A GOOD NEWS STORY. THE MOSQUITO CONTROL COMMISSIONERS WHO UNFIXED THE JOB HAVE ALL JUST BEEN REELECTED. THE BOARD'S INSURANCE COMPANY IS PAYING MANY OF THE LEGAL BILLS
IT LOOKS LIKE THE GOOD GUYS WON ONE.
One of the things we try to specialize in here at Key West The Newspaper is followup. We don't just break a story and forget it. We try to keep you updated as that story develops. Sometimes, however, it takes years for a story to run its course. A good example is the now-famous job-fix scandal at the County Mosquito Control Board (MCB), involving former Key West Mayor Dennis Wardlow. It started back in 1992. We've been covering it since 1993. And, now, we think we can finally write the final chapter. The three anti-corruption MCB Commissioners who unfixed the job were all reelected last month. And the board's insurance company has now agreed to pay more than $550,000 in legal fees incurred to defend the board's actions taken to unfix the job.
The moral of this story is that, maybe— just maybe— the voters here have signaled that they've had enough of the in-your-face government corruption that has been so prevalent here in Key West and up and down the Keys for years.
How did the good guys win one? Here's a final summary of the story.
Back in 1992, Mayor Wardlow's swimming pool cleaning business was, reportedly, not doing too well financially. So calls went out from some of the mayor's political friends to anybody who was anybody: "The mayor needs a job."
Apparently, there wasn't a lot of positive response from the private sector.
But longtime Wardlow pal and former Mosquito Control Commissioner Raymond Archer— who is now a high-ranking employee in the City government— had an idea. Why not get Wardlow a job with the MCB?
In early 1993, MCB Attorney Michael Halpern— also a longtime Wardlow pal— urged the board to do just that. But there was a small problem. There wasn't a job available. So a three-member majority of the board simply created a special job and preselected Wardlow to fill it.
Joe Pinder, the Chairman of the MCB at that time, was disgusted. He would later complain to State Attorney Kirk Zuelch that Wardlow's job at the MCB had been "fixed," pure and simple. He said he had been contacted by Halpern and Archer in October 1992 to help create a job for Wardlow.
Zuelch took no action. Remember this. It will be important later in this story.
In April 1995, Pinder would again call for a state investigation. To no avail. He said that he had initially told Archer that he had no objection to Wardlow coming to work at Mosquito Control, assuming that there was a job open and that the Mayor was qualified.
"But that's not what Archer had in mind," Pinder told Key West The Newspaper. "He told me they wanted to create a second assistant director job for Wardlow! We already had an assistant director and we certainly didn't need two for a 40-employee agency.
"I told Archer our board didn't do things like that. He told me, `That's how we do things in Key West.'"
Archer denies that he ever asked Pinder to help create a special job for Wardlow. "I just told him that Dennis was a good worker and if a job should open up, he should be recruited," Archer told KWTN in July 1996.
Attorney Halpern has also denied that there was ever any effort to illegally fix a job for Wardlow.
But Pinder's allegations were corroborated by former MCB Commissioner Mike Warren. This writer interviewed Warren in August 1993 and he said that he, too, had been contacted in October 1992 to help create a job for Wardlow. That contact came from incoming MCB Commissioner Waldo Veliz. Warren was retiring and Veliz was running unopposed for his seat.
"Since I was leaving office, they wanted me to propose the job and take the heat," Warren said. "I refused in no uncertain terms."
The story that came out of that interview, headlined "Former Mosquito District Commissioner Says Job Being Created for Wardlow," provided the first hint that there may have been a job fix going down.
At that time, Wardlow was one of the top five candidates for the job, culled from 75 applicants, including some pretty heavy hitters such as former County Administrator Tom Brown.
When we tried to contact Veliz in August 1993 to get his side of the story, he refused to come to the phone. But three years later, during his campaign for reelection, he denied that there was any kind of job-fix conspiracy. In a written statement to KWTN, he said that the creation of a second assistant director slot for the little agency and, subsequently, hiring Wardlow to fill it, was simply a solution to a management problem that had to be solved.
It is well known that the "management problem" Veliz was talking about was longtime Mosquito Control Director Lois Ryan. Ryan was seen by the make-a-job-for-Wardlow proponents as a problem because she opposed the creation of the job and the hiring of Wardlow.
"I don't even need one assistant director, much less two!" she said.
At first, those pushing for a job for the Mayor were simply going to arrange for the firing of Greg Scott, who was the Assistant Mosquito Control Director at that time, thereby opening up a slot for Wardlow. Board minutes in early 1993 show Scott under attack and threatened with termination or demotion.
But faced with Director Ryan's opposition to any job for Wardlow, the strategy changed. The new strategy: Fire Ryan, promote Scott and backfill with Wardlow. But getting rid of Ryan might take some time— and the Mayor needed a job now.
So this strategy emerged: Split the Assistant Director job in two. Make Scott Assistant Director- Technical. Then hire Wardlow as Assistant Director- Administration. Continue to push for the firing or forced retirement of Lois Ryan. And, when that happened, promote Scott to Director and leave Wardlow as the lone Assistant Director.
At the board meeting on April 28, 1993, Attorney Halpern took over the meeting and recommended the creation of the second Assistant Director slot. Director Ryan protested, pointing out that the new position was unbudgeted.
Halpern countered: The board can use money budgeted to hire an entomologist, an insect expert. Ryan had fought long and hard for such a position.
With little discussion, Commissioners Veliz, Ellie Cameron-Arnold and Steve Eid, voted to create the new position and preempt the funding for an entomologist to pay for it. Chairman Pinder and newly-elected Commissioner Joan Lord-Papy voted "no."
"We all knew that the job was for Dennis Wardlow," Lord-Papy said later. "I wasn't against Wardlow. I was against the creation of the unneeded job."
At the next meeting, June 30, the board culled the pile of 75 applicants down to five, including Wardlow— even though there had yet to be a job description developed for the new position! We swear we're not making this up.
On August 25, 1993, Veliz, Cameron-Arnold and Eid vote to hire Dennis Wardlow as Assistant Director- Administration. Surprise, surprise!
Early in 1994, Lois Ryan is forced to retire. Scott is promoted to Director and Wardlow remains as the sole Assistant Director. No effort is ever made to fill the now-vacant second Assistant Director slot— because, do you suppose, there was never, ever any need for such a position?!
During his early months on the job, phone logs revealed that Mayor Wardlow spent much of his time at work conducting City business. In addition to all the phone calls, a courier from City Hall dropped off daily packages of paperwork for the mayor to review.
With the departure of Director Ryan, the agency abruptly discontinued the practice of maintaining phone logs.
By 1996, Veliz, Cameron-Arnold and Eid probably all assumed that the alleged job fix was history, long forgotten by the voters. Veliz and Cameron-Arnold announced their candidacies for reelection. Eid had come up for reelection in 1994 and had chosen not to run. But he was back in 1996 to challenge Joan Lord-Papy— some said to punish her for opposing the Wardlow job.
Two obscure first-time politicians came forward to challenge Veliz and Cameron-Arnold: Steve Smith, a specialist in promoting gay travel to Key West, and Bill Shaw, a former mosquito control pilot. Few election watchers took them very seriously.
But their message to the voters struck a chord: "If we are elected, we will un-fix the job that was illegally fixed as a political favor." Only Key West The Newspaper endorsed them.
They both won by landslides. And Eid didn't even make it into the runoff in a three-candidate race that Lord-Papy subsequently won handily.
This created a new majority on the 5-member board.
Soon after the election, both Smith and Shaw reported that they were invited to lunch by Attorney Halpern.
"He told me that I should leave Wardlow's job alone— and, if I didn't, I would be sued and my reputation smeared," Commissioner Smith said.
Shaw said that Halpern told him the same thing. "I took it as a threat," he said.
But Halpern said he was only advising them as the MCB's lawyer.
Halpern's advice may have had some impact. During the very first meeting of the new board in January 1997, Smith, Shaw and Lord-Papy all said publicly that they might be willing to let bygones be bygones if Wardlow would just show up for work and do the job.
But, reportedly, that didn't happen. "Wardlow just continued to come and go as he pleased," Smith said.
Information also surfaced that Wardlow may have falsified his employment application, sign-out sheets and at least one expense account document. And, reportedly, Wardlow even flipped Commissioner Shaw a "bird" in the parking lot after one of the meetings.
Subsequently, it came as no surprise to anyone when the new board majority announced that the position of Assistant Mosquito Control Director would be abolished because it was unneeded.
Director Greg Scott would also be fired. Scott, rather than taking direction from the new board majority, had sided with Wardlow. Reportedly, he even told Commissioner Lord-Papy: "You can't tell me what to do!"
And Attorney Halpern, seen by the new board majority as having masterminded the job fix in the first place, was pushed to resign— or be publicly fired. Halpern resigned, but he left in place his hand-picked replacement, Attorney Tracy Adams.
Then, as Halpern had predicted, Smith and Shaw were sued and smeared.
In May 1997, Wardlow and Scott sued Smith and Shaw personally, accusing them of— get this— interfering with an "advantageous business relationship" Wardlow and Scott had with the Mosquito Control Board. At the time, we labeled that action "The World's Dumbest Lawsuit."
One of the lawyers for Wardlow and Scott: Michael Halpern.
For advice, Commissioners Smith and Shaw turned to Tracy Adams, the acting board attorney. She incorrectly— accidentally or on purpose— advised them that they had to get their own attorneys and pay them out of their own pockets. Subsequently, however, the board voted to pay attorneys fees for the two commissioners. And the agency's insurance company has finally paid off.
In the meantime, Wardlow's job was abolished, and both Scott and Adams were fired.
Then the smear began.
Wardlow went to State Attorney Kirk Zuelch and whined that Smith and Shaw had violated the State Sunshine law by allegedly discussing how to fire him. No matter that, on the campaign trail, both Smith and Shaw had repeatedly and openly promised to "unfix" the job.
Now, recall that we told you earlier that, back in 1993, Zuelch had refused to even investigate when the MCB Chairman had alleged that three members of the board had conspired with Halpern to fix a job for Wardlow. But in 1997, Zuelch fell all over himself to try to get Smith and Shaw indicted. He convened a Grand Jury and then illegally leaked the charges to the press.
When the Grand Jury failed to indict, Zuelch didn't give up. He turned the "investigation" over to a special prosecutor. More bad press for Smith and Shaw. A year later, however, the special prosecutor admitted that he could find no evidence of wrongdoing.
Wardlow and Scott didn't ignore Commissioner Lord-Papy. After giving her an opportunity to act as the swing vote to save their jobs, they sued her, too. Their primary allegation was that she had conspired with Smith and Shaw and their attorneys to "loot" the MCB treasury.
And it went on and on. Smith and Shaw sued Wardlow and Scott for malicious prosecution. Both sides filed ethics charges against the other. Finally, Wardlow and Scott were paid $40,000 each to just go away.
But it wasn't over. Stung by defeat, the powerbrokers who had supported the failed job fix set out to punish Commissioners Lord-Papy, Smith and Shaw by trying to abolish their jobs. The MCB should be taken over by the County Commission, they said.
So, dutifully, County Commissioner George Neugent proposed that action, supported by fellow Commissioners Nora Williams, Wilhelmina Harvey and Shirley Freeman.
Neugent said he wanted to take over the MCB because the agency had gotten too much "bad press." Williams said she was troubled about the MCB, but wouldn't say why. Freeman said she had "secret" information, but has yet to reveal it. Commissioner Harvey didn't have a clue. Only Mary Key Reich argued that one elected body shouldn't try to interfere in the workings of another.
County officials went to State Representative Ken Sorensen, confident that he would just ask the State Legislature to abolish the MCB and turn it— and its multi-million-dollar budget— over to the County.
But by this time, the new MCB majority had transformed that agency from one of the most corrupt in the state to one of the most efficient. One of the top mosquito control experts in Florida had been hired as Director to replace Scott. Two entomologists were now on staff. Mosquito control equipment and techniques were being modernized. Treatment costs per-acre had been dramatically reduced.
County officials were stunned when Sorensen told him that he wanted to see some evidence, perhaps a study, to show that the County could do a better job of mosquito control than the independent Mosquito Control District. So a study was commissioned.
Imagine how chagrined Neugent, Freeman, Williams and Harvey were when their own high-priced consultant reported back that the "new" MCB was one of the most efficient in the state and that there was just no way the County could do the job cheaper. Desperate to make a case, County officials argued "Yes we can!" because we've got almost $500,000 per year in "unused administrative capacity" that could be used to control mosquitoes. In other words, County officials admitted, "We've got people on the payroll who don't have enough to do."
We don't think if was coincidental that Commissioner Williams started calling for "downsizing" of the County government about that time.
Based on the consultant's report, Sorensen refused to take any action.
At that point, the job-fix scandal was all but over. But the board was still being criticized by some newspapers for spending so much money on legal fees to defend against the lawsuits by Wardlow and Scott. And reelection time was coming up for Lord-Papy, Smith and Shaw. Would the voters reward them for cleaning up a corrupt agency? Or would they punish them for paying the lawyers?
Last month, Commissioners Lord-Papy and Steve Smith were reelected without opposition. Bill Shaw had an opponent, but won handily— and has just been named Chairman of the Mosquito Control Board. KWTN endorsed him, as we had back in 1996. But this time, we didn't stand alone. Every Keys paper that endorsed in that race endorsed Shaw.
And this month, the MCB's insurance company agreed to pay much of the legal fees that had been incurred by the board.
We think it's fair to say that the good guys won one.
What about some of the other players in this long-running drama?
• You probably know what happened to State Attorney Kirk Zuelch. Last month, the 20-year incumbent was thrown out of office by the voters.
• Former Mosquito Control Director Greg Scott? The last time we heard, he was working at Scotty's.
• And Dennis Wardlow? After his days at Mosquito Control were over, he managed the Moose Lodge for awhile. More recently, we hear that he's been given a job by the Spottswoods in their property management division. It's too bad they didn't do that back in 1992 when the call went out, "The Mayor needs a job."