Pompano Beach Primary Election Referendums are Commission Attempts to Grab Power and Hide Crime

Aug. 8, 2012 - PRLog -- Interestingly enough, if you go to the official Broward County Supervisor of Elections website (BrowardSOE.org), one finds reference to the fact that there will be three city referendums on the ballot for the City of Pompano Beach, but no description of what they are. A little research later and one finds the three referendums all have to do with increasing the power of the Pompano Beach Commission, as well as reducing its transparency.

Referendum One is proposing the expansion of powers of the Pompano Beach Commission to determine alcohol sales hours when currently the power lies with the public in that a change in hours must be made by public referendum. The supposed impetus for this idea is that the commission wants to allow alcohol sales in the morning on Sundays, but instead of putting that idea up for referendum to directly ask voters what they think, as is the current legal procedure and the whole point of having referendums, the Commission wants to change the system and is asking to just have the power to make those alcohol sales hours decisions solely under its charge with no future input from citizens.

Referendum Two has been proposed in many ways on many ballots over time, but the Pompano Beach Commission just can’t seem to get the public to approve, so here we find it, again. Referendum Two proposes that the City of Pompano Beach be able to give land it owns to the Pompano Beach Community Redevelopment Agency. This is the same agency found to not have the authority to take properties, although it has illegally taken them over a decade (Pompano Beach CRA Gate), and the same agency whose advisor (Vincente Thrower) went to jail on counts of bribery and fraud, and the same agency that is managed by reported lobbyist and double city dipper (Kim Breisemeister), and the same agency that is under investigation by Broward Legal Aid for misusing code enforcement to force residents out of their homes and take their properties. In ballots in the past, the commission proposed specific properties to be given over to the CRA; this time the city is proposing to do away with referendums entirely and just have the power to give over any land it chooses, without citizen voting.

Referendum Three, perhaps not surprisingly, proposes that City Commissioners be exempt from two parts of the Broward County Ethics Code. The City Commissioners want to be able, while in office, to lobby other governmental bodies in the county. As if that weren’t enough to roll eyes, they also want to keep the income they earn from their outside jobs (presumably using their power to lobby other agencies) a secret. Both are not allowed by the new county ethics code which was created to curb as much nepotism and pay-for-play politics which earned the county its nickname of 'Corruption County'. Commissioners of Pompano Beach have often said they see no problem taking money from companies with active business before the commission, and in fact the Mayor (Lamar Fisher) was found to have multiple Florida Ethics Violations including his use of his own company to auction off government property while in office (his Fisher Auction Company auctions 'government surplus' and land foreclosures - no conflict there!).

All of these referenda are proposed to expand the powers of the City of Pompano Beach Commission and reduce the powers of the citizens of Pompano Beach, which is against the very purpose of referendums in the first place. Referendums like these are a form of direct democracy with the idea that local citizens have a vested interest in the governing of their communities and need to participate, by direct vote, in important legislation. By asking for more power and less participation by citizens, the city has hijacked the referendum process entirely, in essence proposing referendums to do away with referendums. These referenda do not appear on the sample ballot to allow citizens to review them, and worse, an alarming number of citizens have yet to receive a sample ballot, although one was promised to be mailed to every household, and primary voting has already begun as of August 4, 2012.

It should also be mentioned that these referenda to have no future referendums are appearing on the primary ballot instead of the general election ballot, a time when voter turnout is known to be notoriously low, so in effect very few people could vote to do away with future voting options for the many. Perhaps this is no accident, and the commission is counting on this, thinking they can use their City Hall cronies to vote and score a coup, especially in the case of Referendum Two which hasn’t gone in their favor previously. It seems a sneaky low blow by a notoriously sneaky commission, but, and a big but, it is still up to the citizens to decide if voting to make one’s own vote obsolete is a vote well-cast or not.

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The 2012 Primary Election is August 14, 2012. Early voting takes place 11 am to 7 pm at select locations from Saturday August 4, 2012 to Saturday August 11, 2012.

For more information on the Pompano Beach Primary Election 2012 and General Election 2012 visit http://www.browardsoe.org

For more information on Pompano Beach CRA Gate visit
http://wojspubs.com