PCOC CONTINUES TO VIOLATE THE LAW

The Polk County Opportunity Council, the area's community action agency best known for providing the county's Head Start programme, voted to send a letter of admonishment to Executive Director Carolyn Speed, who has managed the agency during a series of financial fiascos.

PCOC's Tampa-based attorney Warren Hope Dawson refused to comment on what the letter would say, or if it includes any disciplinary measures for Ms. Speed.

According to this morning's Lakeland Ledger, the nearly packed auditorium was virtually empty when the unanimous vote was taken, because the PCOC board of directors retreated to a conference room to confer with Dawson and the agency's local attorney Bob Nogart...an action that was in apparant violation of Florida's Government In The Sunshine law. While there are allowances for attorney-client privilege in Florida Statutes, they do not apply to public boards, of while the PCOC Board of Directors is one.

These folks have dug themselves a huge hole over the past few years for mismanagement, malfeasance, and a general willingness to operate as they damn will please. I've been supportive of PCOC, and their programmes do good in the community. But there needs to be a wholesale change of the leadership there and a need to realize that they need to operate within the rules of law.