Those of you who have watched the workings of Key West city government for a few years know that back room deals, misrepresentation, coverup, influence peddling, selective law enforcement and varying degrees of corruption have often been simply business as usual here.
You probably know that a former mayor is still making payments to the State Ethics Commission to pay off his fine for influence peddling while he was in office. A former high-ranking city official used to prioritize pending city contracts in terms of the amount of "cocoa butter" that would be available to spread around to friends and relatives.
So you may not be amazed to learn that Key West Code Enforcement Director Catherine Harding is knowingly and willingly selectively enforcing the law. That's a strong charge and we wouldn't make it if we couldn't document it. This is not just our opinion. We caught her red handed.
It's not particularly a major thing. She is simply looking the other way to allow a well-connected citizen to illegally run a business out of his home. Not really a big deal. But chances are that you wouldn't be allowed to do that. And if Ms. Harding would knowingly break the law in this instance, wouldn't it be an easy leap to knowingly approve a falsified building permit application for a well-connected citizen for money or favors?
We are certainly not suggesting that Ms. Harding is doing that. We don"t know. We are simply wondering where she might draw the line when it comes to selective enforcement.
We want to think that we can trust our city officials. But what are we to think when an official in a position of trust betrays that trust by selectively enforcing the law? Why is it unreasonable for us all to expect that the meaning of the law will be interpreted the same for every citizen?
The man who is illegally running his business out of his home happens to be a friend of City Manager Julio Avael. But that shouldn't make any difference. If you went into Ms. Harding's Licensing Dept. and asked for an occupational license to run a similar business out of your home, your application would be immediately rejected— unless your home address is zoned commercial. No arguments. No appeal. You simply wouldn't be allowed to do it! Unless, of course, you are "connected."
And if you tried to circumvent the law by giving the Licensing Dept. a phony mail-drop address— and Ms. Harding or any of her staff members found out that you really weren't running your business at the address listed on your occupational license— it is likely that a Code Enforcement officer would bust you in a heartbeat.
But in the case at hand, Harding well knows that the commercial address on the man's occupational license is not the address where the business is being conducted. But she wouldn't let you get away with that!
A Licensing Dept. official defended Harding's blatant selective enforcement this week by asking, "Is he disturbing anyone in his neighborhood by running that business out of his home?"
That's not the point. The law says that the type of business the man is running can't legally be conducted in a residential neighborhood at an address not zoned commercial. Period. Ms. Harding does not have the legal authority to change the law, even for one of Julio's pals.
In truth, there have been multiple complaints about this in-your-face example of selective enforcement. These complaints have gone unheeded by Harding and her staff— who are normally more than hard-nosed when it comes to enforcing the occupational license and zoning laws. They have even been known to peruse the ads in the local papers, looking for little businesses that may not be properly licensed— and then bust them!
We should, however, give Ms. Harding the benefit of the doubt. In this case, her orders to "lay off" may be coming from the City Manager's office.
Readers should know that, before we published this commentary, we faxed it over to Ms. Harding for review. We asked her to let us know if any of our statements of fact are wrong. We asked her to let us know if we, somehow, had misunderstood the law. And we were ready to pull or modify this commentary based on her response.
But she didn't respond.
Now, think about that. If a newspaper were ready to publish something as damning as this about you, and gave you an opportunity to respond in advance— and if the information scheduled for publication were wrong— wouldn't you quickly respond to set the record straight!?
We can only imagine why Ms. Harding failed to respond. Maybe she was just too busy busting code violators— or at least code violators who are not "connected." But we think the most likely explanation for her failure to respond, however, is that she simply can not explain her actions. So she chose, apparently, to hide under her desk.
Kirk Zuelch used to do that when we asked him questions about his alleged indiscretions. And look at what happened to him. He is no longer slopping at the public trough.
Do you have a Code Enforcement/Permitting/Licensing horror story? Can you cite examples of selective enforcement by Ms. Harding and her crew? Write us a letter to the editor. To be considered for publication, you must sign your name and give us a daytime phone number where you can be contacted— although this requirement will probably cut down the number of letters because we know that some of you will be fearful of retaliation.
If necessary, we'll devote a page or more to these stories each week.
Stay tuned.