MCSO Creates Roadblock to Public Information, Forced to Show Cards
Candidate for Sheriff Bill Grove Exposes Aircraft Fuel Folly
- Naked Conch - Posted by Matt Gardi - May 24, 2012
Grove: What are the annual fuel costs for your airplane?
MCSO: We would have to copy and add up all the receipts, it will cost you $150.
Grove: You can't just give me a number?
MCSO: There is no "Total." $150, please.
Gardi to MCSO: You mean your award winning finance department can't provide a line item on fuel costs...even to the Sheriff?
Less than two hours later...
(During which time Becky Herrin emails administrator Mike Rice and asks..."Does this change anything?")
MCSO: Ohhhhh...you wanted a total. Now we get it. Ooops, we had forgotten to give you the line item report of fuel costs. How silly of us. Here it is, no charge required.
Conclusion: MCSO intentionally created a challenge to obtain information which ultimately illustrated that the Sheriff jet sets around in an effort to get on a new reality TV show called, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Taxpayer Funded Agency Administrators."
OK folks this all gets back to that transparency thingy again. Let's start with the press release coming out of the Grove Campaign.
Sheriff Candidate Cries Foul Over Fuel
- For immediate release - May 18, 2012 Grove for Sheriff Campaign
Bill Grove, candidate for Monroe County Sheriff has cried foul over the MCSO’s release of records relating to fuel costs of the department’s aircraft.
What started out as an exploratory effort to examine the practicality of the Sheriff’s Office use and maintenance of its own aircraft has exposed what Grove describes as a, “less than good faith effort,” on behalf of the MCSO in providing the information.
“You would think that asking for the annual fuel costs of the plane would be a simple request,” Grove suggests. But as it turns out, he was at first given a scattered replied provided by MCSO Administrator Mike Rice detailing gallons purchased, mixed with other dollar amounts. Grove pressed on for weeks in an email exchange with MCSO’s public relations specialist, Becky Herrin, to obtain a simple, dollar amount on an annual basis.
Herrin eventually explained in an email, “There is no "total" available. We would have to make you invoice copies, and you would have to total them up.” She referenced an email from Rice explaining such detail, that also suggested “The cost to gather these records, including staff time and copies, will be approximately $150.”
Grove paid the fee to obtain the records, along with other charges for a total of $200. Shortly afterwards, he mentioned the issue to Matt Gardi, a candidate for Clerk of Courts, himself an advocate of ease of access to public records. Gardi queried Herrin with the following questions;
1) Does this mean that the MCSO finance department has no way to easily provide a line item on the aircraft's fuel costs?
2) Does this also mean that if the Sheriff himself were to pose the exact same question to his finance department that it would consume $200 worth of labor and material resources to get such an answer?
Coincidentally within two hours of Herrin receiving Gardi’s email, Mike Rice realized he had failed to provide a report in his first response, and emailed Grove a line item report of the aircraft’s annual fuel costs.
“It was one way or the other,” Gardi states, “either the MCSO couldn’t provide a line item which would indicate they have a terrible accounting system, or they were intentionally obfuscating and attempting to dissuade Grove from obtaining the information. As it turns out it was the latter.”
Having seen the incredibly quick response to Grove, Gardi asked for any email exchanges between Herrin and Rice during the two hour period. Herrin provided Gardi with an email wherein she forwarded Gardi’s questions to Rice 10 minutes after receiving it and asks, “You were going to send me something for Bill..Does this change anything? See below...” (Click Here to See Email.) Rice then replied detailing his epiphany of forgetting to attach a line item report weeks earlier.
Grove was refunded his fee but still voices objections to the intentional deterrence MCSO created with their behavior.
“This flies in the face of the intent of Public Records laws,” suggests Grove. "This incident clearly shows the way the administration of the Sheriff's Office is less than transparent with regards to how they spend our money.” "Shortly after I began asking about the plane the MCSO website is changed." "Now the website no longer says agencies reimburse them for use of the plane, because that just has not been done." "The Sheriff's Office flies their own private aircraft all over the place and they don't want the public to know about it." "Fuel cost over the last four years average $65,000 dollars a year and the total reimbursement from other agencies during those four years is less than $1200.00."
Well, in an odd way I guess that's pretty transparent. It's transparent that the MCSO was giving Grove the run around, and attempting to discourage his requests with unreasonable fees.
Florida Statute 119.07 (1) (c) states, "A custodian of public records and his or her designee must acknowledge requests to inspect or copy records promptly and respond to such requests in good faith." FS 119 also provides for a $500 fine for violations, and it becomes criminal when those violations are intentional. Quick, someone call...the Sheriff!?!
But now let's take a look at just one example of the jet setting. (Please see here.) This is what the MCSO provided Grove as representing the only reimbursements the Sheriff's Office has received for use of it's aircraft. These are requests for reimbursement, by the MCSO from FDLE for use of the aircraft to transport the Sheriff to Medical Examiner's Commission meetings, mostly held in Sarasota for only a few hours. It also includes reimbursements for meals, car rentals and lodging. The reimbursement is calculated on the average mileage rate the State pays for use of a personal vehicle, but does not illustrate the true cost of flying the plane on these junkets.
Now one might argue that using the aircraft is less expensive, which might be true provided the Sheriff went only for the meeting and returned that day. However, in almost every instance you see an additional expense for a rental car, meals, lodging, and the proverbial canary in a coal mine...the pilots lodging. Yes, because as you see on some of these documents it states "Pilots reserved own rooms." I'm sure these pilots didn't spring for these rooms on their own, (You and I did.) and that detail is simply not included here. That's not even mentioning the pilot's pay. Again, most of the time these trips appear to be for meetings that only lasted a couple of hours.
So what alternatives did the Sheriff have? I have a sneaking suspicion he may have been able to find a white Crown Victoria somewhere in the department and driven. That's just a hunch, as I seem to recall seeing a few of those around the Keys. But as someone who has protested Agency Administrators' frequent travel to such meetings and conferences in general, I might suggest that he could have been an advocate of attending the meetings via teleconference or the web, such as any private sector company would do. This would eliminate the need for the plane, the pilots, the meals, the lodging, the gas, etc, altogether.
Again, this is just one example of the aircraft's use that Grove was able to find. Who knows how much the MCSO would want to charge to find out the true cost and purpose of each and every flight that makes up the $65,000 annual fuel costs. The MCSO references the fact that they only paid $500 for this plane, but what is it truly costing us? Kudus to Bill Grove for digging into this.
