IG deserves better than cities’ cold shoulder
When Elliot Cohen was West Palm Beach’s spokesman, who took him to task for holding a side job with a contractor that did business with the city and for using his position to solicit outside publicity work?
The Palm Beach County Office of Inspector General, that’s who.
And who judged that Palm Beach Gardens violated the law when it failed to make audio recordings of meetings about contract negotiations for a new golf clubhouse? The Inspector General. And who alleged that Palm Tran Connection cooked the books to make its door-to-door paratransit on-time numbers look good? You guessed it. The IG. On large matters and small, Inspector General John Carey and his office have been a keen watchdog for Palm Beach County taxpayers, picking through the contracts, receipts and bidding documents of local government — and coming up with nuggets of waste, impropriety and sloppy management that otherwise would likely have gone undiscovered.
In its five years of existence, the IG’s office has issued 581 recommendations to the county government, municipal governments and agencies like the Solid Waste Authority, and 498 have been put into practice, the office said in a year-end report. That’s a batting average of almost 87 percent.
Another 54 were accepted but not yet adopted. Only 29 were shot down. That brings the rate to 95 percent.
Established after a series of high-level scandals lent Palm Beach County the dubious nickname “Corruption County,” the office has amply lived up to the public’s hopes for an auditing agency that could act with real investigative authority to keep local government honest and efficient.
The county watchdog has uncovered more than $24 million in questionable costs. Governments would save another $20 million over the next three years if they follow IG recommendations on improving the way they do business, the office says.
But as an old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. And that’s proven the case for Carey and his office, who are in a prolonged court fight with about a dozen cities that assert they shouldn’t have to pay for a county program. The bill is nearing $5 million, and rising. So far, the cities have skipped out on all but $303,461, The Palm Beach Post has reported, leaving the county to pay for almost all the IG’s expenses.
The cities are taking this stance although voters approved a referendum in 2010 to establish an Office of Inspector General that would be “funded by the County Commission and all other governmental entities subject to the authority of the Inspector General.”
A majority of voters in the county backed the referendum. So did majorities in each of the municipalities.
As far as Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Catherine Brunson was concerned, those vote tallies were persuasive evidence that the cities should pay up. She ruled to that effect in 2015.
But in December, the 4th District Court of Appeal overruled Brunson and sided with the cities, which contended that their spending decisions should be theirs alone, not imposed by the county.
Carey said the ruling leaves the IG office seriously underfunded. “My disappointment is that we must continue to provide the OIG oversight to the county and all municipalities at approximately half-staff,” he said after the ruling was issued.
Jeri Muoio, mayor of West Palm Beach, one of the leaders in the suit against the IG funding — and who rejected the IG’s report on Cohen as “totally off-base” — said the ruling reaffirmed “our sovereign immunity.”
Sovereign immunity. Perhaps she should be reminded that by a 73.6 percent margin, her voters in 2010 approved creating and funding the IG’s office.
The county should take the case to the Florida Supreme Court. The cities shouldn’t be immune from their responsibility to pay for the assurance of businesslike, honest government.