Trustees Fire Richburg

From the Tampa Bay newspaper blog, The Buzz: "The trustees of Northwest Florida State College just voted to fire president Bob Richburg, the man who hired Rep. Ray Sansom and was indicted along with him earlier this month. The vote was 4 to 3." More here.

Richburg Rumpus

Northwest Florida College's president, Bob Richburg, is facing trial on state felony charges. Now, he has more to worry about.

A self-described "muckraker" with "no ax to grind" -- retired Air Force officer Alan Vafides of Fort Walton Beach-- has filed a state ethics complaint against Richburg for failing to disclose his close business ties with former state senator Charlie Clary. Ditto that last for college board member Jody Henderson.

Meanwhile, governor Charlie Crist says he'll be "asking" the college to return the $6 million previously steered toward the college to build an airport hangar for his developer buddy, Jay Odom.

The trustees can't be happy to have their names associated with this spreading scandal. But, can they summon the courage at today's "special session" to fire Richburg? If not, we expect to see soon a number of them resigning in order to "spend more time with the family."

Sansom Missing in Action

Did the judge impound Ray Sansom's Florida passport when he released the indicted legislator on bail? The Destin Republican is missing in action in Tallahassee, precisely as Florida lawmakers get down to serious horse trading in the closing days of the legislative session.

Can Northwest Florida College Trustees be Trusted?

One aspect of the Ray Sansom/Bob Richburg scandal that hasn't been getting enough scrutiny is what, if any, role the members of the college's Board of Trustees played. Among other things, college boards of trustees in Florida have responsibility for establishing and enforcing recruiting and hiring policies, advertising their own public trustee meetings, and evaluating "the performance of the community college presidents... ."

It sure looks like, collectively, the "Northwest Florida College" Board of Trustees has a lot to answer for. Among other things:

• They turned a blind eye, to be charitable about it, toward the obviously fixed hiring of Destin politician Ray Sansom as a "part-time" college vice-president at a salary of $110,000 per year, when he didn't even meet the minimally-advertised job qualifications.
• In 2007, the trustees accepted college president Bob Richburg's "resignation" so he could collect over half a million dollars in accumulated state pension benefits, and then the board re-hired him in the same job with a three percent raise just one month later -- after what no one could call a bona fide nationwide advertising campaign to fill the post with the best qualified candidate. Even conservative Republicans were outraged at that one.
• The Northwest Florida College Trustees acquiesced a year ago, when Richburg set up one a March board meeting in a private "members only" Tallahassee club 150 miles away from the campus, then they defended the action afterward when Florida's attorney general called the meeting legally questionable and likely a violation of the Sunshine Law.
  
• No minutes of that "legislative update" meeting were taken by or for the trustees -- yet ten months later they approved supposed "minutes" of what took place, just as prosecuting attorneys were about to empanel a grand jury.

So, who are these "Northwest Florida College" Trustees? To all appearances, the board is drawn 100% from the local business community. By contrast, a new nationwide survey of state and local community colleges -- and that's what "Northwest Florida College" really is, hyped-up name to the contrary notwithstanding -- finds that, nationwide, only 32% of trustees on boards "were from the business sector."

None of the present members of the Okaloosa-Walton county college appears to be renown in higher education circles for, or to have demonstrable expertise in, academic administration, management, college teaching, or research. Now, we could be wrong. Maybe the otherwise prosaic-looking composition of the Northwest Florida College board of trustees masks a John Dewey clone, a Warren Buffet heir, or a fund-raising genius.

To find out more about the trustees, however, could it be symptomatic of some deeper malady that the college's web site directs us to call the "Marketing Department?"

All of the trustees, no doubt, volunteer their time because they want to serve the college and the local community. For that, they doubtless deserve the standard round of politely appreciative applause.

But community college trustees have something else, too: fiduciary and legal obligations, as described in State Board of Education rules. They are required to establish college policies and hold executives accountable for following them.

When two of the top administrators "hired" by the college trustees are indicted by a grand jury for college-connected activities, and the legality of the board's own conduct is called into question by the state's attorney general, it's well past time for someone on the state Board of Education to be asking, "Who are these trustees and what on earth have they been doing?"

Elizabeth S. Campbell (business owner)
McCaskill & Co.
P.O. Box 369
Destin, FL 32540

Joseph W. Henderson (CPA)
O'Sullivan Creel
P.O. Box 1600
Fort Walton Beach FL 32549

Brian S. Pennington
Tybrin Corporation
1030 Titan Court
Fort Walton Beach FL 32547

Dale E. Rice, Jr. (CEO/President)
First National Bank of Crestview
1301 Industrial Drive
Crestview FL 32539

Sandy Sims
Gulf Power Company
1 Energy Place
Pensacola FL 32520

Vercell Vance, CEO
(Business Owner)
Alpha Data Corporation
1326 Lewis Turner Blvd.
Fort Walton Beach FL 32547

Esteena K. (Teena) Wells (Self Employed)
92 Hillcrest Way
DeFuniak Springs FL 32433

Wesley Wilkerson (Business Owner)
54 Seashore Circle
Santa Rosa Beach FL 32549

Northwest Florida Leaders Indicted

Northwest Florida kingpins Ray Sansom (R-Destin) and Okaloosa-Walton County college president Bob Richburg were indicted Friday on felony "public corruption" charges. Richburg also faces a second charge of perjury.

Sansom, R-Destin, was booked into the Leon County Jail on Friday afternoon and released on his own recognizance. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison on the felony charge.
* * *
State Attorney Willie Meggs said Richburg unconvincingly told the grand jurors that building an aircraft hangar and emergency-management complex 15 miles from the Niceville campus was a "multiuse educational facility."
* * *
Meggs said Sansom's charge, a third-degree felony, reflects the then-House budget chief's creation of a false and fraudulent budget item that described the hangar project as a college building.

The full 10-page grand jury indictment can be read here. From the narrative "presentment" that follows the actual indictment, it's clear that the grand jury more or less considered Northwest Florida developer Jay Odom an unindicted co-conspirator. As Gannett Publishing Co.'s Tallahassee reporter puts it --

Odom, who contributed more than $1 million to the state GOP and Sansom's political causes, was not accused of any legal violation, but the grand jury said back-scratching among corporate honchos and politicians is a symptom of a deeply rooted malady.

At the root of this back-scratch was Odom's persistent efforts to find "other people's money" to finance a $6 million airplane hangar for one of his companies, Destin Jet, which he promotes as a state-of-the-art luxury private jet service. When Okaloosa County emergency managemnt personnel expressed no interest in misusing public money for Odom's company, the grand jury's narrative suggests, Odom used college president Richburg to be his cat's paw, in order to claw the $6 million out of Florida's state education appropriation:

During 2OO7 and 2008 airport officials learned about the appropriation to NWFSC [Northwest Florida State college] and the requirement by the Legislature that the college facility would be built at the Destin Airport. The college was to use a development order previously prepared by Destin Jet. The Destin Airport is located fifteen miles away from the NWFSC campus in Niceville. * * * During this meeting the NWFSC officials discussed how the building would be used. The college would have classroom space and the college could sub-lease the storage area to Destin Jet. The building essentially was the same design as Destin Jet's 2004 design, and is still an aircraft hanger. The second floor drawing now includes classrooms as opposed to office space and the first floor is now called a staging area.

The kicker is, "NWFSC does not have an aviation component in its curriculum" and "the vice-president of NWFSC responsible for construction of structures, Dr. Yancy, was not aware of the hanger project until he leamed that The Legislature had appropriated funds for it."

Your Grand Jurors have determined that the funding for this hanger can be attributed directly and solely to Speaker Designate Ray Sansom. No member of The Legislature ever saw this appropriation until it was inserted into the appropriation bill during conference between the Appropriation Chair Ray Sansom, and his senate counterpart senator, Lisa C arlton. The hanger project for a community college was the sole work of Ray Sansom, Jay Odom and Bob Richburg.

Jaded Northwest Floridians, by now, fully expect to be ripped off by developers like Jay Odom. Cronyism, corruption, and cupidity run so deep and wide among politicians at every level in the Florida panhandle that the only surprise is there's someone left still honest and courageous enough to try catching them.

But a corrupt college president -- and one who allegedly perjured himself, too? That still surprises.

It probably shouldn't. The reality of higher education is that some time ago it ceased to resemble the idyllic vision of berobed scholars, books in arm, thoughtfully wandering the tree-studded groves of academe.

The "Commercialization of Higher Education," as Derek Bok explains in a book by the same title, inevitably has compromised values "that are essential to the continued confidence and loyalty of faculty, students, alumni, and even the general public." When college presidents, in the scramble to acquire more and more money, climb into bed with developers and politicians, it's to be expected many will wake up indicted.

Niceville Senator Disses College President

Earlier today we lamented that no one was demanding the resignation of Okaloosa County's "state college" president Bob Richburg. After all, he's surely as central to the grand jury probe of criminal wrong-doing as (former) Speaker of the House Ray Sansom.

Turns out, there is at least one person who is now suggesting that very thing: self-described Sansom "friend" Don Gaetz, a Republican state senator from Niceville.

The weekly Santa Rosa Press-Gazette in Milton reported today that Gaetz has issued a written statement more or less saying that Sansom had no choice except to step down as Speaker of the House while the grand jury investigates him. And, Gaetz added, Northwest Florida State College President Bob Richburg also "should 'face consequences' for his role in the botched hiring."

Not only did Gaetz diss Richburg, his remarks in a subsequent interview sound very much as if he might be trying to shift the blame to Richburg for the whole thing:

"I did not know that Ray was going to go to work for Bob Richburg or that it was going to be handled the way it was. Had I known it and had I been asked for advice from my good friend Ray, I would have warned him off."

"Warned him off?" Put aside the fact that Sansom really wasn't going to work for "Bob Richburg;" he was finagling a job from Richburg to work for the public. But is there a whiff of coolness -- maybe even disapproval -- in senator Gaetz' remarks about "Bob Richburg"?

It certainly sounds like that to us. Just as cool, in fact, as senator Gaetz' remarks last month to the Northwest Florida Daily News when he said -- rather crossly we thought -- that Richburg had never invited him "to a meeting of the Northwest Florida State College board of directors in my life."

Gaetz was, of course, referring to the college trustees "public" meeting arranged to take place in Tallahassee, as Richburg wrote in an email from Ft. Walton, because it was "the only way we can do it in privacy but with a public notice here."

Could the state senator be sending a signal to his "friend" Sansom? If he is, might that signal be, 'Better that you become witness for the prosecution than the other guy?'

Witness for the Prosecution

Ray Samson has said in a written statement that his "ongoing legal proceedings have temporarily created an inability for me to carry out my responsibilities as Speaker." What, then, are we to conclude about Bob Richburg, president of the Okaloosa-Walton Community College ... Oh, so sorry; we mean... Northwest Florida State College?

As Scott Maxwell of the Orlando Sentinel observes, the known -- indeed, the undisputed facts -- are that Sansom--

1) helped funnel millions of dollars to a small college; and
2) The college then offered him a $110,000-a-year paycheck.

And that doesn't even allude to the mysterious $6 million college airplane hangar and the top-secret "legislative briefing" that wasn't. Nevertheless, Maxwell says, "That's why he had to give up his speakership -- and why he needs to give up any delusions of returning to the post."

Richburg is a state employee, too. While an academic may not be as politically powerful as a Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, a state-paid college president is in charge of molding a lot of young minds and educating them to become better informed citizens of Florida.

No one else is asking, so we will: How easily can Richburg faithfully discharge his public duties when, as it appears, he was so deeply enmeshed on the other side of the same questionable transactions that have driven Sansom from the Speaker's chair?

If, as we know, a grand jury is investigating Sansom, isn't it inescapable that Richburg also must be facing possible criminal indictment? After all, it takes two to dance the bribery tango.

Richburg has a dilemma nearly identical to Sansom's. Both men are in charge of guiding important state institutions through parlous economic times. Both hold public positions that impose a high duty of loyalty to the public good.

The only difference is one of scale. Sansom as Speaker was expected to provide ethical and policy guidance to 119 other state representatives. Richburg to thousands of the next generation of Florida citizenry.

If Sansom can be compelledto give up the Speaker's job, shouldn't Richburg? Unless, of course, he's hoping for some sort of deal to save his own skin. For example, by becoming a witness for the prosecution.

Sansom Quits as House Speaker

Facing a grand jury investigation and a state ethics probe, embattled Speaker of the Florida House Ray Sansom (R-Destin) has stepped down, the Miami Herald is reporting.

Time will tell how much of this is owing to pressure from fellow House members and how much is because Sansom has word of worse news to come.

Spacy Florida

A couple of days ago, Orlando Sentinel reporters Aaron Deslatte and Robert Block broke the news that Florida governor Charlie Crist is ordering a state ethics investigation into one of his own former staff employees.

The newspaper is claiming that Brice Harris used his position in the governor's Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development to arrange a half million dollar contract for the Andrews Institute of Gulf Breeze. Then, he "resigned his $70,000-a-year state job -- to take a job overseeing the project for the company he had helped get it."

Crist was more or less forced to run for the political cover of a typically toothless ethics investigation after the newspaper obtained "e-mails and other documents" showing that Harris engineered the grant to the Andrews Institute. Then he got waist-deep in the details of running the place by negotiating "minutae down to the design of the logos and shoulder patches the would-be space tourists would wear." And only then did he resign to take the "private sector" position of running the program himself.

That the hog trough is open for all public employees in Florida to self-deal with taxpayer money should not be surprising. After all, former governor Jeb Bush set the tone when he shagged the people of Florida by giving away millions of state money to Lehman Brothers (R.I.P.) and was rewarded soon after leaving office with a cushy consultant contract.

The majority leader of the statehouse, Ray Sansom (R-Destin), also knows a good scam when he sees it. He shoveled tens of millions of taxpayer funds at the once-obscure Okaloosa-Walton County Community College (now, with its ill-gotten wealth, re-christened "Northwest Florida State College"). For his troubles? He was given a $110,000 a year job for which he didn't even have the required advanced degree.

Never mind the absurdity of spending half a million dollars in Florida "tourism and development" money on "space tourism." Space tourism! Here along the Gulf Coast we can't even say that without giggling.

What really gets us is that the news media persist in referring to these all-too-common bag jobs as "potential ethics violations." They are to ethics what bank robbery is to a late payment to your credit card company.

The facts as reported spell out potential crimes. Rod Blagojevich-type crimes. Anyone -- including an elected official or someone who works for one -- who abuses his public position and deploys taxpayer money to secure a cushy job for himself should be indicted. Just as surely as Blagojevich will be.

Sansom's Hiding Place

Florida newspapers from Miami to Tallahassee are ganging up on state representative Ray Samson (R-Destin) for his painfully obvious pay-for-play politics.

The way it worked was simple: Bob Richburg, the president of Okaloosa County Junior College... sorry, now it's Northwest Florida State College, thanks also to pay-for-play hanky-panky .... handed Samson a $122 million wish list and Sansom got a cushy $110 thousand job in return for funding most of it.

Worse, some of those funds supposedly earmarked for "education" turn out to have been designated to build a customized airport hanger suspiciously identical to one wanted for personal use by a Sansom campaign finance contributor. Wink-wink. Your scarce taxpayer dollars at work.

Here's more, from the News Herald:

Since 2006, when he became House budget chairman, Sansom helped the college get $35 million above what the Department of Education recommended. This year, while the Legislature was attempting to close a $6 billion shortfall, he secured $25.5 million for the school, which was $24.5 million above what had been initially budgeted. That was the single-largest public education capital outlay for community college projects this year.

Today's PNJ joins in with an editorial summarizing how Sansom is now avoiding all questions about the recent revelations. It's titled "Sansom Has No Place to Hide."

The thing is, he does have a hidey-hole. It's in the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of Florida. We're still living in the Bush era, after all.

Northern Illinois U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald may see pay-for-play politics as an indictable offense -- it's called bribery and extortion in his book. Apparently, however, North Florida's acting U.S. Attorney, Thomas Kirwin, doesn't have a book.

Quite a few Florida newspapers, pols, and good-government types are demanding that Sansom resign as speaker of the state house of representatives. There's even a web site called SackSansom.com.

What? And leave him sitting there, a free man, in the Florida House of Representatives? We don't get that. If a publicly-paid politician in Illinois, or just about anywhere else, abuses his position to feather his own nest, we'd expect him to be indicted. If a publicly-paid politician does it in Florida, he should get a mere job demotion?

And what about Sansom's publicly-paid academic accomplice? He should testifying in front of a grand jury right now.

Difference Without a Distinction

What's the difference between the "pay to play" schemes of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who tried to trade on his public office to enrich himself with a new job, and Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Ray Sansom (R-Destin), who actually succeeded in doing that?

Seriously. Is there any real difference? Other than the fact, of course, that Sansom doesn't live within the jurisdiction of a tough U.S Attorney and presumably hasn't had his phones tapped; at least, not until some time after January 20, 2009, when president-elect Obama gets to replace all of them.

Well, yes, there is a difference. Sansom got himself the job he wanted -- a part time $110,000 a year taxpayer-paid unadvertised job for which he wasn't even qualified. Blagojevich hasn't managed that, yet.

The Sansom Mistake

Speaking of amoral crooks, as we just were, it seems to us the question is not whether state representative Ray Sansom (R- Destin) should be removed as State House majority leader, as the Pensacola Newsletter editorializes today. Nor is it whether he should resign his leadership position as some Democrats are saying.

The better question is whether Ray Sansom should be removed from office altogether for abusing the public trust for his own private gain.

We recall that a couple of Pensacola Beach resident association leaders got to know Mr. Sansom back in the late '90s and early 2000's when he was first running for office. He assured them that if he won he would sponsor a bill to allow a referendum on whether Pensacola Beach would be allowed to incorporate as a self-governing municipality.

Sansom won. No bill was ever introduced. In retrospect, the mistake beach residents made was that they didn't offer him some cushy, high paying job on the side. Turns out, that's the traditional quid pro quo you're supposed to give Northwest Florida legislators.