City commish’s bigoted rants follow the tradition of civic incivility

Come on now. How shocked can you be? It’s Hallandale.

Hallandale Beach City Commissioner Anabelle Lima-Taub began the new year with a Facebook post demanding the removal of a newly elected U.S. congresswoman. Lima-Taub wanted Michigan U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American and a Muslim, banished. “She is a danger and [I] would not put it past her to become a martyr and blow up Capitol Hill.”

First reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel’s Susannah Bryan, her remark reverberated through the national media. The vice mayor and three of Lima-Taub’s fellow city commissioners issued condemnations. Michele Lazarow called her post “indefensible and a black eye for Hallandale Beach.”

Except Hallandale Beach has suffered so many black eyes that, if this was a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight years ago. (Back in 1950, crime-busting U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver called Hallandale, with its 26 mob-run casinos, “the sin city capitol of the South, a wide-open den of iniquity.”)

Just two years ago, the town was so afflicted with resentment, acrimony, plots and outbursts of hostility, I wrote that Hallandale Beach had reached a kind of political nadir. It was a premature assessment.

Commission meetings had come to resemble WWE productions. Except the combatants weren’t faking it. We had Commissioner Keith London wrestling the gavel from his nemesis, Mayor Joy Cooper. At another meeting, Cooper cut off the microphones of London and Lazarow and ordered them removed from the dais.

We had accusations. We had investigations. We had spying. Someone (who remains a mystery) paid a private detective to attach GPS tracking devices to cars belonging to London, Lazarow and then-commission candidate Lima-Taub.

Meanwhile, the Broward Office of Inspector General cited Mayor Cooper and Commissioners Bill Julian and Anthony Sanders of rampant Sunshine Law violations. Plus, Julian was recorded mumbling something over the phone that seemed to indicate he was benefiting from a nefarious agreement to vote in favor of a controversial project. In return, the developer would supposedly supply free workers for his re-election campaign. After a 14-month investigation, the State Attorney’s Office found “absolutely no evidence that Commissioner Julian ever received any improper payment or benefit of any kind.” Too late for Julian. He had already lost his seat to Lima-Taub.

Could it get any crazier? Yes, it could. After I wrote how Hallandale had hit bottom, the city sunk deeper into the muck. Commissioner Sanders paid a $5,000 fine and resigned after the Broward Inspector General found he had funneled thousands of taxpayer dollars into a non-profit outfit run by his wife.

Then the big shocker. Mayor Joy Cooper was snared in an FBI sting. Evidence included $8,000 in hundred-dollar bills, stuffed into – what else? – a Dunkin’ Donuts bag.

According to the arrest affidavit, FBI undercover agents, posing as developers, used disgraced Hollywood lawyer Alan Koslow to deliver illicit campaign contributions to the mayor. (Cooper still awaits trial.)

With Cooper gone, London ascended to the mayor’s office. He did not bring civility to City Hall. During a snide exchange with Commissioner Lima-Taub last August, London suggested she had no right to question how he earned a living. “Was it getting my sphincter bleached?” he asked. “Is that where I earn my income from? No, that would be you and your family business.”

Bleaching nether regions has become a thriving enterprise in South Florida, particularly among nude dancers. But Lima-Taub, whose mother owns a spa that offers anal bleaching products, was not amused. She told the Sun Sentinel that London’s remark “has exposed Hallandale’s culture of abuse, where insults and nastiness were accepted behavior.”

Lima-Taub later proved her own premise. After London introduced a boiler-plate resolution about domestic violence, she exclaimed, “A man who sat here a month ago and dared to talk about my private parts, sponsoring a proclamation for domestic violence. Wow. That’s like Hitler having a proclamation for Jews. Or Fidel Castro having Freedom Day for Cubans.” (She likes Hitler analogies. This week, after withering criticism of her “blow up Capitol Hill” post, the Miami New Times reported Lima-Taub was back on Facebook comparing Congresswoman Tliab’s to the Nazi leader.) London, by the way, lost the mayoral election in November, defeated by Joy Adams. Mayor Adams has not much improved ethic sensitivities around City Hall.

According to the Miami Herald, Adams was just two hours and 39 minutes into her first commission meeting in November when she felt compelled to explain her miserly ways. “I’m half Jewish,” Adams said, adding to Hallandale’s unseemly reputation. “I’m saving a lot of money today.”

Fred Grimm (@grimm_fred or leogrimm@gmail.com), a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976.