Government at its Worst

I'm what you would call a left wing person.  By that, I mean a number of things, including that I recognize the value of government, and that it acts in the public interest to do things that should be done and that the private sector won't do.

But I certainly know right wing people, and I understand why they see it differently than I do.  Of course, to support their view, they generally have to dismiss whatever government does that's of value, and focus only on the problems-- and there most certainly are problems-- created by government.  Generally speaking, right wingers blame government for being inefficient, taking money it doesn't spend in the public interest, imposing regulations and restrictions that are much more onerous than they are valuable, and functioning essentially as a force for its own purposes.  They view government as self-sustaining, and disconnected from the interests of the public, who are supposedly the constituents of the government.  I don't entirely disagree with right wingers, but I think they fail to credit government when it does good, and they exaggerate what government does bad.

We have a problem here in Biscayne Park, and we've had this problem for over 2 1/2 years.  We now have a government that has worked concertedly to disconnect itself from its constituents, marginalizing them as much as possible.  Our government has come to exist for its own purposes, which appear to rest mainly on arrogating power and control to itself, and excluding as much as possible anyone who is not part of the government, and especially anyone who criticizes the government.  Our government corrupts all the functions of public administration, in part rendering itself a weapon to punish complainers, or even people those who govern simply don't like.

Yesterday, I received an expose of our government's corruption of what is normally the Village's legal representation.  The document was long.  It was 81 pages.  There were two main offerings in this communication.  One was a list of all legal contacts between Biscayne Park residents (the vast majority from Commissioners) and administrative staff, and the Village's legal representation, and the other was a synthesis of what were interpreted as problems with the seeking of legal input, and the use of that input, and the value of that input.

There were a few interpretations of (complaints about) this bill.  There was the concern about double and triple billing (the fact that the Village has been billed for the simultaneous services of two or three attorneys, when we were told at the outset of this contract that we would be billed only for one attorney at a time).  There was also note of vague descriptions of services, like that calls and conference calls focused on "various legal matters."  There were entries like that, although they were not most common.  And of course ("the proof of the pudding...," as they say) that too often, the results of this consulting was wrong legal advice.  But for me, there were broader issues.

The most glaring revelation was the breathtaking extent of contact between Villagers (the vast majority of it was Tracy Truppman and Krishan Manners) and the Village's legal representation.  It is beyond unprecendented.  For example, it has been common for probably many years now that the Village budget includes about $75K per year for legal services.  That comes out to about $6500 per month.  Last year, our long time Village attorney stopped representing us, and we had to find someone else.  The new attorney intended to charge us about the same amount, but his charges appear to be roughly between about $5400 and $10,000 per month.  But Tracy Truppman didn't like this attorney, apparently because he disagreed with her about two legal matters, and she found someone else.  In contrast to monthly bills of $6500, or $5400-$10K (curiously, Tracy's new girls somehow charged us an additional $8000 the same month their predecessor charged us $10K), the bill for last month (July, 2019) was about $21,000.  The bill for June, 2019, was about $12,600.

And way too many of the contacts were between the lawyers and Tracy Truppman.  That doesn't happen, and it isn't supposed to happen, in a normal government that relies centrally on a manager.  It has certainly never happened before, not in Biscayne Park.  We've had professional management since 2006, and we relied on Commissioners before that.  But no one ever relied like this on such frequent (sometimes, it almost seemed constant) contact with the Village attorney.  And we never had bills like this.

It would be entirely fair to note that during the past couple of years, we have had a special legal problem, and that has been our attempt to get reimbursement from FEMA for the costs of clean-up after hurricane Irma.  And we can set aside whether or not we would have had this problem, if Tracy Truppman had not single-handedly commandeered the project, and botched it.  The fact is, we needed extra legal help, and that fact is reflected in the bills.  But that's not what the entries say were the topics of consultation.  In fact, apart from the glaring problem of massive legal billing, the other glaring problem is that no one knows what were the topics of consultation.  Even to the extent that they are often enough summarized, in terms of subject, neither Tracy, Krishan, nor the attorney ever presented to the Village a discussion of what information and insights were sought, and what was learned.  For this much money, yeah, I want to know.

Take, for example, a succession of entries on June 4 and 5 of this year, and starting on the 3rd, and bleeding over into the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th.  There are 47 separate entries for this one week.  The attorney for all but seven of these entries was Rebecca Rodriguez, who is supposed to be our lead attorney.  Entries represented as little as 1/10 of an hour, and as much as 4.1 hours.  And that 4.1 hour entry is interesting.  It occurred on June 4, and it was the entry for being present at the regular Commission meeting.  No one could argue with that, unless they wanted to argue with a 4.1 hour Commission meeting at which typically nothing of substance gets accomplished.  But let's assume we're not arguing about that.  What's odd is that that same day, there were 1.7 hours spent on "Several communications with [unspecified] outside counsel" regarding a few matters, 0.3 hours paying "attention to proposed agenda items," a half hour "telephone conference [with?]" regarding another agenda item, and 3.9 hours for "continued preparation for June regular Commission meeting."  That's 10.5 hours in one day, and at least nine of them were all about one Commission meeting.  At $225 per hour, that's at least $2025 spent on one day for one meeting.  And the lead-up to this meeting, on June 3, included entries like 3.1 hours spent in "in-person meeting with Village Mayor regarding various pending Village legal matters and preparation for upcoming Village proceedings."  What "upcoming Village proceedings?"  The meeting the next day, for which another 9-10.5 hours would be billed?  And then, there was the debriefing for this meeting, which consumed up to another 4.6 hours the day after the meeting.  The largest entry on June 5 was 2.2 hours with an attorney other than Rebecca Rodriguez, and which was a "telephone conference with Mayor Truppman regarding Commission meeting recap" and a few other topics.

Entries from June 6 were interesting for a few reasons.  One was that they seem only part of the ongoing pattern of seemingly continuous consultation between people in BP and the firm who are supposed to be the Village's (not Tracy Truppman's) attorneys.  Another was a "call with Police Chief regarding various ongoing Village legal matters."  Really?  The Police Chief doesn't discuss these matters with the Manager, who then calls the Village attorney?  And then, there's the matter of the ongoing battle the current Commission is waging against Biscayne Park residents.  2.1 hours were spent by Rebecca Rodriguez doing "Research and drafting of request to Attorney General's office for advisory legal opinion as to Commission authority for taking a vote of no confidence to initiate removal of current mayor; e-mails to/from Vice Mayor D. Samaria regarding same."  This is not the only example of Tracy Truppman's using what is supposed to be the Village's attorney for her own protection.  And they're not all about Dan Samaria, either.  Tracy has identified her enemies, and the attorneys know who they are.  And they work, on our nickel, to protect Tracy from...us.

The bill for April, by the way, was about $14K, and the bill for March was about $15.5K.  But the April bill also included extra charges for the FEMA appeal, so the total really came to about $23.3K for that month.

As I said, it's a long document, and I could go on about it, citing example after example.  But that wasn't my point.  My point was that if we think of the complaints right wingers have of government, and if we imagine a government that is a caricature of what right wingers don't like-- the worst nightmare any right winger could have of government; a nightmare so bad that even left wingers would be aghast at it-- that is what now sits at the Biscayne Park Commission desk.  And it sits at the center of that desk, in the mayor's seat.  We have a government that does absolutely nothing in the public interest, that squanders what for this municipality is a scarce fiscal resource, that is insular, and acts only in its own interest, and that uses its power to attack the populace, which the government sees as its enemy.  This is the populace that had enough confidence in this government to elect it, and that pays these people.  And this is what we get.