Lawyer’s fee under scrutiny in Boca

Payment in $24M golf course deal to be discussed

Boca Raton’s mayor wants to be sure it’s ethical to pay the lawyer who negotiated the purchase of the former Ocean Breeze Golf Course.

Arthur Koski, the interim director of the park district, brokered the $24 million golf course deal and billed the district for a percentage of the purchase price at $120,000.

The billing method raised an issue of whether Koski had reason to negotiate a higher price than necessary. A public meeting is expected to further delve into the matter today.

Mayor Susan Haynie asked the park district to be sure the payment complies with Florida’s and Palm Beach County’s codes of ethics. She said she wanted to ensure Koski isn’t benefiting from the sale as a government official.

“We just wanted to check this out,” Haynie said. “We were trying to conclude this transaction. I’m not even discussing the price. I’m not accusing him of anything.”

Koski negotiated the sale of the golf course to the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District. The district is a client

of Koski’s law firm and he was named interim director of the district five years ago.

The city of Boca Raton loaned the district $20 million to buy the 27-hole course, with plans to reopen it as the public Boca National Golf Club. The real estate deal closed on Feb. 22 and Haynie’s letter was sent the next day when she saw Koski’s bill.

Some residents previously raised concerns about the purchase price, arguing the district should have negotiated a lower price.

Palm Beach County property records showed the site was appraised at $3.6 million in 2016, which was down from $4.7 million in 2015. The course, situated in the city’s Boca Teeca neighborhood, already was bankrupt when it closed in 2016.

Koski said he based his fee on .5 percent of the $24 million purchase price. “It would have been $240,000 at 1 percent so half of that is $120,000,” he said.

His contract allows him to charge an hourly rate for special projects like the golf course deal, he said. He calculated he had actually spent 900 hours on the transaction. But to help lower the price, at first he looked at charging a discounted fee of 600 hours at the going rate of $400. Then he consulted another lawyer to see if he could base the fee on the purchase price instead.

Fort Lauderdale attorney Samuel Goren said it was OK to base the fee on the purchase price.

Koski said thought he was doing the district a favor. “The implication was we paid too much because Mr. Koski would get a bigger fee,” he said about himself. “But this was an attempt to find a method to compute the fee so it would be less.”

The park district could ask the Palm Beach County Commission on Ethics for an advisory opinion on the matter, said Anthony Bennett, the ethics commission’s chief investigator. The commission could provide its guidance in the coming weeks or months, Bennett said.

A public meeting is called for 6:30 p.m. Monday in the district’s boardroom in Sugar Sand Park Community Center after commissioners hear more proposals from 15 golf course design firms competing for the project.

“We’ll discuss that our next meeting and decide how and why we will address the fee,” said district chairman Robert Rollins Jr. “When Art is present we’ll flesh this out.”

Haynie herself has dealt with scrutiny in recent months, facing ethics charges that she cast votes that benefited major property owners linked to her husband’s business without disclosing her ties.

She has insisted she did nothing wrong, referencing an advisory opinion from the county’s Commission on Ethics that there was “no appearance of conflict of interest” for one of the votes in question.

Haynie is running for the county commission seat held by Steven Abrams, who can’t run for re-election because of term limits.