Ethics czar blasts city for withholding information

DEERFIELD BEACH — Broward’s top government watchdog has reprimanded Deerfield Beach for repeatedly withholding a public record to two residents that showed the city had been overpaying health benefits for more than a decade.

Broward Inspector General John W. Scott said his office’s investigation found misconduct by the city’s Human Resources director in 2017 and 2018 when she failed to produce documents to residents who had requested public records about the overpayment of health benefit subsidies to retirees over the age of 65.

The document she withheld, officials said, was a retiree health plan analysis that showed the city had contributed to subsidies for retirees without city commission approval, that the city’s Human Resources employees instructed several retirees not to enroll in Medicare and the city lost the ability to offset costs when retirees waived signing up for Medicare, and that retirees could attempt legal action against the city, among other issues.

Deerfield Beach’s mayor told investigators that the city found out that since the 1980s the city had been improperly paying for health insurance of city retirees who were over 65 years old and qualified for Medicare. The city did not stop making the payments until 2018.

The document, “a singularly comprehensive review of the health plan and the issue regarding the payment of health care claims ... contained potentially explosive information that would have provided fodder to critics of the city’s administration, including ‘very angry’ retirees,” according to the report released this week.

The analysis identified 22 people classified as surviving spouses who were over 65, and another 206 retirees with medical coverage through the city.

The Broward Office of the Inspector General said the city has accepted “our factual findings and recognition of the need for improvement of the city’s process of record maintenance and system for tracking and responding to public records requests” and is now making changes.

According to the investigation, among the city’s promised changes include requiring an “acknowledgment from staff members who gather and provide responsive records that they have done so in good faith.”

The Human Resources director told investigators she had no incentive to withhold records, the subsidies occurred before she took over the job, and people already knew what happened. “We found Ms. [Amanda] Robin’s response to be unpersuasive,” the investigator wrote, noting residents were still asking questions to understand the scope of the problem.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel couldn’t reach Robin for comment, but City Manager David Santucci said Friday that the city values public transparency. A status report is due to the OIG in February.

“Public access to the city’s public records is one of the most essential duties of any public agency,” Santucci said. “The city takes Florida’s public records law, public access to the city’s public records and transparency very seriously. The city handles over 3,000 public records requests every year. It is important to note that what occurred was a mistake.”

One resident who complained to investigators that the city would not turn over public records said instead he got “a spreadsheet that made no sense and was of no value to him, as he did not understand its context or what it represented. He said his pursuit of records went ‘down a rabbit hole,’ and that he did not get what he sought after ‘delay’ and ‘deceit on the part of the city.’ ”

The OIG did not investigate the allegations regarding the city’s overpayment of health insurance benefits to retirees because “we observed that the city commission and the public were aware of the retiree health benefits overpayment issues, that the practice had ended, and that the city manager [Burgess Hanson] had resigned.”

Instead, the OIG focused on the withholding of public information and records by both the city clerk and the Human Resources director. Florida’s public records law requires anyone who possesses a public record to promptly acknowledge and then produce the record in response to a request within a “reasonable time” or give an explanation why it’s legally exempt from being disclosed.

One former manager told investigators “the city was not willing to release a lot of information while he was there . ... At the time, one individual’s public records requests were viewed as ‘nuisance requests.’ He said he was baffled about why the city would not simply provide requesters with the information they requested, saying that the city should have acknowledged its mistakes, addressed them, and moved forward.”

According to one interview, the city was paying for the difference in monthly medical premiums “but the city had no idea that it was doing so because no one knew how the plan worked and the city was pulling numbers out of thin air.” The city thought it was paying $276.15, but was actually paying $486.73 per month per retiree, according to the 261-page investigation.