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Johnson's Secretive Ways Leave Financial Mess Behind

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 7, 2009

Buddy Johnson may be out of office, but the mess he made as Hillsborough County supervisor of elections will haunt taxpayers in the coming months. The dismaying episode provides a useful lesson for voters.

When elected leaders seek to do things in secret, look out.

It's encouraging that Phyllis Busansky, now taking over the office after defeating Johnson in November, understands this. She says, "You've got to be transparent. When you're in public office, you need to open to the public anything they want to see. There's no need to hide behind convoluted practices."

Convoluted is a kind word for the financial stink bomb Johnson left behind. An audit of the office's books by the clerk of the circuit court could not determine how $1.7 million earmarked for new voting machines had been spent.

The county commission requested the audit after Johnson asked for an extra $2.3 million to cover election expenses. Commissioners refused when Johnson's office could not provide specifics. They also were annoyed that Johnson sent his chief deputy to appear before the board, rather than making the request himself.

Every taxpayer should be outraged that Johnson's financial experts initially refused to cooperate with the audit. Even after these public officials began to cooperate, the auditor could verify only $336,000 in extra expenses for overtime-related costs. The disappearance of the rest remains a mystery.

The auditor could find no receipts, no records of where the money had gone. Johnson, a Republican who ran as a fiscal conservative, should publicly explain why he didn't bother to keep track of tax dollars he spent.

He bears full responsibility for the confusion because it was his decision to handle his office's finances in-house, without oversight. At the time he claimed the financial move would save money, even though he hired his own budget officer for nearly $90,000.

Previously, Clerk of the Circuit Court Pat Frank's office handled the bills for the supervisor's operation, a logical arrangement since the supervisor's budget is only about $6.7 million, most of which is funded by the county.

The clerk also handles all the expenses for Hillsborough County government. When checks are cut, everything is verified and recorded.

But no such documentation, so far, is to be found at the supervisor's office.

Curiously, he moved the tracking of his office's finances under his own control soon after the clerk's office objected to Johnson paying a former public relations director some $24,000 to keep quiet about what he knew of the supervisor's operation.

In the coming weeks Busansky's team and the clerk's auditor will try to find out what happened to money that was supposed to pay for new voting machines.

The auditor discovered the supervisor had hired some 450 part-time employees who were not poll workers. It's not clear what they were doing.

Busansky needs to scrupulously trace the dollars. Perhaps there are reasonable explanations for the excess expenses. But the lack of documents is disturbing. If the expenditures can't be verified, the state attorney needs to investigate.

It appears at the very least taxpayers are going to have to bail out an operation that didn't document expenses or inform the public that its budget was growing out of control.

Voters should remember the episode the next time an elected official seeks to eliminate public oversight for the sake of "efficiency."

As Frank said, "Even if you are a constitutional officer, you need to be open and forthcoming on how you spend the public's dollars. You can't play games with them."

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