Regier now in denial

Regier now in denial

By Palm Beach Post Editorial
Thursday, August 05, 2004

After a three-month state investigation found that Florida Department
of Children and Families Secretary Jerry Regier had partied with and,
on a separate occasion, spent the night at the beach home of someone
doing $2 million worth of business with DCF — "in contrast to the
Governor's Code of Ethics" — Mr. Regier apologized. Gov. Bush said Mr.
Regier's self-described "lapses in judgment" were not ethical lapses;
they only appeared to be. Mr. Regier has joined in the disingenuous
game of semantics.

The contrition Mr. Regier presented at a news conference upon release
of the inspector general's July 14 report had been replaced with
arrogance in a July 30 letter to DCF staff that falsely accused
newspapers of promoting "terrible distortions of the truth" about the
probe. "I want to state unequivocally," Mr. Regier wrote, "that I have
not done something wrong either with gifts or with contracting."

Although the governor's inspector general detailed Mr. Regier's
behavior and the favoritism two former DCF administrators cast toward
particular contractors, Mr. Regier wants his employees to believe that
the investigator — oh, what's the right word — mischaracterized?
"Other than the 'gift of hospitality' mentioned in the inspector
general report, which I had paid for but they deemed otherwise," Mr.
Regier wrote, "I have always done exactly as the ethics rules and
ethics training instructs us, and that is to pay my own way." DCF's
own policy, like the governor's ethics code, states that gifts,
regardless of value, are prohibited from those doing business with the
agency. It's a matter of acceptance, not reimbursement.

The inspector general's report revealed that senior DCF administrators
engaged in inappropriate social relationships with contractors and
circumvented state purchasing requirements to funnel contracts to
insiders. At least three former state child-welfare administrators
have snagged multimillion-dollar DCF contracts without bids. In
December, according to The Miami Herald, DCF officials agreed to pay
Mercer Human Resource Consulting more than double the amount of its
contract, despite poor performance. A former deputy assistant
secretary for the state's child-welfare agency is a senior consultant
for Mercer. Statements about those ethical violations are not
"innuendo" or "attacks on our agency," as Mr. Regier claimed in his
letter.

Mr. Regier concluded that he is "making it my policy to have no
contact with lobbyists or vendors until the issues of payment and
appearance are clarified." The better response would be to make such a
no-contact policy permanent.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/opinion...edit_0805.html
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