Tawdry allegations may emerge in criminal trial of former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer

TALLAHASSEE --
They headed for Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas, most of them on private planes owned by billionaire Harry Sargeant III, then the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party.

The weekend trip began on Friday Jan. 11, 2008, for a select group of Floridians —maybe 20 or so — who helped raise money for a constitutional amendment that would increase homestead exemptions.

Those who attended have differing memories of how many were there or what occurred, and no one is very anxious to talk to a reporter about the gathering.

Perhaps it’s the accusation of a golf cart filled with prostitutes that scares them away.

The five-year-old gathering has gained a life of its own in the criminal case against former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer, who has been charged with money laundering and grand theft for allegedly diverting about $200,000 in party funds to a corporation he created. The trip itself isn’t tied to Greer’s legal problems, but details of the weekend could surface in testimony at his trial, which begins with jury selection Monday in Orlando, or remain secret, depending on which lawyers win out.

The Bahamas trip included an impressive outdoor seafood dinner with then-Gov. Charlie Crist, Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham, U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas Ned Siegel, Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer and a handful of Tallahassee lobbyists and big campaign donors.

It was organized by Greer and Sargeant for supporters of “Yes on 1-Save Our Homes Now,” a constitutional amendment campaign Crist was pushing to expand the state’s homestead exemption. Delmar Johnson, former executive director of the state Republican party and a key witness against Greer, describes it as a thank you trip for those who contributed some of the $4.4 million raised in support of the measure. Others, including Crist, say the gathering was a fundraiser. The amendment was approved by Florida voters on Jan. 29, 2008, a few weeks after the trip.

The trip was for men only. Even women who worked for the party and helped with fundraising were excluded.

Johnson told prosecutors last summer that he saw women who appeared to be prostitutes in a golf cart driven by one of Sargeant’s employees. The information surfaced late last year when a video of Johnson’s testimony was made public.

More specifics have been hard to come by.

Johnson’s testimony is included in a sealed Florida Department of Law Enforcement report prepared last summer by investigators looking at possible witness tampering in the Greer case. Prosecutors say the report — and details about the Bahamas trip — may be used as rebuttal evidence against some of those scheduled to testify on Greer’s behalf.

Lawyers for two unidentified witnesses have asked that the report remain sealed, saying it contains information that would embarrass them. Greer Circuit Judge Marc Lubet says the records must be made public if they are used in an attempt to impeach the testimony of witnesses who might be embarrassed by details of the Bahamas trip.

After reviewing the report in chambers last year, Lubet read the names of four men: Lobbyist Brian Ballard, Sargeant, Johnson and new state Rep. Dane Eagle, R-Cape Coral, asking if they would be witnesses at the trial. At the time of the trip Eagle was a travel aide for Crist. Prosecutors said all but Eagle, now a state legislator, are expected to be witnesses at the trial.

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Cashing in on state contracts becomes growth industry

TALLAHASSEE --
Even for Tallahassee standards, the scene was notable: lobbyist Brian Ballard dining with a nursing home executive, Gov. Rick Scott and a top aide at a pricey restaurant just blocks from the Capitol.

That Ballard’s clout could command a private dinner with the governor for a client speaks to the influential lobbyist’s fundraising finesse. But equally important, and less celebrated, is Ballard’s talent for helping his clients land lucrative state contracts: $938 million this year alone, according to a Herald/Times analysis of contracts in the $70 billion state budget.

“Is that all?’’ joked Ballard, who said he had never added it up. “A big part of my business is protecting contracts, and outsourcing. Outsourcing saves [the state] money.”

Ballard is not alone. The lobbying offices that line the moss-covered streets of Tallahassee have grown exponentially larger in the last two decades as governors and legislators have steered a greater share of the state’s budget to outside vendors.

No one is keeping track of the total, but Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater last year estimated the total contract spend for Florida’s 2011-12 budget cycle at $50.4 billon — 72 percent of the budget. The bulk of it, nearly $42 billion, was for health care contracts and service sector grants that often are never competitively bid.

“We probably privatize, or outsource, more than some of the Northeastern states — and we have a lot more volume,’’ said David Wilkins, a retired business executive who was tapped by the governor to review the state’s byzantine contracting process. He also is secretary of the Department of Children and Families.

Vendors — from giant computer firms and health care HMOs, to purveyors of office supplies, parking spaces and even prison services — each compete for a piece of one of the biggest spending pies in the Southeast: the state of Florida. The infusion of state cash into private and non-profit industries has spawned a cottage industry of lobbyists who help vendors manage the labyrinth of rules and build relationships with executive agency officers and staff so they can steer contracts to their clients.

There are now more people registered to lobby the governor, the Cabinet and their agencies — 4,925 — than there are registered to lobby the 160-member Legislature — 3,235.

Dozens of former legislators and their staff populate that industry, as well as former utility regulators, agency secretaries, division heads and other employees.

The most high-profile newcomer to the executive branch lobbying corps is Dean Cannon, the former speaker of the House from Orlando. Even before he retired from office in November, he had set up a lobbying shop just a block from the Capitol and started signing up clients to lobby the executive branch.

Cannon’s swift lawmaker-to-lobbyist turnaround has spawned a backlash from former colleagues. Senators are proposing that lawmakers leaving office wait two years before they can lobby the executive branch — similar to the aw that applies to former lawmakers who lobby the legislature.

“One minute you can be overseeing a budget and the next you’re lobbying a state agency,’’ said Sen. Jack Latvala, R-St. Petersburg, who is shepherding the Senate ethics bill. “That’s a revolving door and that’s wrong.”

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Feds indict 11 South Floridians for stealing IDs, filing taxes for 2,700 dead people

A South Florida ring accused of plotting to fleece $34 million from the U.S. government by filing phony tax returns in the names of thousands of dead people was indicted this week.

The indictment charged 11 defendants with conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service by stealing the identities of nearly 7,000 people, including more than 2,700 who were dead, to file fraudulent tax returns, according to federal prosecutors.

The case marks the latest federal crackdown on the escalating crime, which costs the U.S. government billions of dollars every year. Earlier this week, the U.S. attorney’s office announced the recent prosecutions of 14 defendants in similar fraud cases.

U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said the double-barreled crime of ID theft coupled with tax refund scams is the “new Medicare fraud” in South Florida.

According to the latest indictment, the defendants recruited “knowing participants and unknowing victims” to put businesses, bank accounts and electronic filing ID numbers in the perpetrators’ names to carry out their schemes, prosecutors said.

“To avoid having the fraud discovered, the defendants negotiated the fraudulently obtained income tax refund checks at each other’s businesses,” they said in a statement.

Prosecutors are seeking to seize $443,449 from bank accounts, a 2011 Cadillac Escalade EXT Premium Sport, a 2010 Nissan Maxima, a 2011 Infiniti M37, and a 2010 Porsche.

Charged in the indictment were: Henry Dorvil, 35, of Hollywood; Herve Wilmore Jr., 29, of Aventura; Dukens Eleazard, 33, of Pembroke Pines; Marie Eleazard, 32, of Miami; Jesse Lamar Harrell, 26, of Miramar, and Luckner St. Fleur, 32, of Miami.

Also: Ruth “Princess” Cartwright, 30, formerly of Plantation; Miguel Patterson, 35, of Miami; Brandon Johnson, 29, of Miami Gardens; John Similien, 24, of Plantation; and Marc Leroy Saint Juste, 26, of Tamarac.

On Friday, Dorvil, Harrell, Patterson, Johnson and Saint Juste made their initial appearances in federal court in Fort Lauderdale. Cartwright was arrested in Georgia and will make her initial appearance there. Wilmore, both Eleazards, St. Fleur and Similien remain at large.

On Thursday, in a separate case, three defendants were sentenced for filing false income-tax claims with the IRS using the stolen identities of foreign nationals.

Christian Andres Perin, 40, of Miami, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Venancio Oscar Pio, 52, of Doral, and Olga Rosana Garcia, 46, of Miami, were sentenced to about six years.

The defendants were also ordered to pay restitution of $1.15 million.

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Green card ends terrible chapter for South Floridian

Juan José Correa Villalonga looked at the envelope, felt its contents and held it close to his chest, but he would not open it. He let his mother do it, because the permanent residence card inside represented long years of her struggles.

And thus, the young Venezuelan became one of the few people who have been deported and later allowed to return to the United States. He is perhaps the only Venezuelan ever to have accomplished this.

“I feel very fortunate for this,” Villalonga said in an interview this week, just days after receiving the green card. “I know there are many people being separated from their families and they never reunite again, so for me this is a blessing.”

His mother, Helene Villalonga, is a well-known activist for human rights and a critic of Hugo Chávez’s government. In 2000, when Juan was 11 years old, the family fled Venezuela because of political persecution. They sought political asylum in the United States but were ripped off by two lawyers who did not represent them properly. The family’s petition was denied.

Venezuelan exiles, unlike Cubans, do not enjoy special immigration privileges, though officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the number of deportations of Venezuelans had diminished in recent years. According to ICE numbers, more than 400 Venezuelans were deported every year between 2007 and 2010. In 2011, however, the number of deportations dropped to 290.

Villalonga graduated from high school with honors in 2007, was awarded a scholarship, and was accepted into Florida International University — but due to his undocumented status he did not have access to his scholarship funds. After his first semester as a psychology major, he realized he could not continue to pay tuition on his own. Then he decided to go to Canada, where he had also been offered scholarships by several universities.

He drove for six days in his gold Dodge Neon, and was close to the Canadian border when, on June 27, 2009, he stopped on a road in Vermont and was arrested by a highway patrol officer.

“Are you aware that you have a deportation order?” he said the officer asked him.

“I explained to him that my family had an open case of political asylum, but it was there that I learned that there was a deportation order against us and our lawyer never notified us,” Villalonga said.

He went through three prisons in two months and, though his family warned immigration authorities that he would be in danger if he were returned to Venezuela, one night in August he was deported without having time to inform anybody.

He arrived in Caracas at 5 a.m. with $195 in his pocket. Villalonga remembered two telephone numbers of relatives in Venezuela, those of his aunt Vivian and his grandmother Blanca.

“I knew nothing about Caracas because I had never been there,” said Villalonga, whose family is from Valencia, west of Venezuela’s capital. “But I did know that it is one of the most dangerous cities in South America.”

During the two years Villalonga was in Venezuela, his mother launched a campaign to demonstrate that her son’s life was in danger.

Villalonga said that while in Venezuela he received threats by email. One day when he was alone at his aunt’s house, he heard someone enter the back yard. When he came out to check, he found three armed men wearing red shirts and red berets.

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Judge angered after learning mentally ill Miami man was placed in assisted living facility, and escaped

After Cristobal Abreu was arrested for stabbing a Hialeah SWAT officer with a large BBQ fork in December 2009, doctors deemed his mind too ravaged by mental illness to stand trial.

For years, he bounced around mental health facilities.

Then a stay at a Miami Gardens assisted living facility, where funds for his medications ran out and his mental state deteriorated, ended last month when the 72-year-old Abreu was shipped without a judge’s permission to Jackson North Medical Center.

Then last week, a Jackson case worker — again, without permission from the court — sent him to an ALF in Little Havana. He promptly escaped.

“I’m free! I’m free,” Abreu yelled as he shuffled away from the San Martin de Porras facility Tuesday, according to lawyers and court personnel who aired the episode over two days in court this week.

Abreu’s ping-ponging treatment has drawn the ire of Circuit Judge Ellen Sue Venzer, who has now ordered hospital and state-contracted mental health administrators to court Friday to explain what happened.

“The system is broken,” Venzer said angrily in court this week, adding: “What would have happened if Mr. Abreu had decompensated and gone out and hurt somebody else in our community?”

Abreu’s escape was short-lived: police quickly detained him, committing him back to Jackson Memorial Hospital for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation.

The unusual episode underscores what mental health advocates in Miami-Dade’s criminal justice system say has been a reoccurring problem: “incompetent” defendants are often shuffled between facilities without the knowledge of the court tasked with supervising them.

ALFs mostly house the elderly and others with mental health issues or disabilities. It is not unusual for incompetent defendants, usually non-violent ones, to be placed at an ALF in a residential neighborhood.

“The people in the social services arena have to recognize that a court-order is sacrosanct,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Wednesday. “I really understand the judge’s ire. She has the absolute right to be livid with everyone in the system.”

Subpoenaed to appear before the judge on Friday: Representatives from Jackson, the South Florida Behavioral Network, which contracts with the state to manage cases of the mentally ill defendants, and New Horizons Community Mental Health Center, which monitored Abreu’s case.

A lawyer for the Florida Department of Children and Families will also appear.

“It sounds like all these different agencies are treating these individuals like hot potatoes,” Venzer said in court Wednesday.

Abreu was initially arrested in December 2009 for attempted murder and aggravated battery of a law enforcement officer. The attempted charge was later dropped; the SWAT officer was not hurt because the knife pierced his shield.

During a jailhouse interview with a psychologist, the incoherent Abreu admitted that he sometimes hears voices and see visions of “flowers [and] gold diamonds.”

The court determined that Abreu was “incompetent” to proceed to trial, meaning he could not assist his lawyer in defending the accusations.

After stays in several other facilities, Abreu wound up at the Graceful Gardens ALF, 18101 NW 47th Ct., in November.

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6 Miami-Dade cops fired or suspended for loafing

A Miami-Dade police sergeant and two officers have been fired, and three others have been suspended, capping a two-year investigation into accusations that they ignored emergency calls, filed false police reports and lied about calls they handled, Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Perez said Tuesday.

The Miami-Dade Internal Affairs Bureau launched the investigation into the Kendall District police squad in 2010. The discharged officers are fighting to get their jobs back.

The officers — who worked the 2-to-10 p.m. shift — were followed, captured on video and tracked with GPS devices. More than 130 violations of department policy were documented.

Fired were Sgt. Jennifer Gonzalez and officers Dario Socarras and Jose Huerta. The other three — officers Jeffrey Price, Fabian Owens and Ivan Tomas — were suspended without pay in September and are back on the job.

Gonzalez was caught shopping, loading purchases into her patrol car and visiting her parents — all while on duty — according to CBS 4’s Jim Defede, who first reported the investigation and its outcome. Socarras ignored emergency calls, including a robbery, instead having a romantic rendezvous with his girlfriend at the Dadeland Mall.

A video captures him making out with the woman while in uniform. He also ignored a call involving a 5-year-old boy who was unconscious and locked inside a car, telling dispatchers he was on his way when, in fact, he was having a cup of coffee with Gonzalez and Huerta, who also ignored the emergency call.

The child was tended to by paramedics.

Price, Owens and Tomas were given suspensions of from five to 20 hours without pay. They, too, ignored a number of emergency calls.

Although police internal affairs investigations of individual officers are not uncommon in an agency as large as the Miami-Dade Police Department, a probe of an entire squad is unusual.

The boundaries of the Kendall District are Bird Road to the north, Coral Reef Drive to the south, Biscayne Bay on the east and Florida’s Turnpike on the west.

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Member of Miami-Dade marijuana growhouse ring pleads guilty

An operative in the Santiesteban family’s alleged marijuana growhouse ring pleaded guilty Monday to conspiring to kidnap a rival gang member, admitting he witnessed the man’s murder after the target stole 50 pounds of pot from the Miami-Dade clan.

Juan Felipe Castaneda’s plea agreement signaled a major development in the federal government’s crackdown on one of South Florida’s largest suspected growhouse operations. The ring is accused of running a distribution network stretching to New York.

Castaneda admitted he collaborated with alleged ringleader Derrick Santiesteban, accused shooter Norge Manduley and other members of the syndicate in June 2009, when they kidnapped Fidel Ruz Moreno after carjacking his Chevy van.

While en route to one of the Santiesteban’s grow houses in southwest Miami-Dade, Castaneda said in a court statement that he witnessed Manduley struggle with Ruz in the back of the van and then shoot him with a revolver.

After Ruz’s body was tossed out into the street, Castaneda said he saw Manduley “approach [the] prone body and repeatedly strike [Ruz] about the head with the butt of revolver that Manduley was wielding,” according to a statement filed with the plea agreement in Miami federal court.

Castaneda, a growhouse caretaker who fled the area last June when FBI agents arrested most of the 16 Santiesteban-syndicate members, is the first defendant to plead guilty to the main charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping conspiracy.

In April, he faces a minimum-mandatory sentence of 10 years for the drug charge and up to life in prison for the kidnapping. His cooperation with prosecutors William Athas and Pat Sullivan could help them put pressure on other defendants to cut plea deals, according to the plea agreement.

The Ruz kidnapping and slaying — along with the possibility of a second, unrelated homicide, as well as suspicions that a Miami-Dade police officer was working with the Santiesteban clan — elevated the case beyond a routine pot-trafficking investigation.

At a detention hearing, Athas and Sullivan described Derrick Santiesteban, the lead defendant in the case, as the “mastermind behind the [Ruz] kidnapping.”

Investigators are zeroing in on a Miami-Dade officer who is suspected of playing a role in the family’s alleged drug syndicate. The officer, Roderick Silva, worked patrol in the Hammocks area of West Kendall. He was suspended with pay in June 2009, records show. He is the brother of another of the Santiestebans’ accused growhouse caretakers, David Silva.

Homicide detectives are also trying to determine whether an unsolved April 2006 slaying of a teenager in West Kendall is linked to an alleged Santiesteban growhouse in the area.

After going to visit a girlfriend near Southwest 172nd Terrace and 153rd Place, Angelo Lopera, 17, was attacked and shot multiple times. Investigators believe Lopera may have been killed because he was mistakenly suspected of visiting the neighborhood to steal harvested marijuana plants from the Santiestebans’ house at 17231 SW 153rd Pl., according to sources familiar with the probe.

The Santiesteban indictment was built around a dozen cooperating witnesses, most of whom were involved in the family’s alleged drug organization and have or will be separately charged, court records show.

The case was spearheaded by Miami-Dade police homicide detective Rich Raphael and FBI agent Michael Gualtieiri, working as part of a federal drug task force. Court records show the task force cultivated the witnesses, including two who were present during the Ruz kidnapping and eventually identified Manduley as the shooter.

Last July, Manduley was sentenced to 10 years in state prison after pleading guilty to weapons charges involving a domestic dispute with his ex-girlfriend in 2010. Manduley shot a .357 revolver twice into the air while threatening the ex-girlfriend and three other people.

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Engineers: South Florida bridges rated ‘deficient’ remain safe to use

Of the hundreds of bridges both big and small in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, only a handful are rated as “structurally deficient” — and engineers say none is in danger of collapsing or being shut down.

But the cost of maintaining, repairing and replacing aging local bridges over the next decade and a half will easily mount into many hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when the state, county and local government agencies responsible for their upkeep face the prospect of tight or shrinking capital funding.

Piecing together the money for even the most crucial repairs is already a constant scramble, highway and public-works engineers say. Their agencies often make millions of dollars worth of repairs to old and obsolete bridges to eke out several more years of use from them, pushing the dreaded date of even costlier full replacement into an uncertain future.

The good news, they say, is that regular bridge inspections carried out by the Florida Department of Transportation mean government engineers have a good handle on maintenance and repair needs, and that surprises like the Rickenbacker Causeway’s Bear Cut Bridge, which had to be partly closed last month after an analysis found unusually rapid structural deterioration, are likely to remain infrequent.

“We’re very proactive to make sure our investment in infrastructure is maintained,” said Gus Pego, FDOT district secretary in Miami.

Still, some of the already-known needs are daunting.

For instance, Miami-Dade public works engineers say they expect to have to replace all 12 bridges, including two drawbridges, on the historic Venetian Causeway, built in the 1920s. The rough cost projection is $110 million, although they are about to embark on a study with FDOT to determine the precise scope and timing of work. Most of the cost, they hope, will be covered by federal grant money.

And that’s after the county spent about $9 million in 2011 to repair spalling and reinforce the concrete pilings supporting some of the Venetian’s bridges.

Dade: $450 million

Miami-Dade, which owns and maintains 206 bridges, roughly projects the cost of rehabilitating or replacing them over the next 10 to 20 years at more than $450 million, though the its engineers caution that the estimate also includes a “wish list” of noncritical work.

Those figures, which include the Venetian, encompass only a portion of the bridges across the county, many of which are owned and maintained by FDOT or municipalities.

Aside from the westbound half of the Bear Cut Bridge, 10 bridges in Miami-Dade are rated by FDOT as structurally deficient, a label that covers a range of issues, including structural deterioration but also some purely functional elements like narrow lanes or inadequate sidewalks.

Bridges on the list include the Miami River drawbridges at Southwest First Street and at Miami Avenue, and the Broad Causeway bridge at that road’s eastern end.

13 Broward spans

In Broward, 13 bridges have the same rating, including the Sunrise Boulevard bridge over the Middle River in Fort Lauderdale.

The details that earn the structurally deficient classification are unavailable because, to protect security, inspection reports are exempt from review under the state’s public-records law.

Each bridge receives a “sufficiency rating” that specifies its overall condition. A sufficiency rating below a certain level means a bridge must be repaired within six years or, in the case of bridges determined to be dangerous, shut down or weight-restricted. None of the Miami-Dade or Broward bridges besides Bear Cut scores at those lowest levels.

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Gov. Rick Scott pushes “Finish in Four” tuition plan to save college students money

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott’s push to keep tuition low includes a new twist submitted with his budget for the coming fiscal year, which begins July 1. The governor’s idea: tuition should be the same when students graduate as when they start.

Scott has offered legislation that would hold tuition steady for four years for students entering a state university this fall or afterward. The governor did not highlight the bill during his press conference unveiling his proposed budget, but the proposal is in the package he’s sending to the Legislature.

And it sticks closely to something that Scott has pounded on now for months: his belief that an era of nearly annual tuition increases need to end.

“When I talk to universities, they know that we’ve got to hold the line on tuition, we’ve got to watch how we’re spending the money,” he said Thursday.

A summary packet about the budget handed out by the governor’s office makes the case for “Finish in Four,” which alludes to the hopes that the tuition guarantee will encourage students to finish their degree in four years to take advantage of the tuition freeze. Universities could also designate some degrees that they believe take longer than four years for a lengthier guarantee.

“The unpredictability of tuition increases makes it difficult for students and families to plan for the cost of higher education,” the packet reads.

Scott has also pushed state colleges to lower the cost of four-year degrees with a “challenge” to offer at least one degree at $10,000. Every college offering four-year degrees has agreed to be a part of that challenge, but not all have come up with how they will do it.

Sen. Bill Galvano, the Bradenton Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Education, said Friday that he wasn’t ready to take a position on the proposal. But when asked what an objection to the plan might be, he pointed to “unique challenges that students face that may make it impractical in certain circumstances” to finish in four years.

For example, jobs or other responsibilities could lengthen some students’ time at school — which would make them ineligible for the guarantee after four years.

Georgia recently experimented with a “Fixed for Four” program beginning in 2006, but abandoned it beginning with the 2009 freshman class, blaming it on budget cuts.

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In Dominican Republic, eye doctor linked to Sen. Menendez known for philanthropy, thirst for celebrity

SANTO DOMINGO --
Salomon Melgen arrives at galas here in a blue Mercedes Benz, his four bodyguards in tow.

He rarely goes unnoticed. The stout 58-year-old ophthalmologist is a regular on the society pages, where he is almost always pictured with important politicians. Late last year he made national headlines for performing free eye surgery on a 28-year-old woman who had been shot in the face.

“He’s a national treasure,” said Eduardo Gamarra, an international relations professor at Florida International University who has polled extensively in the Dominican Republic. “He has the reputation of a miracle worker.”

But Melgen’s carefully crafted public image began to unravel this week, when federal investigators raided his West Palm Beach eye clinic as part of a probe into potential Medicare fraud. Separately, The Miami Herald confirmed the existence of a federal corruption investigation involving his ties to U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Family members in the Dominican Republic defended the doctor on Friday, characterizing the allegations as an orchestrated effort by his political opponents to destroy his reputation.

“Everybody in this country loves him,” said his cousin, Vinicio Castillo Semán, a member of a powerful family in the Dominican Republic. “He lives his life helping people, returning their sight to them, as he did for Jose Jose,” a famous Mexican performer.

Few others here would speak openly about Melgen. But published reports and public records paint Melgen as a man with business and political savvy — and a thirst for celebrity and influence.

Melgen has not returned calls to his cell phone, homes or offices. His family says he has stayed under the radar since allegations surfaced that he brought Menendez on free trips to the Dominican Republic, some of which were alleged to have involved underage prostitutes.

Menendez issued a statement this week saying he had gone on three trips to the Dominican Republic with Melgen, a friend and campaign contributor, but denied all allegations involving the prostitutes. The senator later cut a check for more than $58,000 to cover the costs of two of the flights.

Some of Melgen’s influence stems from his business interests. In addition to a successful ophthalmology practice in the United States, he has two real estate companies registered under his name in the Dominican Republic, government records show. He also holds at least 50 percent of a Dominican company known as ICSSI, which in 2002 won a lucrative 20-year government contract to scan cargo at ports.

Both ICSSI and Melgen have come under intense public scrutiny in light of new allegations that Menendez used his influence to help revive the port contract, which had been dormant for nearly a decade. Menendez has denied wrongdoing.

Melgen also has the power of the press. In 2012, he launched his own web publication — an English-language news site known as VOXXI. The online start-up, which is geared toward Hispanic audiences, drew praise from U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, among other federal lawmakers.

Family members say Melgen takes great pride in his philanthropic efforts. On his resume and website, the doctor boasts that he has been awarded the Medal of Duarte, Sanchez and Mella — the Dominican Republic’s highest honor for charity work — and has served as the country’s alternate ambassador to the United Nations.

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Report shows health concerns in Broward’s black communities

A swath of low-income communities wedged between Interstate 95 and the Turnpike, and stretching from Fort Lauderdale to Lauderdale Lakes and Lauderhill, is home to the highest diabetes rates in Broward County.

That’s one of the most troubling findings from a “state of black Broward health report’’ released Thursday by the Urban League of Broward County. The statistics, charts and anecdotes revealed gaping healthcare disparities for black communities — a partial reflection of the withering socio-economics in some of the zip codes. Of particular concern: infant mortality rates; HIV/AIDS mortality rates; and diabetes, with rates in the 33311 zip code more than 200 times the overall county rate.

“My reaction as a resident, as a mom, as a wife, is we can’t continue with business as usual,’’ said Germaine Smith-Baugh, president and CEO of the Urban League. “What I took away is we have to work comprehensively to address the family issues and community issues. We have to take a holistic approach in developing the family.’’

Smith-Baugh, speaking at the league’s new community empowerment center in Fort Lauderdale, called the findings “an urgent call to action.’’

The report covered a broad array of concerns, including maternal infant and child health; health and nutrition; disease prevention and health equity. Among the findings:

* The mortality rate for HIV/AIDS is six times higher among black men and women in comparison to Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites.

* The mortality rate for black infants is three times the rate of white or Hispanic babies.

* The highest rate of teen-age births occur among young black teens (38.2 percent), followed by Hispanic youths (22.9 percent).

* Non-Hispanic blacks make up 26 percent of the county’s population, but account for 33 percent of the uninsured – approximately 151,000 of the 418,000 uninsured residents in 2010.

“When we talk about health, we are not just talking about behaviors such as in eating your fruits and vegetables and getting enough sleep,’’ said Danielle Doss-Brown, the Urban League’s research and evaluation manager. “We are also talking about access to affordable health care and healthy foods which is influenced by social determinants such as poverty, income, education and housing.’’

The Urban League unveiled the report – its first since 1994 — as part of a community-wide health initiative which also included a health care symposium Thursday in which panelists discussed the findings. The larger goal is to narrow the gaps, but also to humanize the numbers.

The report was developed over seven months based on 2010 and 2011 data from the Florida Department of Health and was funded by Sunshine State Health Plan and Centene Corp.

Along with a coalition of health care providers, community organizations and academic institutions, the Urban League will use the report to develop an action plan by the end of the year that is expected to include education, state policies and programming.

“Having grown up here, I was aware of the statistics but to see them in writing …it’s alarming.,’’ said panel moderator Dr. Carmen Shirley, of Teen Health of South Florida at Westside Regional Medical Center. “To change this tide is going to require everyone’s participation.’’

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Miami cop fired for ‘unjustified’ shooting of unarmed man

A Miami police officer whose shooting of an unarmed motorist two years ago capped a string of fatal police encounters that sparked a public outcry and political upheaval was fired on Wednesday.

The reason: A review board finding that officer Reynaldo Goyos used “unjustified” deadly force when he shot and killed Travis McNeil and wounded friend Kareem Williams as they sat in car at a Little Haiti intersection.

The decision — coming seven months after the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office declined to prosecute after determining the shooting had not reached the level of criminal intent — didn’t offer much solace to the victim’s family. At the McNeil home in Overtown, the mood was subdued and somber.

“It doesn’t help my son a whole lot,” said McNeil’s mother, Sheila McNeil. “Nothing will bring Travis back.”

Across town, Fraternal Order of Police President Javier Ortiz blasted a decision that he vowed would not stick. The union intends to appeal.

Ortiz said Goyos, a seven-year veteran taking part in a multiagency undercover gang task force, had been put into harm’s way by a federal agent driving the vehicle carrying both of them. He also blamed McNeil for his own death, claiming he didn’t follow the officer’s command.

“There is no doubt that Officer Goyos will get his job back,” said Ortiz.

Chief Manuel Orosa formally announced the firing on Wednesday, nearly two months after the City of Miami Firearms Review Board concluded the shooting was unjustified.

In a short, seven-paragraph opinion released for the first time, the board found that the evidence surrounding the shooting was “inconsistent with Officer Goyos statement.” The report said McNeil had been struck in the rear left shoulder blade area, which didn’t match with Goyos description that he had approached the car from the passenger side and had seen “a black object on Mr. McNeil.’’

The review board found the shooting was in violation of the department’s deadly force policy because neither Goyos nor anyone else “was in imminent danger of death or serious physical injury’’ when the officer opened fire.

The review board also ruled that the officer “should have never approached the vehicle, but instead should have retreated and followed all training protocols regarding felony stops involving armed subjects or vehicles.”

Orosa refused comment pending the appeals process. According to union chief Ortiz, an arbitrator will review the firing and issue a binding decision.

The city’s Firearms Review Board is composed of officers and staff who review every police-involved shooting. As far as anyone could remember Wednesday, the board had never ruled an officer-involved shooting unjustified.

The shooting occurred on a Thursday night in February 2011. Goyos, joined by officers from Hialeah and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations, were targeting gang members, some who they believed spent time at a notorious Little River establishment called the Take One Cocktail Lounge on Northeast 79th Street. An hour before midnight McNeil, 28, and Williams, 32, were kicked out of the lounge for being drunk and drove off, but not before an officer in the parking lot radioed other officers that the men were leaving.

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Rick Ross raps about ducking hail of bullets

Rapper Rick Ross was keeping a low profile Tuesday, one day after his brush with bullets on the streets of Fort Lauderdale.

Though he has yet to comment on the incident, the self-proclaimed “Boss,” did what he does best: He rapped about the incident.

“I can’t believe I’m alive,” he said, dropping a rhyme about his near-death experience into a recording by a fellow rapper, Kendrick Lamar, titled “B---- Don’t kill my Vibe.” The verse was distributed through social media by his record label late Monday, and spread quickly over the Internet. Ross, whose real name is William L. Roberts II, also posted a link to a story about the shooting on his Facebook page. His publicist did not return phone calls.

Social media sites, however, were abuzz about the incident, mostly skeptical that he was the target of an attempted assassination. Many tweeters theorized the gunfire was staged to help boost his “street cred,’’ which has been a source of contention in the rap community. The timing of the episode also raised eyebrows, coming a little more than a week before the Grammy Awards. Ross is nominated for “Best Rap Album,’’ and referred to his nomination in the verse released Monday.

Rapper 50 Cent — who knows something about street violence, having been shot nine times in a single incident — declared the shooting a hoax, saying “lol it looks staged to me. No holes in the car,’’ referring to the 37-year-old Ross as “Fat Boy.”

Ross has frequently feuded with fellow rappers. He admitted to placing Young Jeezy in a choke hold at BET’s music awards last year and had reportedly received death threats from a group called “Gangster Disciples” a Chicago street gang that felt he disrespected one of their leaders by using his name in a song without paying him. Following the threats, Ross cancelled the second leg of his 2012 tour, though he denied he pulled the plug because of the threats.

In a move that may have further antagonized the gang, at a concert in Chicago, he made producers turn off the sound system as he arrived on stage in a $40,000 black Chinchilla coat.

“I told them to cut the music off. I wanted them to just look at me for a while,” he said in a December interview with Miami’s 99 Jamz. “Look at the beard, look at the coat, look at the walk. I’m here to make money.’’

The bulky, tattoo-covered rapper, who graduated from Carol City High and attended Albany State University on a football scholarship, formerly worked as a corrections officer, leading some to ridicule him for producing urban lyrics that seem to contradict his stable upbringing and law enforcement background.

Fort Lauderdale police were reviewing video surveillance tapes of the scene Tuesday, but released no new details of the shooting, which happened early Monday on Las Olas Boulevard, near the landmark Floridian diner. Witnesses said anywhere from five to 20 shots may have been fired, but they missed Ross, his girlfriend and the Rolls Royce they were riding in — no small target. Ross crashed the Rolls into some trees, but was not injured. His girlfriend, Shateria Moragne-el, is a native of Maryland who has her own fashion line.

Miami Herald staff writer Nadege Green contributed to this story.

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Related developers find themselves in court over tactics

His company on trial over its tactics in a controversial condo project, Jorge Perez, the celebrated developer, found himself on the witness stand Monday answering to an unexpected foe: Jorge Perez, the author.

Perez, the chairman of the Related Group, testified in the trial of a lawsuit brought against his company by The Vizcayans, a fundraising and support group for the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. The Vizcayans have accused Perez’s company of secretly manipulating the zoning process at Miami City Hall to win approval in 2007 for a three-tower condo project next to Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove — forcing the Vizcayans to spend more than $1 million in legal fees in its successful effort to kill the project.

The Vizcayans, who objected to the project because it would have intruded on the views from the historic property, have also accused the developers of quietly buying the approval of two local neighborhood associations by offering them $8 million in exchange for their support.

William Davis, a lawyer for the Vizcayans, questioned Perez about the arrangement by citing passages from Perez’s 2009 book, Powerhouse Principles: The Ultimate Blueprint for Real Estate Success in an Ever-Changing Market (foreword by Donald Trump). In the book, Perez discussed his efforts to build the Mercy Hospital project, and said his team decided to keep the payments to the neighborhood groups secret because “we gave them a lot of money,” and he feared other groups would ask for more if they got wind of it.

Perez sheepishly conceded that he didn’t exactly write his book — it was the work of a ghostwriter with whom he worked. “They were my thoughts interpreted by a person that was writing,” he said.

Davis also tried to hoist Perez on one of his powerhouse principles from the book: “neutralize the opposition.” He suggested that Related sued the Vizcayans seeking public records in an effort to harass them. Perez denied the allegation and said he had no recollection of that lawsuit.

Perez insisted that there was nothing sinister about the deals with the neighborhood groups; he said the payments to the groups were simply a routine practice his firm follows when it seeks community support for its projects.

“I’m doing that on probably 10 projects right now,” Perez said.

Yery Marrero, the president of the Natoma Manors homeowners’ association, told jurors that her group supported the condo project not because of the promise of money, but because they thought the condos would prevent Mercy Hospital from expanding and bringing even more traffic to their already congested neighborhood.

“Our issue in our neighborhood is traffic,” Marrero told jurors. “Per day we have so many cars going through there.”

The Vizcayans’ lawyers have portrayed the payments as part of a larger scheme to win over the Miami City Commission, which had to endorse zoning and land-use changes for the condo project. They have accused Related’s staffers, lawyers and lobbyists of working behind the scenes to essentially rig the commission vote.

In one January 2007 e-mail, a Related vice president told Perez that they had confirmed the votes of three commissioners in favor of the condo deal — days before the first public hearing on the project.

The city commission ultimately approved the project in a 3-2 vote. But following a suit from The Vizcayans, an appeals court later overturned the decision, finding that the city ran afoul of state zoning laws and that then-Mayor Manny Diaz had improper contact with Perez during the veto period after the vote. Diaz is expected to testify Tuesday.

Related’s lawyers, John Shubin and Israel Reyes, have asked Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Daryl Trawick to throw out the case, saying The Vizcayans have failed to prove that the developers set out to deliberately harm the nonprofit.

The developers’ lawyers also called Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado as a witness Monday. Regalado, who was on the commission at the time of the 2007 vote, said he never heard anything suggesting that the developers were trying to harm The Vizcayans.

Shubin said the Vizcayans are wrongly seeking to punish the developers for simply petitioning the government for a zoning change.

“This is all about petitioning activity,” Shubin said. “They can’t even cite to you a case that looks remotely like this one that has been brought.”

Perez took his day on the witness stand with good humor. “I’m glad someone is reading my book,” he said when his testimony ended.

The trial, now in its fourth week, is expected to end this week.

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Brush fire breaks out in Southwest Miami-Dade

Firefighters were battling Sunday a brush fire in Southwest Miami-Dade, with crews working to keep the flames from spreading to nearby homes.

The fire broke out at 1:07 p.m. in the area of 112th Avenue and 224th Street. As of late Sunday, no homes were being threatened, fire department officials said.

Streets in the area were blocked off while firefighters worked to contain the blaze, according to CBS4.

While the fire department did not called for mandatory evacuations of nearby homes, the Florida Department of Forestry said several homeowners were voluntarily leaving the area.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Phil Osava said around 21 fire units were on the scene to monitor the flames as they wind down.

The fire might have been caused by dry conditions, Osava said.

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State budget surplus will spur intense debate on what to fund

TALLAHASSEE --
Gov. Rick Scott this week will send the Legislature a proposed budget that’s a blueprint for spending and a road map to his re-election campaign — complete with potholes.

For the first time in three years, a slow but steady economic recovery means Scott will have more tax money to spend — not less. But Scott, who ran as a small-government conservative, has rankled state lawmakers by calling for a $2,500 pay raise for every full-time teacher at a cost of $480 million, in effect sweeping much of a modest projected surplus, and declaring teacher pay a higher priority than other needs.

A year after championing a 3 percent raid on teachers’ salaries, Scott has decided they are underpaid, and they now make up a prized constituency. For three days, Scott toured schools in Tampa, St. Petersburg, Gainesville and Orlando to amplify his call for higher teacher pay.

“Our revenues are up. We have a projected surplus now,” Scott said Friday in St. Petersburg. “If we’re going to have a great education system, we’ve got to take care of our teachers. They’re doing the right things.”

But his fellow Republicans in the Capitol aren’t yet convinced that Scott is doing the right thing.

His call for across-the-board teacher pay hikes unnerved lawmakers who say he didn’t specify where the money would come from and that it contradicts a state policy of linking pay to classroom performance.

“I think the governor would have more credibility with teachers if he would be able to identify where the money’s coming from,” said Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville. “I was surprised at the notion of an across-the-board increase that would draw no distinctions.”

Gaetz said Scott’s respect for teachers is real, but it’s also obviously about re-election politics. “There’s a blurry line between politics and policy,” he said.

Scott has struggled to improve his standing with Florida voters. Recent polls show that a majority of Republicans hope he faces a challenge from within his own party in 2014.

“He’s spending all this money because his poll numbers are so low,” said Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. “People are a lot smarter than politicians give them credit for, and this is a perfect example.”

The $70 billion-plus budget Scott will propose next week is a midterm course correction for a governor who narrowly won in 2010 and quickly alienated educators by cutting public schools by $1.3 billion. His last budget restored $1 billion of the previous year’s cut, but the political damage lingered.

As Scott sees it, he had to make tough choices in a recession. Now that unemployment has rebounded from 11.1 percent to 8 percent, he says, it’s time to invest more in schools.

Scott also wants to give a tax break to 17,500 manufacturing companies in Florida by exempting new equipment purchases from the state sales tax. Current law requires firms to prove that new equipment boosts production by at least 5 percent.

He wants to hold the line on tuition at state colleges and universities. With state debt steadily shrinking, Scott will propose no major borrowing, but he wants $14 million to give $250 debit cards to teachers to defray out-of-pocket classroom costs.

He will propose spending $15 million to reduce the statewide waiting list for disabled adults who need home and community-based care.

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Appeals court again upholds power of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel

An appeals court has struck down a police officer’s challenge to the validity of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel — the second time the panel has withstood a legal challenge from police officers in the past five years.

Police Lt. Freddy D’Agastino and the Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit arguing that the civilian panel, which reviews citizen complaints against officers and makes recommendations to the police chief, had no legal authority to investigate officers.

But in a ruling on Wednesday, the Third District Court of Appeal found that the panel neither conflicts with state or local law, nor intrudes on the police department’s power to discipline its officers. The CIP does not have the authority to discipline officers, though it does have the power to subpoena records and witnesses in its own investigations.

The appeals court also upheld the panel’s authority in 2008, when then-Police Chief John Timoney sought to prevent the panel from investigating him.

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Miami Dolphins assemble familiar faces for lobbying team, many with ties to Mayor Carlos Gimenez

The Miami Dolphins’ lobbying team looks like a reunion of Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s campaign brain trust.

To push for a $400-million stadium renovation funded in part with tax dollars, the Dolphins have enlisted three key figures from Gimenez’s recent election races: Marcelo Llorente, Brian Goldmeier and Jesse Manzano-Plaza.

Llorente, who became a frequent presence on the campaign trail after losing his own mayoral bid, has been hired as one of the Dolphins’ Tallahassee lobbyists. Goldmeier, Gimenez’s fundraiser, and Manzano-Plaza, a former Gimenez campaign manager, have been brought on as advisers to help drum up community support for the Dolphins’ plan.

The three men’s participation could indicate a calculated effort on the Dolphins’ part to appeal to the mayor, whom Miami-Dade commissioners tasked on Wednesday with negotiating a potential deal with the football team. Gimenez was a stubborn critic of the lopsided public financing deal for the new Miami Marlins ballpark in Little Havana — a position that helped the former commissioner in his campaign for mayor.

Gimenez dismissed the suggestion that a particular lobbying or campaign team could curry favor with his office.

“If anybody knows me, you can hire whoever you want. At the end of the day, I work for the people of Miami-Dade County — that’s who pays my salary,” he said in an interview Thursday. “I’m pretty black-and-white about things like that.”

Gimenez, who said he was unaware of Llorente’s and Manzano-Plaza’s involvement with the Dolphins, said his former election workers are successful in their own right.

“They’re very good at what they do, and they’re professionals,” he said. “I would hope that’s why the Dolphins hired them. In terms of me, that makes no difference.”

Goldmeier, Llorente and Manzano-Plaza are part of a larger team, led by Dolphins CEO Mike Dee, hunting for votes among state lawmakers and county commissioners, who would have to sign off on the football team’s request to raise a Miami-Dade mainland hotel tax to 7 percent from 6 percent and to receive a $3 million annual subsidy from the state. The funds would amount to some $199 million, about half the cost of proposed upgrades to Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens.

Voting 9-4, commissioners on Wednesday endorsed state legislation that would allow the county to raise the hotel tax — an early victory for the Dolphins, who are having to stare down criticism of the Marlins deal. Commissioners directed Gimenez to negotiate with the Dolphins. The mayor said talks would begin soon, led on the county side by deputy mayors Ed Marquez and Jack Osterholt.

“If the public is going to be investing money via a bed tax — which is tourist money, but still public money — then what are we going to be getting in return? Why should we be investing public money into the enterprise?” Gimenez said. “I know we’re not going to put the general fund at risk in any way, shape or form. There’s not going to be any fancy financing.”

His administration will likely hire outside consultants with expertise in negotiating with professional sports teams, the mayor added.

“I don’t want to be at a disadvantage,” he said. “So it may be that we come to some kind of framework — and maybe we don’t.”

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Miami conclave to help map the next 50 years for Southeast Florida

On a Google map, the long stretch of Florida coastline from deep South Miami-Dade County to Sebastian Inlet appears a seamless mass of urban development jammed between a thin border of sand on one side and wetlands and farmland on the other.

But zoom in and it’s soon sliced up by lines both real and imaginary: roadways, highways, railways, waterways and the boundaries of numerous, and often overlapping, governmental jurisdictions.

Now this vast area, at once connected and disconnected, is the subject of one of the most ambitious planning efforts ever undertaken in Florida. Called Seven50, it aims to chart a coordinated, integrated future for the development of Southeast Florida’s seven counties for a couple of generations, through the year 2060.

On Thursday, the big moveable feast of thinkers, planners, economists, government officials and business leaders that is Seven50 will convene in downtown Miami for the effort’s second public summit since its launch in Delray Beach last June.

It may sound like “wonky stuff,’’ said Seven50 lead consultant Victor Dover, a Coral Gables-based planner. But he said Seven50’s scores of participants are convinced that agreeing to coordinated plans across jurisdictional lines is critical if the region is to prosper and meet a long list of common challenges. They range from transportation logjams to the prospect of rising seas and U.S. and international competitors trying to grab our share of international investment, tourism, cargo and trade.

And that competition is serious and well-organized, Dover said. In Texas, for instance, 13 counties and 100 cities between Houston and Galveston have banded together in a similar planning alliance, and so have cities and states along the Great Lakes.

The advantage Southeast Florida has, Seven50 planners say, is that old real-estate cliche: Location, location, location.

But it risks throwing its advantage away unless it better links up its airports and seaports, installs more and better-connected mass transit, and develops strategies to improve education and retain and attract the kind of skilled, educated young people considered key to economic prosperity in today’s economy.

“Planning at this scale is profoundly American, from Jefferson to the creation of Washington, D.C., and if we don’t do it, we’re going to get blown away by the competition,’’ said Andres Duany, a renown Miami-based planner who will give the keynote address at the downtown gathering. “They’re gunning for us.’’

The free, full day of sessions at Miami Dade College’s Wolfson campus is designed to gather public input and share a still-in-development snapshot of the region as planners build what they describe as a massive data warehouse covering everything from demographics to housing, economics and transportation networks. Key discussion areas will be transportation, education and the daunting implications of climate change.

Because Southeast Florida will be among the first regions to experience rising sea levels, across-the-board planning on how to adapt will be essential. That could include difficult options like steering investment for new public infrastructure away from vulnerable areas, or protecting the region’s underground water supply from saltwater intrusion by raising freshwater levels in drainage canals, which could produce more seasonal flooding in some areas.

Some 200 public agencies, advocates, business groups and academic institutions, including the region’s principal universities, have signed up for the effort. Any resulting plans are purely voluntary, and no town or agency is obligated to adopt any ideas it doesn’t like, planners stress.

Still, the process hit a roadblock in the northernmost county, Indian River. The county commission and the Vero Beach city council voted to drop out after Tea Party-linked activists raised a public ruckus over their participation. The activists contend Seven50 is part of Agenda 21, a 20-year-old, nonbinding United Nations resolution that called for environmentally sustainable urban development, which they describe as a conspiracy to evict people from their homes and force them into dense urban housing.

Seven50 planners had to post a response on their website explaining they intend no such thing. Since then, the Stuart city council voted to join Seven50. Other Indian River agencies remain as participants.

The two-year planning effort, led by a consortium established by the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, is funded by a $4.25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The federal agency is encouraging local governments to engage in long-range planning under the sustainability label, which covers a range of strategies to foster development of pedestrian-friendly urban zones that put jobs close to homes and save energy by providing alternatives to auto transportation.

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Broward schools superintendent earns high marks

The honeymoon may be long over, but Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie still boasts the solid support of the majority of the Broward School Board — with six board members rating Runcie “highly effective” during his latest semi-annual performance review.

Broward’s remaining three school board members gave Runcie an “effective” grade — including School Board member Nora Rupert, who at times has been Runcie’s strongest critic. During discussion of the recently-completed evaluation at a Tuesday School Board workshop, boards members repeatedly showered Runcie with praise.

“He’s a dynamic individual, a visionary,” School Board member Patricia Good said.

Said board member Robin Bartleman to the superintendent: “What I admire most about you is, it’s all about the kids.”

When he became Broward’s schools chief in the fall of 2011, Runcie was tasked with restoring the reputation of a school district that had become a local poster child for scandal. Two board members had been arrested on corruption charges in recent years, and a grand jury report released eight months before Runcie’s arrival blasted the nation’s sixth largest school district as a backroom-dealing cesspool of lobbyist influence.

Under Runcie’s leadership, the district awarded teachers their first raise in more than four years, though the salary boosts were somewhat modest. Broward also dramatically improved its performance under Florida’s class-size rules, with the percentage of classes in compliance rising from about 54 percent to 84 percent.

Runcie not only halted teacher layoffs but found the money to hire hundreds of additional teachers, and electives such as music and art (previously a victim of budget cuts) were restored to elementary schools.

Not all of Runcie’s changes worked out perfectly, however. Some of the money for hiring teachers came from radically overhauling the district’s school bus transportation department. When Runcie’s new-and-improved transportation department botched the beginning of the school year (with widespread reports of late or no-show buses) the superintendent absorbed weeks of heavy criticism.

The supervisor in charge of that dysfunctional bus service, transportation director Chester Tindall, was a friend of Runcie’s from a time when the two men both worked in Chicago. With parents furious over the bus mishaps, Runcie reassigned Tindall but refused to fire him. Tindall finally announced his resignation last month.

That school bus soap opera did make its way into some board members’ written evaluations of the superintendent. In writing that Runcie “Needs Improvement” in the Leadership/Management category, Rupert called the busing mistakes “The Giant Elephant in the Room.”

Bartleman, while overall complimentary of Runcie, wrote “The transportation issues that occurred at the beginning of the year have overshadowed many of Mr. Runcie’s accomplishments.”

Some board members also complained that the district’s communication skills — both internally and when reaching out to the public — are sorely lacking. Other Florida school districts, for example, have glitzier websites. The Palm Beach County school district has its own mobile phone app.

Runcie responded that improving the district’s web presence will also require upgrading some of its outdated computer technology. In an interview following the workshop, Runcie said he planned to move forward on that front, as he felt there was lots of good news about the district to promote online.

“Overall, we’ve turned the corner,” Runcie said. “Does everybody out there recognize it? I don’t know.”

Regarding the difficulties he encountered in remaking the transportation department, Runcie said the goal was to steer more money into the classroom, and that experience wouldn’t deter him from similar efforts in the future.

“The bottom line is this: any time you’re going through any real transformative change, it’s not going to be always smooth,” Runcie said.

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