The Pembroke Pines city commissioners are debating whether to hire an internal auditor. In these cash-strapped times, they’re looking for someone who will monitor the Broward suburb’s spending habits and report on them truthfully, without feeling beholden to the city manager.Not surprisingly, City Manager Charlie Dodge isn’t keen on the…
They all hate taxes, so why can’t all tea partiers love one another? This week has revealed divisions within the tea party activist community of South Florida, and in Central Florida the infighting has spilled into the courts, where an Orlando radio host is being accused of “hijacking” the tea…
Sweatpants aren’t just comfortable exercise attire. They’re also a subtle way of telling the world you’ve just. Stopped. Trying. In the video above, it’s hard to tell whether Gov. Charlie Crist has reached that point in his senatorial campaign — or if he really is on the way to a…
Karin Hoffman of Coral Springs (that’s her in the video below) says that no matter what you’ve read on this blog — or in the national media — she absolutely is a member of the tea party movement. And the meeting that Hoffman and her allies recently had with Republican…
Any time public money goes missing in Broward County, we’re conditioned to reach for our tomatoes and wait for a public official to do a perp walk. But Deerfield Beach interim city manager Burgess Hanson is trying to dampen that speculation in the weeks following an internal investigation into how…
Karin Hoffman of Coral Springs: Consider yourself warned. The real South Florida Tea Party is on to you. Her group is called DC Works for Us, but in media reports, Hoffman has been identified as a “tea party leader.” So this week, when Hoffman’s group landed a meeting with Republican…
Technically, Burgess Hanson is merely the “interim” city manager of Deerfield Beach. But only five weeks after he was given that title, he has managed to perform a feat that has eluded every other city manager in recent memory: Every commissioner thinks he’s doing a great job.Which is surreal. At…
He was a star first baseman for the World Series champion Mets and a central character in one of the best Seinfeld episodes ever. But who knew that Keith Hernandez was also a paying subscriber to the right-wing rhetoric of our local congressional candidate, Col. Allen West?In the last fundraiser…
You’d think an anti-hate group would show some love for people of a different race and religion. But this is the Orwellian irony of Americans Against Hate, which just announced that it will stage a demonstration outside the Broward County Convention Center, where the Council on American-Islamic Relations is having…
Jack Seiler is having it out with Chaz Stevens after the mayor found the blogger in his law firm’s parking lot Sunday morning. Seiler chased Stevens off his property and said he called the cops to investigate, starting an exchange of heated words today from both of them.It began last…
Col. Allen West, candidate for Congress in Ron Klein’s coastal South Florida district, has another YouTube clip for his trophy case. This one comes from last month’s “Reclaim American Liberty” conference in New York City. West gave a blunt answer to a question about why Islamic jihadists hate us nice…
No gliding into office for Dennis Beach. In just the second month since he was hired, the Pompano Beach city manager has a started a wrestling match with one of South Florida’s political behemoths: the Broward Sheriff’s Office, which is desperate to hold on to its $38.5 million contract to…
Your local congressional candidate Allen West is Fox News’ go-to guy on the treatment of suspected terrorists. He’s outraged that we read them their Miranda rights — just like Sen. George LeMieux is. That damned liberal Barack Obama isn’t as “tough on terror” as a true Republican like George W…
Among the cast of hundreds who attended last night’s standing-room-only meeting of the Pompano Beach Commission were several leaders of a neighboring city that has a Broward Sheriff’s Office contract coming up for renewal this year: Deerfield Beach.City commissioners Marty Popelsky, Joe Miller and Bill Ganz were all in the…
It’s nice to see a Broward-born politician like Sen. George LeMieux keeping a vigilant eye for conflicts of interest, even though we’re not technically sure he’s right — nor that he’s remotely qualified to be an arbiter of such things. A few months ago, LeMieux boldly challenged the chairman of…
According to Deerfield Beach City Attorney Andy Maurodis, the Westside Deerfield Businessmen Association has provided the city with records that purport to show how the association spent the federal dollars distributed to it through a home rehabilitation program.Earlier today, we reported that WDBA funds are the subject of an internal…
Is there anyone in Indianapolis who actually believes that the mayor and 20 of his advisers are flying down to South Florida to research the “logistics” of hosting a Super Bowl, as he claims in the video above? Reality check: If you manage to escape a landlocked, snow-strangled city like…
We were hopeful that Hollywood’s new development czar was a political outsider, but we weren’t sure until now. Tanja Gerhartz has no friends or family in South Florida. She had never been to Hollywood until she came down from New Smyrna Beach for an interview. And she has never heard…
In a move that could spell trouble for longtime Broward politician Sylvia Poitier, Deerfield Beach is conducting an internal investigation to determine how a nonprofit run by the vice mayor’s relatives spent federal housing dollars. As the city’s registered Community Housing Development Organization, the Westside Deerfield Business Association is entrusted…
The city of Hollywood has named a former Orlando official to lead its Community Redevelopment Agency. Tanja Gerhartz previously worked as the economic development director in Orlando. More recently, she had her own private consulting firm. If that means she’s new to the South Florida political scene — and to…
For gays serving in the U.S. military the fear of exposure exists at every level of the chain of command. Just ask Dr. Alan Steinman. In the early Nineties, Steinman served the four final years of a 25-year career as a rear admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard as its…
This is embarrassing. On a day when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates came to Capitol Hill to dramatically announce his department’s plan to ditch the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, Florida Sen. George LeMieux used his time at the mic to push an unrelated and absurd political agenda. Let’s roll…
