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'It wasn't illegal' is too low a standard

By Howard Troxler, Times columnist
In print: Sunday, October 26, 2008

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The Florida Commission on Ethics has "cleared" the major players in the Jim Smith land scandal in Pinellas County.

But as often is the case with Ethics Commission rulings, the result has been somewhat misinterpreted from all sides.

It wasn't a "whitewash," as some angry citizen-critics claimed. The commission is limited to saying whether an act violated the law.

But neither should the ruling be seen as a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for what remains an act of spectacularly bad judgment. The best that can be said for it is: It wasn't illegal.

Smith, the county's elected property appraiser, owned 1.5 acres of land in North Pinellas. He said county workers damaged it.

So the county agreed to buy the land from Smith in 2007 for $225,000. The purchase price was nearly four times the appraised value from Smith's own office.

The county staff fast-tracked the deal, with the then-county attorney acting as a go-between. The County Commission approved it quickly with no discussion.

None of this was exactly Good Government in Action. It was an insider deal, handled on an insider basis.

A Pinellas grand jury investigated. The grand jury did not find any criminal violations, but criticized the deal on four fronts:

• The values of Smith's land, as set by his office, and reported by him on his financial-disclosure forms.

• The county staff's rushing of the deal, ignoring normal procedures and using shaky methods to come up with the purchase price.

• The county attorney's pushing the issue and advocacy of Smith's personal interests, while failing to make clear her role in the situation.

• The County Commission letting the thing sail through.

The county attorney, Susan Churuti, was made a scapegoat and fired by the equally guilty County Commission.

The county administrator, Steve Spratt, soon resigned. The chairman of the commission, Ronnie Duncan, chose not to run for re-election this year. Smith is retiring, too.

This brings us back to the much-misunderstood "Commission on Ethics," which is not much of a commission on "ethics" at all.

The commission's role is limited under Florida law. It takes complaints from the public and renders opinions on whether it thinks the conduct in question violated Florida law. The commission can neither launch its own cases nor impose its own punishments directly.

In a sense, it is the "Florida Commission on What's Not Illegal." Just as the grand jury before it had done, the commission found that nothing in the Smith deal broke the law.

So make no mistake — this ruling is not some sort of magic benediction that proves that the Smith deal was just peachy keen.

Smith got a deal not available to the average citizen. He got the help of the county attorney, and the personal attention of the County Commission chairman. The county brass pushed it through from the top. The commission rubber-stamped it.

To their credit, most of the members of the County Commission whom I've heard talk about this understand that they made a mistake in the way they handled the deal.

I hope that they, and the county government, are better for it. The taxpayers deserve a standard of government higher than, "At least we didn't break any laws!"