Agency keeps director targeted in scathing audit
The official in charge of transportation planning for Lake and Sumter counties turned in his resignation this summer, more than a year after a scathing audit detailed misspending of tax dollars and sloppy recordkeeping of state grants.
T.J. Fish, the Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Planning Organization’s $112,000-ayear executive director, negotiated a severance of 20 weeks’ pay and agreed to leave Sept. 1. Then board leaders set out to look for a temporary replacement. They found a familiar face — Fish.
The board last month voted 8-5 to keep Fish as interim director until Jan. 5 — exposing a rift in the agency’s 22-member board.
Saying he had “buyer’s remorse” over his vote to approve him as interim director, Lake County Commissioner Josh Blake on Wednesday made a motion to
remove Fish in two weeks.
“Rip the Band-Aid off, and it’s a fresh start,” Blake said. But the motion failed 7-4, with two Sumter County officials abstaining, exasperated over the future of the agency.
“We will continue to have minimal participation ... because we have no faith or confidence that the MPO is going to come through on their end,” Sumter County Commissioner Don Burgess said.
Fish said it was unfortunate that some board members wouldn’t respect the contract they already approved. He also reiterated that he would leave Jan. 5.
“They wanted me for some continuity during the search [for a new director],” he said. “It’s bad timing that this board remains possibly fractious. I’m hoping that whatever it takes ... all the parties will pull together.”
The 2016 audit by the inspector general of the Lake County Clerk of the Circuit Court found, among other things, that Fish went to the office “approximately two days a week” and that the agency misused taxpayer money to pay for memberships in nine chambers of commerce and for sponsoring community events.
It said the bulk of $892,000 in questionable spending was due to improperly reporting how staff time was spent on projects funded through state and federal grants. Though Fish vowed to make improvements, a transportation department official this spring detailed a pattern of ongoing sloppiness.
Facing renewed pressure from some on the board, Fish agreed to leave the job he has held since 2005.
This week, his supporters on the board said Fish made only late payments or simple mistakes on ledgers and that he is still the best man for the job with the deepest knowledge of the two counties’ transportation network.
Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione has lauded Fish’s “command of the issues, his knowledge and experience …”
But Sumter County officials said in June they wanted a smaller governing board — which the audit recommended — and to merge with the MetroPlan Orlando, which represents Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties.
Leesburg City Commissioner Dan Robuck, another Lake-Sumter MPO member, said that would be a terrible position for the transportation future of Lake County, which would have less bargaining power when grouped with other Central Florida counties.
“If we don’t get it fixed, we’ll end up with Orlando, where we won’t get anything,” Robuck said.
The board also voted to hire a headhunter agency to find Fish’s permanent replacement Wednesday, but Sumter officials were skeptical that goal would be met by Jan. 5.
“This has been going on forever,” Burgess said after the meeting. “Do you know when the first audit was published? March 2016.”
He blamed Lake County’s “small-town politics” for Fish’s ability to continue at the agency.
“They wanted me for some continuity during the search [for a new director]. “It’s bad timing that this board remains possibly fractious.” T.J. Fish, Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Planning Organization’s interim director