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We have all heard comments along the lines of,
"You know how those politicians are, they're all corrupt"
and "Why don't they do something about these guys? They must all
be on the take!" As the chief law enforcement officer for
Miami-Dade County, these types of comments certainly make me wince. I
was particularly disheartened recently, when my 15 year old son said,
"Mom, I'd never go into public service because everyone is
crooked." However, these comments also make it clear that despite
all of the work of my office in the area of public corruption
prosecutions, parts of the community may have missed what we have
already accomplished as they react to some new revelation. The added
perspective created by citizen frustration also highlights the
public's lack of awareness of the weakness of so many of the laws
presently available to fight public corruption. To do a better job, we
need better tools.
The battle to eliminate public corruption from our
political process has become a primary goal of our law enforcement
agencies, in general, and of the office of the state attorney in
particular. Since ballot fraud led to the overturning of the November
4, 1997 Miami mayoral election, there have been 60 people arrested in
the fraudulent absentee ballot probe. But that was only the most
visible of the hundreds of public occupation investigations undertaken
by the Office of the State Attorney. In the last 6 years, 294 police,
corrections officers and public officials have been prosecuted. In the
last 2 years alone, 140 public employees have been convicted of
crimes. The conviction of former City of Miami Commissioner Humberto
Hernandez in the attempt to cover up voting frauds is only one of the
most visible prosecutions which have occurred in Miami-Dade state
courts. The goal of charging, convicting and removing from public
office such individuals as former Miami-Dade County commissioner Bruce
Kaplan, for making false statements on his financial disclosure forms,
remains a law enforcement priority. The investigation of former
Opa-Locka City
Manager Earnie Neal led to an ethics complaint, criminal prosecution and his
resignation from public office. Other cases are still pending, such as:
state prosecution of Carmen Lunetta, former Director of the Port of Miami
for illegal campaign fundraising; the arrest of 14 Miami-Dade Department of
Corrections employees for bribery; and the trial of the Mayor of Hialeah
Gardens for murder solicitation and insurance fraud.
While the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases continue, my
experience in this area of prosecution shows that there are enormous legal
loopholes in our laws that minimize a prosecutor's ability to convict and
which result in a lenient sentence even in the event of a conviction. To
remedy these problems, I have developed an 8-point legislative plan for the
year 2000 to create some effective new tools to fight public corruption. I
need your help, the average person on the street, to gain the legislative
support to see these proposals enacted as law.
* Punish those who conspire to violate the election code or help someone who
has violated the code with the same seriousness of punishment as those who
actually commit the violation. Presently, conspiring to violate our election
laws, being the brains behind efforts to steal an election, or helping
someone who has violated the code are misdemeanor crimes, equal in the eyes
of the law to an offense of letting your dog roam the neighborhood without a
leash. The foundation upon which our government is based, our elections,
deserve far greater legal protection than this.
* Require that all public officers and candidates for public office, receive
mandatory training on the code of ethics for public officers and employees
and other ethical requirements of their office. This would eliminate the
often used, "unintentional violation excuse" and make criminal
prosecutions more possible.
* Require that any person entering into a contract with government be held
responsible for subcontractor's work and billings. Investigations into
government contracts have shown that contractors appear to have little
fiduciary responsibility to the public as they go after the public's money.
This must change.
* Toughen the penalties for
bribery and unlawful compensation so these penalties are based upon the
value of benefit at the center of the crime. Under the current law, any
bribery or unlawful compensation is a third degree felony. This means that
even upon conviction, it is often virtually impossible to send an offender
to jail.
Expand the crime of official misconduct for a public servant. In 1985 and
1978 the Florida Supreme court held that provisions in the official
misconduct statute, useful in the prosecution of public corruption, were
unconstitutionally vague. We need to redraft this statutes so it can pass
inspection by the Supreme Court. The Governor's Public corruption Study
Commission agreed with my position and proposed a new official misconduct
statute that will make it a second degree felony for a public servant with
corrupt intent to obtain a benefit for any person, or cause harm to another
person, to: (1) falsify or cause another to falsify any official record or
official document; (2) conceal, cover-up, destroy mutilate, or alter any
official record or official document or cause another person to perform such
act; (3) do any act to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of
information relating to the commission of a felony that directly involves or
affects the public agency or public entity served by the public servant; and
(4) refrain from performing a mandatory constitutional or statutorily duty
or causes another person to refrain from performing such duty. This statute
would allow law enforcement authorities to arrest and prosecute those few
public servants who misuse their positions for their own corrupt purposes.
* Create new statutes to make bid rigging on government contracts and other
practices that undermine the fairness of the bidding process, a felony.
Since Grand Jury reports are an important and effective way for the people
of a community to express their concerns about how their government is
working, steps need to be taken to allow the Grand Jury more input into the
fight against public corruption. We need to modify the present state statute
which requires that a grand jury report be disclosed pre-publication any to
a named individual referred to in the report. This change should eliminate
the automatic
stay of the publication of the report pending the appeal of someone who
decides to challenge the report because it mentions the person's name. Such
stays minimize the impact of the findings of a grand jury, and have become a
tool of those who seek to avoid public scrutiny. The public has a right to
full disclosure about issues which affect the integrity of their government.
There are reforms that should also occur at the local level to remove
corrupt influences from our political process. We need to create a county
ordinances that would prevent a lobbyist from lobbying the county commission
if that lobbyist had engaged in campaign fundraising activities on behalf of
a member of the commission. This ordinance would help restore the confidence
of the citizens of Miami-Dade County that our elected commissioners do not
give preferential treatment to those lobbyists who help bankroll their
campaigns.
If we hope to get any of these reforms passed into law, our citizenry needs
to make its voice heard. Our state legislators and our commissioners need to
know, first-hand, that the people of our community want a clean government.
Too often, the concerns voiced about our quality of government end with a
few cynical comments, as if these comments alone will solve the matter. If
we truly want clean government, each of us must work for clean government.
Corruption's greatest ally is public apathy. It allows those who apose
reform to say, "See, the people don't really care." I call on all
of those who share my commitment to good government to make a telephone
call, send a fax or an E-mail to their State Senator, their State
Representative or their County Commissioner demanding that the steps I have
outlined be taken to restore our faith in the honesty of our government.
Good government is our right. But like all rights, we much each work to
preserve its sanctity. As the Florida Legislature begins its term on March
7, 2000, I will be working to have these proposals become law. I have faith
that citizen intolerance of corruption can create the reform momentum
necessary for us to reclaim government integrity for Miami-Dade County.
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