Commercial real estate developer and founding Budget Hawk Russell Price said, “Eliminating approximately $2,000,000 in business fees would be a financial shot in the arm for businesses that are still struggling to recover from the national recession.”

Former chamber of commerce chairman and Budget Hawk Brent Pichard added, “We are elated that the chamber has joined the movement for tax relief. The chamber brings tremendous political influence to help convince local government to make Tallahassee a more pro-business city.”

This does not mean the Budget Hawks’ work is done.

“Budget Hawks will continue fighting for a repeal of last year’s 13.5% city property tax hike and for more transparency in the city budget debate. Cutting property taxes will benefit all taxpayers, including young families and the elderly on fixed income. A repeal of the business tax will be a good down payment in the effort to return tax dollars back to taxpayers’ pockets,” former mayor and Budget Hawk Penny Herman promised.

The Budget Hawks and two other groups, Citizens for Responsible Spending, and the Network of Entrepreneurs and Business Advocates held a budget workshop earlier this month and presented an alternative budget to the spending priorities proposed by the City of Tallahassee.

Our report on that workshop can be read here.

The presentations addressed the rosy outlook presented by City staff weeks earlier at a budget workshop and raised questions about information provided to City Commissioners.

After the presentations City Manager Rick Fernandez told City Commissioners, “We were ambushed.”

Mr. Fernandez explained to Commissioners that the groups had never talked to him about this new information despite his willingness to meet with anyone at anytime.

The presentation to the City Commissioners started with former Mayor Penny Herman who said “after reviewing documents provided during the last budget presentation by City staff, we are concerned that the information provided to you is not consistent with an independent review of some of the comparisons presented.”

She was followed by Dr. Shawn Kantor who is the L. Charles Hilton, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Economic Prosperity and Individual Opportunity at FSU and a prize winning author.

Dr. Kantor presented two charts. The first chart showed per capita spending since 2000. He said General Fund per capita spending had began increasing in 2010 and has reached a level not seen since the real estate boom in 2005. This contradicted the claim by City staff that General Fund spending was tracking population growth.

The second chart compared growth in the General Fund with growth in other measures of the local economy. The chart showed the City Commissioners that the rate of growth in the General Fund since 2010 has surpassed growth in jobs, annual wages and property values.

Dr. Kantor was followed by two members of the Budget Hawks.

One, Mr. Brent Pichard, challenged the City staff’s presentation during the last budget workshop that indicated the staff was responsible for a 30% decline in electric rates over the last eight years.

Mr. Pichard presented documents to the City Commissioners which showed that the price for natural gas has declined significantly over the last eight years and that the decline was not the result of any City government action.

Rather, he said, base rates – which is controlled by the City – has increased approximately 56% since 2008.

Mr. Fernandez’s comments were followed by a spirited defense of City staff by City Commissioner Curtis Richardson and Mayor Andrew Gillum.

Commissioners Scott Maddox, Gil Ziffer, and Nancy Miller did not offer any comments.

When the Tallahassee Democrat, Martha Barnett, the former President of the American Bar Association, Harry Anstead, the former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice, and former Mayor Penny Herman say it is time for an appointed Ethics Officer, you would think it would be a slam dunk. But it was not!

The troubling part of this is that Commissioner and Mayoral candidate Andrew Gillum was able to say no to an appointed Ethics Officer in the face of such support.

The irony is that Commissioner Gillum is the one that got the ball rolling with the EAP, but he could not support their most important recommendation.

And now the question is why?

Gillum, who was elected to the Commission at a young age, has never been one to rock the boat. He went along with the Mayor and then Commissioner Mark Mustian, to support the contract with Honeywell for the smart meter program that has been a huge disappointment.

Gillum voted for the controversial deferred compensation program for elected officials that was ultimately killed after citizens displayed outrage.

Gillum voted for a tax subsidized restaurant in Cascades Park, despite evidence that indicated the project does not make business sense.

So for those who were looking for a leader in the next Mayor, the vote for an appointed Ethics Officer was an opportunity for Gillum to break from the past, sever ties with the old way of doing business.

But it was not to be!

Gillum’s supporters will say that the City Commission adopted a lot of policies recommended by the EAP that will make a huge difference in the future. And that will be Gillum’s political cover. But do not believe it for a minute.

For the last 10-15 years the City Manager and the City Attorney have been providing cover for the questionable deeds of certain members on the City Commission.

Remember deferred compensation – how did that get on the agenda?

Remember when City Attorney Jim English sat in silence when Mayor Marks misled the public about his communication with his law office over the Honeywell vote?

Remember when the City Attorney approved the hiring of a private investigator to follow a City Hall critic?

And now the current City Attorney, Lew Shelley, is in charge of implementing these new ethics rules.

The is the same City Attorney that will not enforce the lobbyists registration ordinance. The same City Attorney that just this year let a City Commissioner repeatedly walk out of meetings instead of asking him to follow the law and declare a conflict. The same City Attorney that sat by and watched a citizen get shut down while trying to talk about a City lawsuit settlement.

Commissioner Andrew Gillum made his choice – along with Mayor John Marks and Commissioner Nancy Miller- and decided to side with the City Manager and the City Attorney and reject what was good for the citizens of Tallahassee.

This vote was a defeat for transparency, but sadly, it was a vote that Andrew Gillum will be shackled with as the next Mayor of Tallahassee and that is unfortunate, because it was his own doing!

The focus of the Panel was a recommendation by Panel member Jaber on oversight authority that would create an ethics officer position that would report to the City Attorney. One member argued that such a structure lacked the independence required to have an effective oversight authority.

The Panel ended the discussion without taking a vote on the issue, but the consensus seemed to be leaning towards keeping the ethics officer position within the confines of the City Attorney’s office.

The public hearing began by taking input from seven citizens. The meeting format was informal and the speakers were given great leeway by Chairwoman Barnett to finish their comments.

Six of the seven speakers focused on the need for an independent oversight authority. But the most persuasive speaker was former City Commissioner Penny Herman. She stated as a former elected official her experience was that there needed to be an independent structure to enforce ethics rules that apply to elected officials.

When asked by a Panel member what was wrong with a process that would allow for the City Attorney to turn over ethics issues to a “contracted” ethics officer, Ms. Herman replied by saying that “the problem is the City Attorney would decide what is an ethics issue and the City Attorney works for the elected officials.”

Erwin Jackson, a consistent participant in these hearings, stated that “the City Attorney has been the ethics officer for the last 10 years and that has not worked. We cannot even get the City Attorney to ask the Attorney General of Florida for a legal opinion on deferred compensation. The Panel needs to recommend an independent oversight authority.”

The main argument against an independent oversight authority seems to be concern about creating a new bureaucracy and the associated cost. However, Ms. Herman pointed out that all you need is a citizen committee, like the Ethics Panel, that would hire an ethics officer to implement the adopted ethics code.

Those supporting an independent oversight authority at the public hearing and at other meetings include former City Commissioner Penny Herman, former Director of the Florida Commission on Ethics, Phil Claypool, and former City Auditor Sam McCall.

No public speakers opposed an independent oversight authority.

The Ethics Advisory Panel will meet Thursday morning to finalize the recommendations they will present to the City Commission.