School For Scandal

Score one for the Bubbas, Jim Hendrick isn't going to jail, according to the Key West Citizen, and Friday's ruling in Federal Court has some people who weren't born in the Keys, in a snit. Jim Hendrick, an accredited lawyer, was convicted of helping a former county Commissioner try to avoid getting caught for taking a bribe to support a development. The former county commissioner died before he could be nailed, the man who offered the bribe skated and Hendrick was left holding the bag for assisting the bad behavior. Prosecutors asked for a re-sentencing but the judge simply added on some more community service, probation and another few months of house arrest.

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With the rapid conviction last month of Randy Acevedo on charges of helping to cover up his wife's school district theft (she has yet to face trial curiously, even though his trial was predicated on her guilt), the vocal Outsider community in Key West figured they had the Bubbas on the run. Not so fast apparently. And on the Monique Acevedo front, her father is saying she is being treated for mental afflictions of one sort and another, thus presumably setting up a defense strategy if she needs it. It looks like she will try to secure a plea agreement and I suspect her alleged kleptomania will figure in the defense's argument even if it is being put forward by her father rather than her attorney at the moment.

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With Hendrick continuing his ankle braceleted freedom one has to wonder if Randy Acevedo will get jail time following his three felony convictions, not least because his wife is in treatment and he has two children at home and he did not actually do the stealing just like Hendrick didn't in his case. Outsiders are braying for blood, Conchs are frowning. I am looking at the Florida Keys Community College watching the next shoe drop.

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The Hendrick acquittal ties in to the College President's travails too, weirdly enough. As part of his community service the lawyer Hendrick, with three felony convictions to his name, was sent to the Community College on Stock Island as a consultant. The President of the College, under siege from anonymous e-mails and angry administrative staff, fired him before his re-sentencing saying he was working against her. She also poured public scorn on a particular bid for a dormitory development project at the college. A bid that that Hendrick's developer friends the Spottswood family had submitted.

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The Spottswood bid has a special clause in it that if the eight million dollar dormitory building to be erected on a parking lot leased from the College does not get built, the Spottswoods get the land. No really, as a friend of mine put it they have written in an incentive for themselves to fail. It sounds like a joke but it isn't at all, and President Jill Landesberg-Boyle's opposition to that bid over a more rational bid from a company Up North is widely rumored to be the reason for the dogs of war being unleashed on her at the College.

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There was a paragraph last week in the paper announcing, whispering really, that the College had approved the winning bid for the dormitory project. The Spottswood's offer was apparently one the embattled college president couldn't refuse. I don't know if Boyle threw in the towel as a pre-departure fuck you or if her acceptance of the domination of the Spottswoods in the Keys is the start of a fresh effort on her part to build the College back up. If she is eating humble pie I hope she now understands the limits of the possible and moves forward undeterred in improving the academics and leaves the money printing to the Spottswoods. That's all they want or have ever given any indication they care about.

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While that fiasco unfolds the School District mess continues apace. The school budget is being finalized and the new Interim Superintendent "Super Joe" Burke is settling in to his new digs. And he trails the whiff of scandal into town with him... I am told he fired the whistle blower Kathy Reitzel because he wants to bring in "his own people," which was his defense when the State Attorney Dennis Ward tried to speak up in support of his star witness in the Acevedo conviction. And the idea that Superintendent Joe Burke wants his own financial staff in Monroe county is giving some people pause.

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Another whisper campaign has started suggesting Super Joe had his own scandal Up North. He worked in Dade County schools for 27 years and was superintendent in Springfield Massachusetts for seven and then came back to Florida to work for the Department of Education not least to secure his Florida pension.

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I perused masslive.com http://blog.masslive.com/breakingnews/2007/12/burke_out_of_picture_for_state.htmland and all I found were banal articles about Burke's tussles with a "Control Board" member who didn't seem to much like him. I will watch with interest how his people cope with the vicissitudes of life in the Fabulous Florida Keys, where being not well liked can have a very deleterious effect on one's career prospects when those people doing the offering are in a position to make offers that simply cannot be refused.