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    An ethics complaint filed against Commissioner Ken Russell for a failure to provide a public document.

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    An ethics complaint filed against Commissioner Ken Russell for a failure to provide a public document.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    1K views11 pages

    The Russell Ethics Complaint

    Uploaded by

    al_crespo
    An ethics complaint filed against Commissioner Ken Russell for a failure to provide a public document.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 11
    3. Ss. MIAMI-DADE COMMISSION ON ETHICS & PUBLIC TRUST 19 West Flagler St, Suite $20, Miami, FL 33130 Tel, 305.579.2594 Facsimile 305.579. 0273 COMPLAINT FORM, COMPLAINANT (PERSON BRINGING COMPLAINT) Add pages, ifnecessary Name: Address: Contact No. E-mail: RESPONDENT (PERSON AGAINST WHOM COMPLAINT IS MADE) Add pages, if necessary Name: sc Nee Kessel atiews F500 Pen Ayrtei.. cy Litas tin Coie FY ZB _ Contact Nos): Specify Home, Work &/or Cel § IS. ZS S= ee Title/Office Held or Sought: _ i Mbt 1S ce IF KNOWN, CHECK WHICH APPLIES: ALLEGATION REFERS TO Person in County Government _Person in City Government. Speety City: _/ Xr County Whistleblower Retaliation __Eleetions Campaign Practices Note: ‘The Fthies Commission does not have jurisdiction over State officers and employees or the Miami-Dade County School Board. ‘STATEMENT OF FACTS BASED ON PERSONAL KNOWLEDEGE. Ina separate attachment, please describe in detail the facts and actions that form the basis of your complaint, including dates when the action(s) occurred. Also, attach any relevant documents as well as names and contact, information of witnesses or other persons who may have knowledge about the actions. If known, indicate the section of the ordinance you believe is being violated. For further instructions and procedures, see Page 2 of this form, oaTH STATE OF county cptte Dele 1, the person bringing this complain, do depose On oath or affirmation and say that the facts set Forth in the foregoing complaint & attachments ‘Are true and comes, to the best of my knowledge ‘And belief. ‘he NANCY GOLDAING Gf « MY COMMSSION EE se0 ‘Type of entiation pro J,” EXPIRES Febuary 15,2017 iene” Boas TavBapy Sis ETHICS COMPLAINT AGAINST MIAMI CITY COMMISSIONER KEN RUSSELL This is an ethic’s complaint against Miami City Commissioner Ken Russell for either the loss or destruction of a public record. In early December of 2015, I had occasion to speak to the Commissioner on the phone and in the course of that conversation he volunteered to me the information that his office was beginning to receive numerous “gifts” from constituents, many of them he claimed hadn’t a clue who he was, but rather, they were delivering whiskey, gift certificates and other items as Christmas present. He was almost giddy in describing to me how much stuff was being delivered to his office, amazed that just because he had been elected to office all of these items were just being carried through the door by people who he had no clue who they were. explained to the Commissioner that he needed to keep track of those items and he needed to report them on a FORM 9. I went on to explain the importance of the information he had shared, given my almost 6 year effort to force elected officials in the City of Miami to account for all the gifts, free tickets and free trips that I had uncovered them taking over those years. Sometime shortly after January 15 I submitted my quarterly request to the Florida Ethics Commission for copies of all the FORM 9's that might have been filed by Miami City Officials, and included Russell's name to that list. ‘The response that came back stated that Russell had not filed a FORM 9. I called Russell to ask why he hadn't, and he told me that he had contacted the Ethic's Committee and was told he didn’t have to file a FORM 9 for the last quarter of 2015 until after the first quarter of 2016. In early April of 2016, | had occasion to be close to City Hall and decided to stop by and make sure that the Commissioner was going to file a FORM 9 by April 15%. He was in his office when | arrived and we discussed this issue and he stated that he - or his staff- had contacted the Florida Ethics Commission again, and this time they told him he didn’t have to include any gifts with a value of less than $100, but that he would be filing a report that included those gifts with a value of $100. He also admitted that while he had given most of the “gifts” away, he and his staff had kept all the whiskey. Russell also assured me, after I asked about the list, that it was safe and maintained in his office. On April 16", | filed my quarterly request to the Ethics but mistakenly only requested the latest submission of FORM 9's from my list of individuals that | normally ask for. Consequently, I did not find out, as | explain further on that the Commissioner had in fact filed a FORM 9 for the last quarter of 2015, and because | did not know that on April 21%, I sent the Commissioner an email requesting a copy ofthe ledger that he had told me was how his office was keeping track of all of the “gifts.” (EXHIBIT 1) On May 14, I sent him a stronger email expressing both my concerns regarding his failure to comply with my request, and concerns about the behavior of his Chief of Staff, Who I personally believed - and continue to believe - might have had a hand in not providing me with the document I requested. (EXHIBIT II) On May 19%, still not having received a response | sent the Commissioner one last message to another email address, expressing my concerns and advising him that a refusal to respond to my request would result in my initiating actions he would not like. (EXHIBIT III) That evening | received a phone call from the Commissioner expressing his apologies, and pointing out that the email address that I had been sending my emails was in fact one of his campaign email accounts that he no longer monitored, but assuring me that he was going to instruct his staff to provide me with the list of “gifts” he had received. On the evening of May 22nd, the Commissioner sent me an email stating that the list had mysteriously disappeared, and that a search by his staff had been unable to find it. (EXHIBIT IV) He assured me that he was very concerned about this, and was having the staff member - a volunteer who no longer comes to the office - recreate the list. I wrote him back and expressed my thoughts on the recreation of list that was now 5 months old, and expressed to him not only my anger over what at best could be considered gross incompetence on the part of him and his staff, but also that ! would give him till 5 PM on Tuesday afternoon to provide me with the original of the list or Twould file this complaint. On May 25t, as part of the research for this complaint, I sent an email to the City Clerk of Miami for copies of all of the FORM 9's that Russell sent to him, and which he in turn forwarded to the Florida Ethics Commission. As part of that response, | received a copy of the FORM 9 that Russell had prepared for the last quarter of 2015, and that had been signed by Russell and notarized on March 31* by the City Clerk. (EXHIBIT V) That time has now passed for the Commissioner to provide me with the alleged missing list, and | am following through with my ethics complaint. WAS IT GROSS INCOMPETENCE, OR WAS IT A CONSCIOUS POLITICAL DECISION ‘TO MAKE THIS “GIFT” LIST DISAPPEAR? From my very first conversation with the Commissioner about this list I was open and straightforward about the importance that he comply with the law in reporting the receipt of these “gifts,” and I was also candid if he did this then I would be able to use that list to raise the question as to why all the other Commissioners and the Mayor had never done what he was doing by reporting any of the Christmas “gifts” that they had received over the years. Inall the time that I have been writing my blog and reporting on their misbehavior when it came to reporting all the swag that they receive, had anyone of them ever reported so much as receiving a single gift basket at Christmas, much less the thousands of dollars in turkeys and hams that some of them received from wealthy campaign donors or grocery stories in their districts that they then passed out to the poor residents in their districts as little more than naked attempts to use this food as a way to ingratiate themselves with potential voters. (EXHIBIT VI) The Commissioner claims that the list, which was prepared by hand - this is not a document maintained on the city's computer system - by a volunteer staff member who had served as his campaign treasurer, and who had continued to work for him ona part-time basis after he was sworn in for approximately several months just seems to have disappeared. What is both puzzling and troubling is that the Commissioner in his response to me where he acknowledges that the list has mysteriously gone missing from his office, implies first of all that the woman in question only left his office recently, when to my recollection she left sometime in January, and secondly and much more importantly, if the Commissioner only got around to preparing and signing the FORM 9 for the last quarter of 2015 on March 31%, then one would naturally assume that shortly before he did that either he, or his staff would have reviewed that “gift” list to make sure that no items worth over $100 were left off the FORM 9. ‘The most troubling fact about this issue is that the Commissioner received over $200,000 over a 14-day period between his first election and the runoff. That money came for the most part from deep-pocket developers, attorneys and others who had no problem ponying up $1000 checks to a guy they didn’t know just to be able to get his attention or put a marker down. And even though he publicly returned some of those checks he did keep over $130,000 of that money, and just because he did return some of those checks didn’t necessarily mean that afterwards he didn’t meet with those people, or entertain their requests for assistance. Several weeks later the Christmas “gifts” started coming through the door ina volume and quality that as I have previously said, when the Commissioner told me about it he was giddy over the whole thing. Given my own previous experience in sitting in the lobby of City Hall one afternoon several years before during the Christmas holidays where | personally witnessed individuals walking in with large cellophane wrapped gift baskets, and others with holiday wrapped boxes, | know, and so do you, and so does everyone else whose savvy to the way that this game is played that the kinds of people who normally show up at City Hall to give these elected officials Christmas do not show up with little boxes of home made cookies - although I’m sure that among all the swag there were probably a few such items from average citizens - but for the most part the gifts that get delivered to City Hall come from the same group of people, as well as. others, looking to buy influence, or at least put a marker down by giving these politicians a Christmas “gift.” Yet, a review of the FORM 9 for the last quarter of 2015 that the Commissioner submitted shows NOT ONE SINGLE gift on that report other than free tickets to 2 gala events. The Commissioner would want us to believe that after raking in dozens and dozens of $1000 campaign checks, not one of those same individuals showed up to give him a Christmas “gift” valued over $100 - not even among all the whiskey bottles that he and his staff kept for their own consumption. While I cannot detail any of the “gifts” that the Commissioner received, I can be absolutely sure that when I spoke to the Commissioner in December while the “gifts” were coming through the door, he was not only giddy over the number of items that were coming through the door, but also at the value of some of these gifts. will refrain from speculating on just why the Commissioner and/or his staff might have decided to make this list disappear, but in all of the years that I have been doing what I do, and I'm sure that in your own experience as well, documents in filing cabinets in government offices don’t just up and walk away on their own, especially a document that could prove to be embarrassing to the Mayor and the other City Commissioners, were | to have gotten my hands on that list. At the end of the day there is only one undisputed fact and that is that whether the Commissioner in his giddiness misled me to believe the value of the Christmas “gifts” were more valuable than he now claims they were, or that on reflection and political calculation he decided that having the list mysteriously disappear was a politically expedient thing to do, or even that perhaps gross incompetence on the part of one or more members of his staff resulted in the loss of this document, the one thing that everyone can agree on, based on the Commissioner’s own words is that the “document has been misplaced.” he decided that having the list mysteriously disappear was a politically expedient thing to do, or even that perhaps gross incompetence on the part of one or more members of his staff resulted in the loss of this document, the one thing that everyone can agree on, based on the Commissioner's own words is that the “document has been misplaced.” In legal terms, that means for purposes of the Public Records Law, the document, whether “misplaced,” or whether it ran off to join the circus, in no longer in the possession of the document's Custodian Of Records. That's a real problem, and I contend a violation of the Citizen’s Bill of Rights, much less of the Florida Public Records Law, which not only deprive me and anyone else of obtaining a copy of this document, but also of reviewing it. PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST ‘Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST From: alcrespo Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2016 10:41:01 -0400 To: Ken Russell Dear Commissioner Russell, Per our previous conversation, please send me a copy of the itemized ledger that you created to account for all the gifts you received from the time you were sworn in until today. ‘Thank you, al crespo toft 5/23/16 7:08 AM Fwd: | HAVE A PROBLEM 1of2 ‘Subject: Fwd: | HAVE A PROBLEM From: alerespo Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 07:57:55 -0400 To: Ken Russell bs al ~ Original Message be Subject:| HAVE A PROBLEM Date:Sat, 14 May 2016 10:06:23 -0400 From:alcrespo Reply-To:alcrespoi@att net To:Ken Russell Dear Commissioner, I have a huge problem. In the last month I submitted 2 public records requests to you, and I have not received a response to either one. Now, of all the people who went out of their way to help you get elected, I think that I can say that I have absolutely not pestered you, called you up asking for favors, waltzed into you office with somebody on my arm looking for a favor, or done anything else but try to stay away from you and let you do whatever you thought was right. However, I do have two things that I am absolutely passionate about. The first is a public officials obligation to respond to my public records requests, and the second is not catching a public official lying to me about the acceptance of gifts. Now, I'm sure that you never actually received my email requests, and that your Chief of Staff did, and that he took it on his own to ignore my requests. I say that because he has, in a very very period of time managed to piss off a large number of people with his attitude and rudeness - in fact given the short time he's been lurking in your office he has managed to piss off more people than I have after 6 years of doing what I do - and that's saying a lot, because I worked at pissing people off. Well, I'm now pissed off and I want those documents that I asked for, or I will pretty quickly decide that you and your Chief of staff are actually no better than your predecessor when it comes to obeying the law, and then I'm going to go back to my old ways and see just how much shit I can dig up on you PDQ. ‘The one thing I do not want is another stupid phone call from your Chief A L ~re phe 5/23/16 7:09 AM On 5/22/16 9:20 PM, Russell, Ken (Commissioner) wrote: HiAl, Thanks for your patience on this. Pat Vegnani worked the front desk for the first couple months. She kept a list of every gift that came | through the door (mostly around christmas). I was adamant that | wanted the list even for stuff under $100 because most of itis just that. ‘Since she left our office and Courtney Omega came in recently, the list has been misplaced. Pat came in on Friday to look for herself after describing to Courtney the manila folder in which it was kept. Pat's pretty old school and didn't do much on digital spread sheets. They haven't found it. | have asked Pat to re-create the list from her recollection. | don’t understand what could've happened to it, but the info exists and it is important to me that it’s recorded. So I'll be straight with you that it's missing and I’m not happy about it. lll let you know as soon as we either find it, or re-create the record. ‘Thanks, Ken Ken Russell City of Miami Commissioner District 2 Form 9 QUARTERLY GIFT DISCLOSURE (GIFTS OVER $100) TAST NAME ~ FIRST NAME ~ MIDDLE NAME: NAME OF AGENCY. Russell, Ken City of Miami TWAILING ADDRESS: ‘OFFICE OR POSITION HELD: 3500 Pan Aamerican Drive Commissioner District 2 ony. a: COUNTY: FOR QUARTER ENDING (CHECK OREN), YEAR naa perast Miami-Dade | MARCH GUUNE scPTemBeR! @okcewaeR 2015. LF PART A— STATEMENT OF GIFTS ‘nave at below each gf, he value of which you baieve to excned STO0,accapted by you dung the cuendar quar for which ie Statement beng fled, You are required to describe the git and state he menetary vale of te ge name and adress ofthe person making the Gt and the dates) he git was recive. I any of hese facts, other thane gift desertion, are urknown or ot applicable, you shoud so sale onthe form. AS ‘explained more flyin the stuctons an the reverse sie ofthe orm, you are nat required to discose ats fom vlaives ocean her gi. You fare nat required 10 fle this statement for any calendar quarter during which you did not receive a reportable aif DATE DESCRIPTION MONETARY | NAME OF PERSON | ADDRESS OF PERSON RECEIED, orairt ALUE anivatwectet | “Sane THe oF Rees is 272) | [esa vinwie coal Vizcaya Museum | 3251 S Miami Ave 15 00.do December 12, 2015 | 1 tcket to Camillus Gala qT Jbs00| camilus House 1603 NWT Ave 0 TD CHECK HERE IF CONTINUED ON SEPARATE SHEET PART 8 — RECEIPT PROVIDED BY PERSON MAKING THE GIFT 1 any receipt ora gf ited above was provided 10 you bythe person making the gf. you are required to alach a copy ofthat recs to ths form. You may atfacn an explanalion of any cilerences Setwoen the sformationascloed on tis orm and the information on the receipt. CHECK HERE IF A RECEIPT IS ATTACHED TO THIS FORM PART C — OATH Tike parton whose name appear athe boponing os fom, do | STATE OF FLORIDA COUNTY OF —_Su.co = Dade, ___ depose on oan or afmation and say tal te informaton cacloved | Swornto(g slemed) and subsanbed Relore me Tis Se sayot Marcy ole hari and onan atacimers made by mw contts ae acme, | Rees lWiscrae at Ceameetenes eiuaienga ape msteduce mandy seams ee —— Fiona Statutes, > ff ‘(Sghature of Notary Public-State of Flonda) _

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