see how those groups that ride on the back of government, work.

In a Hillsborough County Commission meeting last week, Commissioner Rose Ferlita brought up those clandestine raises issued by County Administrator Pat Bean. When Ferlita holds up a mountain of paperwork indicating that she has done her research that usually isn’t good news for whoever might be on the other side of that paperwork. Ferlita didn’t think that Bean had fully informed the Commission prior to giving those raises, and because proper procedure had not been followed, the board’s decision to approve those appointments back in November could be null and void. During the discussion, Ferlita cited agenda documents and ordinances (article 6 section 1) and she even brought up a similar situation from way back in 2005, before she was even on the board.

Other commissioners echoed similar complaints about not having the full information, and this is not the first time they have hammered Bean about this raises. Commissioner Kevin Beckner brought it up several weeks ago. But Bean held firm during Wednesday’s meeting stating she felt “we” had done everything “we” were supposed to (is there a Co-County Administrator that “we” don’t know about or does “we” just mean herself and Commissioner Jim Norman?)

Ferlita asked Bean to present her case the next day at the budget workshop. Commissioner Mark Sharpe went a step further and suggested a vote of no confidence (nobody bit) but he made it clear he felt Bean was not the one to lead them any longer. THANK YOU Commissioner Sharpe!

Bean stated in this article that she wouldn’t throw her employees under the bus. Um, Ms. Bean, there isn’t any more room under the bus for your employees considering you are proposing to fire hundreds of them. She was later quoted as saying she would not apologize to commissioners unless she was proven wrong (nice attitude) and don’t forget that mountain of paperwork.

Well, Ms. Bean was wrong and she admitted during Thursday’s workshop that indeed she failed to provide the board with the job descriptions and salaries of the individuals (details, details) and she apologized. This meant commissioners got to re-vote on those appointments. The majority of the board seemed to want the same thing, the reorganization without the double-digit raises. Turns out all the board can vote on is the appointments. This is where it gets muddy because evidently Bean doesn’t need the board’s consent to give raises……..now what?

You know things are bad when Commissioner Al “I Have The Floor” Higginbotham invites Ferlita to share the floor with him during the discussion. After much discussion on what they could actually do, Ferlita made the motion not to approve the appointments and Commissioner Mark Sharpe seconded. This didn’t take the raises away though (only Bean can do that) and she never offered to. Instead she explained somewhat defiantly that this would now create two vacancies that she would need to fill (costing you more money). Her HR person backed her up saying they couldn’t ask people to do more work for less money because of the rules (is there a union down there or what?) The board voted anyway not to approve the appointments 6-1 (only Norman protected Bean).

It didn’t end here, though, because Ferlita left the ball in Bean’s court saying we can’t make her do the right thing (referring to rescinding the raises). Maybe not but hammering her publicly, withdrawing support for the appointments, and outlining what she should do might help. Bean showed no willingness during Thursday’s meeting to work with the board on their wishes so that is why I was surprised to read that indeed Bean rescinded the raises last Friday. (Game, Set, Match-Ferlita)

Ferlita and Sharpe were impressive all week. In addition to researching and shining the light on Bean’s shadowy raises, Ferlita  put the Moral Courage award name change on the agenda and kept it on there despite what looked to some of us as an attempt to silence her (and made the motion to have the controversial Hughes name stripped from it). She also created a memorial award in honor of Phyllis Busansky. Sharpe is to be commended regarding his comments during the Moral Courage award discussion, his calling for Bean’s head and finally for his instruction to staff to find out about the lawsuit other municipalities have filed against the state’s approval of the anti-growth management bill SB360. Thank You Commissioners Ferlita and Sharpe! Not to leave out Commissioner Kevin Beckner, either, because his comments and votes were also impressive. A few more good commissioners and I will have more time to go biking at the Flatwoods. (You can help me reach that goal by doing your research before voting.)

So far it sounds it like several of the Commissioners are reluctant to axe Bean because of the huge severance package in her contract (wonder why they agreed to that in the first place?) Maybe commissioners can find a loophole in the contract or maybe “reorganize” her job description? Why not ask the 700 people showing up at the budget public hearing how they felt about Bean’s raises in spite of her proposed budget cuts?

Update: Since this post was submitted the County Commission had another discussion on Bean’s raises during Wednesday’s budget workshop. I read the captioning and it sounded like they broke out into a chorus of Kumbaya. Bean asked for the board to officially approve the appointments (with only a 2.5 percent and a 2.5 percent cost of living raise) from what I could gather and she apologized to the board, the citizens and the other county employees. Ferlita made the motion to approve and it passed 7-0.

By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist

Remember when the whole idea behind the Cone Ranch possible sale was because Commissioner Ken “Half-Truth” Hagan wanted to “preserve it” after being asked by big-time Republican donors to subdivide and sell off Cone Ranch [more than 12,000 acres of publicly owned land in Northeast Hillsborough County]?

The county now has an advisory board pondering this deal. You can read my take on their first meeting here. This second meeting started with County Administrator Pat Bean addressing the panel lobbing threats about the state of the county water utility which owns the land. Wasn’t this panel supposed to be objective? Yet here we have the County Administrator throwing in her 2 cents. She did admit that the land was already preserved though, glad we got that cleared up. Recall the earlier threats that the Florida Environmental and Conservation Group (FCEG) (the group pushing the sale) made implying that the alternative could be commercial or residential development.

Bean said that the water utilities director Mr. Vanderploog was very concerned over the utlilities bond rating and did not want it to fall. Hmmmm, I thought he cleared that concern up when he asked Commissioners to approve a rate hike recently in water fees, which they did! Now Bean implies the sale of Cone Ranch could be necessary to save the bond rating? Unbelievable.

Recall the referendum on ballot regarding preserving land last year passed overwhelmingly even though Ms. Bean didn’t want to put it on the ballot. Hillsborough County Voters want land to be preserved Ms. Bean. Come early get a program.

During Monday’s meeting the panel also got a history lesson on Cone Ranch, a wetlands update and water quality concerns. There was also a briefing on the procedure of disposing of county property describing some interesting loopholes where a competitive bidding process can be avoided (like to non for profit groups….like what FCEG is proposing) uh-huh, or other governmental agencies (like ELAPP!)

Then the meeting took an unexpected twist with Rosanne Clementi making a motion to recommend to Commissioners that they do not dispose of the property. Hugh Gramling seconded it which raised both my eyebrows considering his recent involvement against wetlands. On the surface this motion sounded OK but as Clementi (with the help of Gramling) clarified their her motion they made it clear that while they did not want the land to officially change hands they still wanted to make recommendations as to the future use of the land and hinted about other ways it could make money (call me jaded but this made me think they might be toying with the idea of letting private companies come in and use the land for profit … maybe a lucrative wetland mitigation bank?)  In other words, what came to my mind was the county pimping out publicly owned land to turn a private profit (throwing the county a few bones along the way of course) and shutting up those pesky residents by not actually selling the land. I know, I know, jaded. This motion would effectively appear take ELAPP (the county’s own land-buying program) out of the picture too.

Dee Layne, Pamela Jo Hatley and Chairwoman Heidi McCree voiced concerns over the prematurity of Clementi’s motion and the fact that FCEG had not even given their official proposal yet (do they even have one?) and that they didn’t know all the facts regarding conservation easements. Clementi and Gramling pushed hard for their motion and I couldn’t help but wonder about the speed at which he seconded it and the hard lobbying he did for it. Hmmmm.

Clementi’s motion failed (a count was not given). The panel will continue to meet and they will hear a detailed (hopefully) proposal from FCEG as well as other options. You can follow their meeting schedule as well as find information about this issue here.

Does this land really need to be “restored” or does it function fine as is? Maybe we could have our EPC do an updated and indepth study? Oh yeah, Ms. Bean’s budget cuts threaten to cripple them. If restoration rather than preservation is now the goal then maybe panelists can suggest a restoration plan to County Commissioners in whatever form keeps the land in public hands.

Hillsborough County commissioners will discuss dropping conservative activist Ralph Hughes’ name from the county’s Moral Courage Award on Wednesday.

Commissioner Rose Ferlita put the controversial issue on the agenda for discussion weeks after the federal government said Hughes died owing $69 million in unpaid taxes.

Ferlita told the Tribune on Tuesday that Hughes’ son Shea has sent a letter to the commissioners asking that his father’s name be removed from the award.

UPDATE: County commissioners did just that. The vote this morning was unanimous.

It is not a worst-case scenario for voters or Democrats who hoped that Gov. Charlie Crist would appoint a good adminstrator (and Democrat) to replace Phyllis Busansky, who passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. The choice of Earl Lennard is not wildly ideological, as he is not a fire-breathing conservative, nor especially partisan, as Lennard has been both a Democrat and Republican (or at least considered running as both/either for the State Senate in 2006, a race he entered as a Republican and later dropped out of) and spent much of his public life as an appointed nonpartisan leader.

But it is not, as many had hoped, the choice of Democrat Craig Latimer, who was Busansky’s chief of staff and the driving force behind the planned changes at the office.

Lennard makes sense in terms of a picking a relatively nonpartisan administrator who has run a large organization and who understands how to gear up for really big work days (first day of school vs. Election day). Some may grouse about it, and there are Lennard haters out there, but Crist surprised me with this pick. I expected something that would please conservatives more.

From the Gov’s Office:

GOVERNOR CRIST APPOINTS EARL LENNARD AS HILLSBOROUGH SUPERVISOR OF ELECTIONS

July 14, 2009

CLEARWATER – Governor Charlie Crist today appointed Earl Lennard of Riverview as Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections. Lennard previously served as Hillsborough County Superintendent of Schools from 1996 to 2005.

“Earl understands the importance of elections in our democracy and has a fundamental sense of fairness,” Governor Crist said. “Dr. Lennard has served the Hillsborough County community well, both as superintendent and as a community leader, and I am confident he will once again serve the people of Hillsborough County well.”

Lennard, 67, served as a classroom teacher and administrator before being appointed as superintendent. A 42-year educator, he received the Ellsworth Simmons Good Government Award earlier this year from the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners. He was named Florida Superintendent of the Year in 2003 by the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.

Lennard’s community service currently includes serving on the boards of directors for the Brandon Community Foundation, the Hillsborough County Fair, the Riverview Chamber of Commerce, the Boys and Girls Club of Riverview and A Kid’s Place. He earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the University of South Florida and a master’s from the University of Florida.

Lennard is appointed for a term concluding November 8, 2010, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Phyllis Busansky last month.

Reporters are gathering at the Hillsborough Medical Examiner’s Office for a noon newser at which a preliminary report into the death of famed TV pitchman Billy Mays is set to be released. We’ll pass along coverage on Twitter (follow @poho) and over at the Daily Loaf blog.

For some, that would be duplicitous; Busansky, however, meant it and was close friends with just about everybody she met, forging an instant connection, building communities and circles of influence, her longtime friend Jeannie McGuire told the gathered mourners. McGuire had one of my favorite lines of the funeral, talking about Busansky’s sense of fashion as not quite classic but “classic — plus dramatic.”

There were more laughs than tears.

Tampa Tribune columnist Steve Otto, who long held a valued spot on Busansky’s speed dial and in heart, called his politician-friend “a tornado with hair.” Busansky’s daughter, Rebecca, read a 2005 e-mail that came to Busansky’s husband, Sheldon, from a woman that Phyllis had helped in the 1960s get into a college. The woman was hoping that Sheldon was related to Phyllis so he could pass along her thanks.

Most touching was the remembrance of her son, Alex, who said he was happy to have had 47 years with his mother. “I am my mother’s son,” he told the crowd, which flowed over into a separate room and outside, where monitors were set up. “If you’ve met her, you’ve met me.”

The room was full of politicians and elected officials, from Mayor Pam Iorio to the county commission, city council and constitutional officers — including Gov. Charlie Crist. Even the man that Busansky vanquished in the 2008 elections, former Elections Chief Buddy Johnson, attended, making for an uncomfortable moment when Rabbi Richard Birnholz said he had endorsed Phyllis in that election because it was the community’s only hope to clean up a hopelessly bungled office. Johnson later shook hands with people in the parking lot.

For progressives, it was a trip down memory lane, a viewing of some of the people who helped Tampa and Hillsborough County make great strides during an eight-year period, from 1988 to 1996, when social conservatives began their destructive takeover of county government and the rise of suburban development gave them the numbers to consistently beat urban progressives at the ballot box. Busansky’s quarterbacking of the county’s landmark indigent health care program, part fiscal sense-part social justice, that was a highlight of that era.

A roundup of the media coverage after the jump:
(photos courtesy of Stehlik Photography)

TBO.com: Mourners praise Busansky as true leader

Tampabay.com: Despite the weather, a full house for Phyllis Busansky

ABC Action News: Family, friends remember Phyllis Busansky

It’s funny the things you remember — and don’t remember — about your friends when they die. I spent much of the afternoon searching my brain for a tiny detail about Phyllis Busansky among the thousands of bits of info I know about her over the past two decades.

A drink. I can’t remember the last line of a 1991 Tampa Tribune article that I wrote about Phyllis on the night she completed her major opus, an effort to create a decades-ahead-of-its-time indigent health care plan in Hillsborough County. I remember how she gathered allies, the narrative approach the story was written in, the delight in my editors when they read it. The last line had her going out for a drink after the vote (I was along) and detailed exactly what she drank.

But it’s gone, lost in the recesses of my brain and not available online.

Phyllis Busansky — who died on the job at an elections conference in St. Augustine overnight Monday — was a unique political force in Tampa Bay. She was a domineering presence, physically and mentally, smart and savvy, with top columnists’ phone numbers at the top of her speed dial and an unwavering enthusiasm that led to her say the word “fabulous” at least once every 10 minutes.

She will probably most likely be remembered best for her 1991 indigent health care plan, winning a 6-1 vote on the Hillsborough County Commission to raise sales taxes by a half-cent to create a system of effective, preventive health care clinics for the working poor and uninsured. The idea was to provide early care that is cheaper than letting illness settle in and end up at an expensive hospital emergency room, where the public was paying for it after the fact via Medicare or through higher health care costs for the insured.

Busansky’s response on winning the battle to create the groundbreaking program: “I’m just thrilled. I think it’s a great day for Hillsborough County.”

She was one of those politicians you knew only by one name: Phyllis. It became so ubiquitous that she actually incorporated it into her unsuccessful 2006 congressional campaign, the second time she ran and lost in her attempt to go to Washington. I was an unpaid adviser in the first congressional attempt, in 1996, when she finished third to Jim Davis and former Mayor Sandy Freedman.

In many ways, Phyllis was progressive. She was launched into the public eye in 1988, running a reform campaign against big-money pro-development forces in the person of Tom Vann, whose $200,000 campaign bankroll dwarfed Busansky’s cash on hand. She hired a little known political consultant named Mary Repper, who told Busansky to go stand next to Vann at every campaign appearance possible, unnerving the Tampa city councilman with her enthusiasm and guts. Phyllis won, and joined a progressive bloc on the board that included Ed Turanchik, Sylvia Kimbell and Pam Iorio, who would go on to be (like Phyllis) Supervisor of Elections before becoming Mayor of Tampa.

Unlike the right-wing Hillsborough board today, halting runaway growth, restoring voter confidence and pushing conservation programs were priorities during those years. But Phyllis could be exasperating to her friends and allies; many at the time did not understand why she twice voted down gay rights ordinances at the county level that would have given protections in employment, housing and accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation. I never heard her give a solid explanation, and the best description I find now in accounts of that time comes from the St. Petersburg Times, which said she was against it because “it went    further than local government should go in instituting social change.”

During the debate over a second vote, the Times reported:

An angry Busansky lashed out at what she called “extremists” on both sides who refused to consider a middle ground that Busansky said was more acceptable to the “moderate majority.”

Busansky bragged that her indigent health program saved $100 million in taxpayer costs in its first four years alone. It became a national model. And it shifted indigent health costs off the backs of property owners and into the broader sales tax, so some would be paid by visitors and tourists.

The move won her 1995 recogntion as “Public Official of the Year” in Governing magazine. She was term-limited out of office by 1996, and after losing the congressional race that year, she moved to spread the gospel of her health plan. Gov. Lawton Chiles sidetracked her from that job in 1997, named her as executive director for Florida’s welfare reform project, called WAGES. I worked as a communications director in that effort for almost a year.

It was a perfect job for Busansky’s brand of networking and cheerleading. She could cross the aisle, as a Democrat, to have allies in the GOP, including her strongest fan in the Florida Senate at the time, Katherine Harris. (This is long before Harris’ evil-nutty phase as Secretary of State and Congresswoman, when she was just a solid centrist Senator from Sarasota.) Phyllis’ job was to bring lots of different people with different ideologies to the same table (including liberals not wild about kicking folks off the welfare rolls and conservatives not wild about having any welfare at all) and get them fired up to exist in a new system in which more job training and accountability was introduced into the welfare safety net.

After leaving that job in 2000, Phyllis largely left the public eye. I was a political consultant in those days, and I recall her calling me and my then-business partner, Mary Repper, every six months or so with another idea of an office to run for. She was itching to get back in, but her brand of progressiveness was falling out of favor as the Bush Administration took hold. She lectured and consulted, keeping up her health-care reform mantra, and bided her time. She tried (and mostly failed) to help start a good-government advocacy group in Tampa.

Why she chose the near-suicidal race against Gus Bilirakis for Congress in 2006 is a testament to both her ego and her unflagging courage. No other major politician wanted a piece of Bilirakis the Younger, whose dad had held the Pinellas-based congressional district for more than two decades. But Phyllis plunged in, and dutifully lost after putting up a pretty good fight, raising more money than I ever thought she could.

After that race, she revealed that she was diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer. After surgery and treatment, she was declared cancer-free.

It set the stage for perhaps her greatest gift to Tampa Bay politics: running against the incompetent incumbent Supervisor of Elections, Buddy Johnson. She beat him in the 2008 elections, waiting weeks for the votes to be counted as Johnson’s office melted down. She was denied an Election Night victory party because of it.

I last ran into Phyllis two weeks ago, having lunch at the popular Vietnamese restaurant Bamboozle in downtown Tampa, where her office was located. She jumped up from her table with energy, insisting that she was doing “fabulous” and saying I must pay a visit to the Elections Office to hear about all the changes she was planning. Call me in a few weeks, I’m traveling until then, she told me.

I said I would.

Monday night, at the Florida State Association of Supervisor of Elections conference in the World Golf Village just outside of St. Augustine, Busansky complained to a colleague of a little indigestion, but put it off to some antibiotics she was taking. The next morning, she did not show up for the start of conference events. Hotel security opened her room, and she was found dead. Foul play is not suspected.

To her husband, Sheldon, and her kids, Alex, Edward and Rebecca, my sympathy and support.

To Phyllis, I say rest in peace. You went out on top of your game. We’ll miss you.

Phyllis Busansky was a friend of mine, and I worked on her various political efforts, including her stint as the director of welfare reform in Florida, so it is with great sadness I pass along news of her death today, from ABC Action News:

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Phyllis Busansky has been found dead in her hotel room in St. Augustine, according to Pam Iorio.

Ms. Busansky was supposed to be participating in a conference in St. Augustine. When she didn’t show, coworkers came looking for her, and found her dead in her hotel room.

Foul play is not suspected.

I spoke with a mutual friend who mentioned that Phyllis had a health problem earlier this year in which she was hospitalized but that they thought it was simply hyperventilation. Busansky did battle lung cancer in 2007 but told friends she was cleared of the disease after surgery.

The St. Petersburg Times weighs in with this info:

She was 72 and had battled lung cancer. She died in her sleep, said Sigrid Tidmore, spokeswoman for the Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections office.

“Honestly, this is all I know,” Tidmore said.

Tidmore was with Busansky last night, before she went to sleep about 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. She said Busansky was not complaining of any pain. When Busansky didn’t respond to phone calls this morning after not showing up to today’s conference meetings, hotel security went to check on her and found her dead, Tidmore said.

(Busansky’s office says she was 73, but the Times says records show she was 72.)

Tidmore went on to say that everyone connected to Busansky was in shock, that she was very vibrant and had lots of plans for the office. I can attest; I ran into Phyllis two weeks ago in Bamboozle in downtown Tampa and she was her usual exuberant self, eliciting a promise from me that I would pay a call on her to hear about her innovations at the office in a few weeks, after she was done traveling.

Busansky was a mainstay of local Democratic politics for the past two decades, after winning a seat on the Hillsborough County Commission in the late 1980s as part of a reform effort that brought progressives to that board.

Under state law, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist will appoint a successor until voters choose a new supervisor in the 2010 elections.

UPDATE: This statement just in from the Supervisor of Elections Office:

It is with great sadness the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office announces the passing of Supervisor of Elections Phyllis Busansky. Mrs. Busansky, 73, was attending the Florida State Association of Supervisor of Elections conference in St. Augustine with members of her staff at the time. She passed away sometime during the night. The cause of death is not known at this time.

“Phyllis,” as she was known to everyone, was an inspiration to generations of Hillsborough County residents and a champion of good government. Over the last six months she brought order, focus and vision to the Elections office. Her entire staff is deeply saddened by her passing. However, they will continue to perform professionally and deliver the kind of election services Phyllis was determined to have.