June 22, 2016 – Palm Beach Post
by Eliot Kleinberg
The Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach County, if inadvertently, violated Florida’s public meetings and records laws in the handing out of grants for a beautification program, the county’s Inspector General said in a report issued Wednesday.
The report said a committee set up to award the grants did its work in private and didn’t take minutes.
According to the report, a committee formed to hand out $500,000 in grants for the Authority’s “blighted and distressed property clean-up and beautification grant program” met Jan. 13. It marked the first time the authority had awarded money to other governments under the beautification project.
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The report said that “the process of evaluating, ranking, scoring, and short-listing the grant applications did not occur at a publicly noticed meeting of either the Grant Committee or the SWA Board.”
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“I’m pleased with the IG’s conclusion,” Barbara Petersen, president of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, a Tallahassee nonprofit open-government advocacy group supported by newspapers and broadcasters, said Wednesday in an email. “The grant committee is clearly subject to Florida’s open government laws.” [READ MORE]