North
Florida Broadband Authority:
Secrecy and a lawyer's spread sheet
It's business as usual at the NFBA
Posted August 22, 2012 02:35 pm | Part XXII
The NFBA management gives up nothing to its member
municipalities and blatantly ignores Fla. public
records laws.
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Lake City, FL – The North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) has been racked with insider dealing, conflicts of interest, allegations of waste, fraud, abuse; massive procurement irregularities, incompetence, outrageous salaries, background and credit history cover-ups, including a cover-up by the Feds of an investigation by the Office of the Investigator General of the Department of Commerce. The NFBA is over a year behind schedule. After spending over $23,000,000 of the $30,000,000 of Obama stimulus money, the NFBA has, at the most, a handful of people using its continually redesigned wireless broadband network and has squandered millions.
Covered in part XXI of the series was the now bankrupt Mainstreet Broadband. Mainstreet was already in the process of being shut down by the Feds as the NFBA prepared for its August 1st meeting. No one with whom the Observer has spoken believes that the insiders at the NFBA did not know that the bell had tolled for Mainstreet.
The NFBA: Keeping secrets or playing dumb?
The event relayed to the Observer regarding a visit to NFBA headquarters by a Mainstreet customer at about 11 am on the morning that the rest of the world already knew of Mainstreet's demise crystallizes the most recent business practices of the NFBA.
On August 2nd, William Elwood, Chief Petty Officer USNR retired, reached out to the Observer. Mr. Elwood was concerned about his internet service and the NFBA's business partner, Mainstreet Broadband.
Mr. Elwood told the Observer that at about 11 am on August 2nd, after visiting the locked up office of Mainstreet in Lake City, he drove to the NFBA offices to find out what was going on.
Mr. Elwood said, "I had learned from the Observer that the NFBA and Mainstreet were business partners. When I walked into the offices only one person who was there was an attractive secretary. Then someone walked out of a back office and introduced himself as Pat O'Neal, Vice Chairman of the NFBA. I told him Mainstreet had gone out of business and I was wondering if he could help me. He told me, "'I don't know anything about that.'"
NFBA needs $9,227,000 – Instead they get a "lawyer's spread sheet"
Attorney Jennifer Springfield presented a "lawyer's
spreadsheet" to the board.
By February of 2013, the North Florida Broadband Authority needs to come up with $9,227,000 of in kind assets.
Beginning in 2010, the NFBA has been paying FSU's Jeff Hendry through a contract with the NFEDP (North Florida Economic Development Partnership) approximately $10,000 a month for community outreach to identify and sign up anchor institutions and in-kind assets.
An in-kind asset is something of value that can be given to the project by one of the NFBA member counties or cities instead of money. In the case of the NFBA, this has been generally tower space and land for future tower space.
It appears that the valuations on these properties may be problematic.
NFBA project manager, Donny Lort, explained that the federal government valued those assets.
Washington Attorney Cynthia Schultz at the Aug. 1
meeting. The NFBA management refused to explain Ms.
Schultz's job or who she is working for.
Recently, consultant to the NFBA, Cynthia Schultz, the $500+ per hour Washington attorney of Patton Boggs and the Schultz Group, one of the authors of the Obama grant, had determined that an in-kind asset includes monetary reimbursement for the time that NFBA board members spend attending the NFBA Board meetings. This means a board member, such as a county manager, city manager, or county commissioner, an individual who is being paid by its municipality to watch over the NFBA expenditures of the Obama free money, which is being spent on equipment and contractors that are supposed to benefit their communities, are now having a monetary value put on their time and that value is being contributed to the project as an in-kind donation.
Some folks think this is double dipping.
How much money has been claimed for board member time?
This has been kept top secret by the General Manager, Richelle Sucara, and the Board's General Council, Jennifer Springfield. Together, they have locked down the numbers and refused to comply with Florida's public records laws and turn over that and other information, which the Observer has requested numerous times.
In-kind asset contributions: how much?
In the past two and a half years how many and which in-kind assets have been contributed by the members of the NFBA, the recipients of the $30,000,000 of free Obama money?
Again, this is being kept top secret by General Manager Sucara, General Council Springfield, and Board Chairman and the newly elected Tax Collector of Gilchrist County, Tommy Langford.
The American people, the source of the Obama money funding this project, have spent well over a million dollars on accounting and grant compliance fees since the awarding of the grant.
For those who have been the recipients of this money, spread sheets are their business.
Richelle Sucara is an accountant and was certified in Indiana over 20 years ago. She never received her certification in Florida, but that is carefully hidden on her resume, as City Manager Wendell Johnson found out in October of 2011. One would presume Ms. Sucara knows how to produce a spread sheet. (You can also read about Ms. Sucara here).
The present accounting firm, Purvis Gray, has produced spread sheets for the NFBA in the past.
The well connected Washington lawyer/compliance officer, Cynthia Schultz, clearly knows how to produce a spreadsheet.
With all this talent in the room, NFBA General Council, Jennifer Springfield, stood up at the August 1st NFBA Board meeting and handed the Board what she called a "lawyer's spread sheet" without any dollar amounts and which by the time February 2013 rolls around has to add up to $9 million plus.
Not one NFBA member, the local stewards of the American people's money, asked for a total. If the NFBA comes up short, it is the member communities of the of the Authority that must make up the difference in cash, although some Obama watchers are thinking that they will get a free pass, also.
It's business as usual at the NFBA.