Palm Beach and other counties looking to shed a dark history of corruption are setting a pace for reform that could be modeled by other governments and state officials, advocacy organizations said Thursday.

Integrity Florida and the Leroy Collins Institute released a report which showed a majority of Florida’s 45 counties surveyed require ethics training for elected officials, regulate contracting practices, and restrict gifts from lobbyists to officials. Most also have designated a county point person for ethics issues, the report found.

“In many of these instances, these reforms did follow corruption,” said Carol Weissert, director of the Collins Institute. “But I think what we’re seeing counties where they’re not having corruption and they’re still trying to make these changes.”

Dan Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida, said some county officials acknowledge the stricter oversight measures enacted locally were prompted by an absence of tough state ethics laws.

“City and county governments can go further than the state, but they can’t be weaker than what the state requires,” Krassner said.

He said the survey of local standards can be a guide for Florida’s new legislative leaders, who have spoken of toughening standards state officials must meet. Both House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, and Senate President Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, have created new ethics committees expected to propose measures for next year’s Legislature.

The survey listed Palm Beach County as a model for many. The county created its own ethics commission in 2010, enacted a tougher ethics code a year later and hired an inspector general empowered to look for fraud and abuse in the county.

Palm Beach’s reforms were hard earned. The county was branded the “Capital of Florida Corruption,” in 2009 by Time magazine and saw four county commissioners convicted of corruption charges and a pair of West Palm Beach city commissioners sent to prison for felonies over a five-year period.

A nonprofit watchdog organization Monday called for Florida to broaden its financial disclosure requirements for public officials, saying current law provides for loopholes that invite corruption.

Integrity Florida said state lawmakers and the Florida Commission on Ethics should model changes on the state of Louisiana, which drew a top ranking from the Center for Public Integrity in 2009 for disclosure standards enacted under Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal. Florida ranked 26th in the same report.

For starters, Integrity Florida executive director Dan Krassner said state ethics officials should post disclosure forms filed by public officials annually on the internet, so citizens can easily find them.

“If something’s not online, it essentially does not exist,” Krassner said.

Integrity Florida’s push comes on the heels of the ethics commission last week acknowledging that it is still awaiting disclosure forms from more than 4,000 public officials who failed to file by the July 1 deadline.

The commission also is digging in and refusing to dismiss as uncollectible $87,000 in fines that goes back more than four years and is considered beyond the panel’s authority to pursue.

Commissioners said they are hoping the Legislature will approve a measure next spring that extends the commission’s power. Florida’s disclosure laws were approved with a 1976 constitutional amendment. But the reporting requirements for public officials have not changed dramatically over the years even as the potential methods for gaining favors or hiding corrupt gains have become more sophisticated.

Integrity Florida, however, also is recommending that the Legislature enhance disclosure requirements to include more detail on public officials’ outside employment, nonprofit board membership, more information on a spouse’s net worth and more details about clients for those officials exmployed by professional or consulting groups.

“We still need more disclosure to know,” Krassner said. “Otherwise, Florida has increased its corruption risk.”

Krassner said more detailed information also should be demanded of legislators who work for lobbying firms. Integrity Florida found 11 lawmakers employed by organizations that lobby the Legislature, including Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, a lawyer with Gunster Yoakley & Stewart, and Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington, employed by Weiss, Handler, Angelos & Cornwell.

Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, also lists Weiss, Handler as a secondary source of income on the disclosure form she filed earlier this month, although both she and Abruzzo also disclosed clients of the firm that have business before the Legislature.

Integrity Florida also said that lawmakers should tighten the standard for lawmakers required to disclose a possible conflict-of-interest when casting a vote. Legislators have as much as 15 days after each vote to file such disclosures with House or Senate officials. Such disclosures should be made before a vote, Integrity Florida said.

Only a dozen lawmakers disclosed 33 possible voting conflicts during the 2012 session, the organization found.

With Florida leading the nation in federal public corruption convictions over the past decade, a watchdog group Wednesday urged the state Legislature to give more investigative power to the state’s Commission on Ethics.

Palm Beach County has contributed its share to the statistics, with four county commissioners convicted of corruption charges over a four year period ending in 2010. Integrity Florida, a research organization, said the first step should be for lawmakers to pay attention to the wish list of proposals the ethics panel is expected to approve June 15.

Among the recommendations — some a repeat from earlier years — is that the panel be authorized to begin its own investigations of possible wrongdoing, without waiting for a citizen complaint. Similar calls have been ignored in the past by lawmakers, but Integrity Florida leaders said next year could prove different.

“2013 will be the year we see ethics reforms finally happen in Florida,” said Dan Krassner, executive director of Integrity Florida, who co-authored the report on Florida with research director Ben Wilcox.

The report concluded that Florida had 781 public corruption convictions between 2000 and 2010, tops in the nation. California and Texas were close behind, with New York fourth. But Florida’s corruptions history also contributed to it having three cities listed this year among Forbes’ magazine’s ‘most miserable,’ with Miami #1, West Palm Beach #4 and Fort Lauderale #7.

Krassner said he has had three meetings with leading officials in Gov. Rick Scott’s administration on the issue. Tea party organizations and the Florida League of Women Voters also have joined the call for tougher ethics standards, he said.

Other proposals Integrity Florida is backing include creating a corruption hotline,  requiring more financial disclosure for public officials, and making it easiner to obtain ethics convictions in cases that go to court. Some of the provisions are included in what the Ethics Commission is expected to recommend to the Legislature later this month.

But the commission that day also is scheduled to consider again writing-off thousands of dollars in penalties imposed against public officials who failed to file state-required financial disclosure forms. The commission prides itself on having a compliance rate of 99 percent for officials submitting their forms, but state law currently gives scofflaws an incentive for waiting out the commission.

A four-year time limit on the commission’s ability to collect led last summer to about $1 million in fines against 800 public officials being written off.

Most of the accused had served on professional boards, pension committees and other panels that generally make up the low minor leagues of state politics. But at least one served as a mayor and ran in 2010 for the state Senate: former North Miami Beach Mayor Joe Celestin. He owed $3,000 in fines accumulated in 2003 and 2005.

Also on the agenda June 14 is Rep. Erik Fresen, R-Miami, who owes $1,500 dating to when he served as a legislative aide in the early 2000s and apparently failed to file disclosures. Fresen didn’t return calls from the Post seeking comment.

UPDATE: Florida Secretary of Commerce Gray Swoope issued a strongly-worded rebuttal to Integrity Florida’s report, condemning the group’s findings and accusing Integrity Florida executive director Dan Krassner of “misleading Florida’s citizens by disseminating misinformation and misrepresentations of our organization, our mission and our work each day.”

Swoope said he met with Krassner before the report was released but Krassner’s analysis failed to reflect Swoope’s clarifications. Instead, Swoope accused Krassner of “releasing half-truths to inflame emotions. Read Swoope’s full statement after the jump.

Do Enterprise Florida’s corporate board members have a conflict of interest in awarding themselves tax breaks or other economic development aid? And should one of the recipients of Enterprise Florida grants be trusted with figuring out whether the agency is getting a good return on its investments?

Those are some of the questions Integrity Florida, a new government watchdog organization, raised in a report released Wednesday that found, among other things, that millions of dollars in grants went to corporations who paid to be on the public-private partnership’s board of directors.

Board members Publix, Embraer Aircraft and Lockheed Martin board all received tax breaks or incentive awards ranging from $150,000 to $570,000 over the past two years, the report found.

Ernst & Young found that the public-private partnership’s investments were good for Florida’s economy, generating $2.66 for every economic development dollar. But the accounting firm also received a $96,000 incentives grant last year, according to the report.

“Should a recipient of Enterprise Florida incentives also be responsible for calculating return on investment
benefits of incentives?” the report, written by Integrity Florida executive director Dan Krassner and research director Ben Wilcox, the former head of Common Cause of Florida.

The report also found Enterprise Florida did not give publicly notice all of its meetings and did not make the meeting materials easily available to the public.

Last year, one of Gov. Rick Scott’s former agency heads – Doug Darling – revealed that Florida had id tens of millions of dollars to lure companies to the state for jobs that were never created. Darling, the former head of the Department of Economic Opportunity, quickly backed away from his critique of the jobs return on the tax breaks, saying the situation wasn’t as bad as it first appeared.

But Integrity Florida also questioned whether the state is doing a good enough job keeping track of the number, duration and types of jobs the tax breaks create or whether it should change its analysis “to help ensure high wage criteria is being reached in an appropriate manner rather than by a few larger salaries skewing averages.”

Florida Department of Commerce Secretary Gray Swoope issued a lengthy rebuttal to Integrity Florida’s report, including a point-by-point clarification of the highlighted issues. Read it after the jump.
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