Key West City Commissioner Sam Kaufman joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on in the city.
Yesterday was the Key West City Commission’s special meeting that discussed the grand jury report from the investigations of the former Key West City Attorney Ron Ramsingh, the former Chief Building Officer Raj Ramsignh and former City Code Compliance Director James Young.
The report talked about “a pervasive culture of negligence, nepotism, manipulation and abdication of duty at the highest levels of city leadership.”
All three of the aforementioned officials have been terminated and no longer work for the city.
The title of the report is “Unbuilding Trust: the Grand Jury’s Findings on Abuse of Power in Paradise” and it was released in May.
Kaufman said, “I would say, overall, the public want an honest government. They want an ethical government. I would say, we all need that and unfortunately, some of my colleagues are a little slower to accepting and really promoting what needs to be done. Some people in City Hall are still part of the problem when we have a majority of the commission pay the former city attorney over $220,000 as a payout after committing multiple felonies. Also, we learned yesterday that the former city building official Raj Ramsingh is still technically a city employee. How could that be after two and a half months of after the indictment? I’m definitely with the majority of the people who want to see good government, and really addressing head on the unethical and other misconduct in City Hall.”
The meeting started off a little rough.
Kaufman said, “It was unnecessarily contentious. There’s no reason for the mayor to say that the public can speak at the end of the meeting. That’s first of all, not the norm. The norm for public meetings at any government meeting is for the public to speak first, especially under these circumstances. You see in the grand jury report, for those reading it, you see that the grand jury and the part of the problem is the quelling of public input and public participation. So what I said at the beginning of the meeting was we need to have the public discussion at the beginning of the meeting and not three hours after the City Commission addresses things that after three hours at eight o’clock at night, you’re going to lose people who have families at home and other obligations, and they’re not going to sit there for three hours. That’s why public comment is always at the beginning, but the mayor decided that she wanted the public comment at the end, and as you may see, if you look at the video of the meeting, very few people stayed to the end, and very few people spoke, and that was maybe by design, and that’s why people were very upset, and especially now when there’s this public scrutiny and when the grand jury and everyone who’s watching is expecting us to do the right thing, that was just not the right way to start that meeting, in my opinion, and I think that that’s why so many people in the meeting were really outraged at the beginning, because of that.”
Has enough been done in City Hall as a reaction to the report?
Kaufman said, “Overall any objective view of this meeting, I spent a lot of time preparing for the meeting. I did a lot of research, and I was prepared on each point, and quite frankly, most other members of the commission remained silent on just about every number of those 27 items. There was very little input from commissioners, with the exception of Commissioner Haskell and so that that makes me wonder why? Then there were certain things, in situations like this, where one might wonder, is this just paying lip service to this process and saying, yes, we’ll do this. Yes, we’ll do this. But I think members of the public really need to continue to come to these meetings and really hold elected officials accountable to implement these policy changes. Are they perfect? Are they going to 100% guarantee that there’s no more corruption in City Hall? No. What will help is public participation and the public scrutinizing what the elected officials do and continue to come to meetings and continue to put the pressure on and make sure that public officials do the right thing. That’s my view. The mayor was simply reading management’s responses. That’s all that was, and that was verbatim and from a document that was attached to the agenda. I don’t know to what extent the mayor worked with management on that response, but many of those responses, in the core of them, were not well developed, in my opinion, and that’s why you heard me and at times Commissioner Haskell really trying to delve into these things, because this was the purpose of that meeting to right the ship, if you will.”
Where do things stand with the three former city staff members who were fired over this?
Kaufman said, “All three are under indictments from the State Attorney’s Office. Presumably, there are continuing investigations by the federal and possibly the state government, but as far as the former city attorney Ron Ramsingh, as incredible as it sounds, the City Commission decided to pay him $221,000 and terminated him without cause. I strongly advocated to terminate him with cause, not to give him the golden parachute extra, I think it was $120,000 or whatever it was, and my colleagues felt that that was appropriate. I don’t know under what thought process, because many don’t really articulate the reasons, but keep in mind, and this was brought up last night, keep in mind that this fallout from all of this, the expenses that will be incurred by the city could be in the millions of dollars, just the expenses to do the auditing of all the fraudulent permits that were covered up by Mr. Ramsingh and his brother. That is going to cost quite a bit of money, the lawsuits that will come from this, they’re already starting to come in, the remedies for the properties that may have public safety concerns because of illegitimate permitting processes, and the list goes on. So how that $221,000 was paid out to Mr. Ron Ramsingh, I don’t understand the justification. But that being said, last night, it came out that, perhaps we need to look at recouping some of that money, either through the criminal cases, or through independent lawsuits.”
Will any of them receive pensions?
Kaufman said, “The way that was explained yesterday, and that’s not an area of expertise of mine, that was explained to us by our HR director, that upon conviction of felonies that are, I think, related to their employment, that they would potentially lose their pension. I believe the Florida Commission on Ethics make those kind of determinations. That’s a state agency appointed by the governor, and they’re located in Tallahassee, and that would probably be a year from now, two years from now, when all of the criminal cases ultimately are resolved. I would think it would take that that long.”
Is it too late to put something in place to potentially insulate the city from possible repercussions of the termination of Al Childress?
Kaufman said, “Remember that this all started when there was that decision by these public officials to conspire to fire Mr. Childress without any reason other than to protect their own wrongdoing, and that’s become clear from the grand jury report and the indictments. But one thing that is interesting and of note is the Corradino Report still which, by the way, the Corradino Report outlined some of the misconduct that Mr. Raj Ramsingh, the former city building official was doing. It even mentioned specific properties that are of the highest concern and it made recommendations, the first draft of which was available to the City Commission 14 months ago, April of 2024, and that that report still has not been addressed by the City Commission on a City Commission agenda. What does that tell you? Part of my frustration is that from June of 2024, until these indictments were made known, I had been trying, diligently in every capacity, to get that Corradino Report on a City Commission agenda, and I was blocked every which way by two city managers, by four different outside council. So that needs to be addressed. The Corradino Report needs to be on a City Commission agenda, and I will be pursuing that for sure in short order. But about the whistleblower ordinance there, I think there have been, seven or eight resignations of city employees in the last few months that are of great concern, and there’s great concern of retaliation, of people who have given testimony to the State Attorney’s Office, doing the right thing, telling the truth, caring about the city, and it’s just plain wrong, and we have to do everything that we can to protect and support our employees who are doing the right thing and city employee morale, it used to be a top priority of the city manager, especially Patty McLaughlin, I mentioned it last night, that was her top, top priority during her tenure as city manager. And where are we on on employee morale? It’s got to be really low right now, and so we need to make sure, first and foremost, that our employees are protected, that there’s a safe place for them to go when they need to report wrongdoing, and that there can be a fair and just process. I’ve seen a number of resignation letters, exit interviews of late, of recent employees who’ve left the city and I encourage your listeners to read every one of these resignation letters and exit interviews. They detail continuing problems, not since just the grand jury report, but continuing problems within management in City Hall. We have to get to the bottom of this, and we have to get back to proper management and supporting our employees so we can do the business for the people of Key West and get things, right? In my view, we’re still a long ways from getting back to good government.”
Last night Kaufman said because he has been outspoken, he may have been singled out as a result.
He said, “Look, there’s many reasons why very, very capable people do not want to put their name forward to run for public office and be elected officials. It’s not an easy job, and this is not an easy process. In 10 years, I’ve been involved with a lot of things that have been very difficult. I was a commissioner during the COVID years, very difficult times. I was a commissioner throughout Hurricane Irma. That was a very difficult time. During the cruise ship referenda and all the fallout with that, very difficult situations. But in the last year since June 26 of 2024, when Mr. Childress was terminated wrongfully, in my view, it’s been very difficult. I’ve had a number of things that make me wonder why am I doing this? It’s certainly not for the pay. The number of hours that we put in, at least, I put in, I can’t speak for anybody else. I recently had the discussion with a friend of mine, who’s the mayor of South Miami, who’s undertaking quite a process with challenging the governor with respect to the immigration policies. He’s a great, great man, and we had a good discussion about this. Before Raj Ramsingh the CBO, the city building official. He was recommended to myself and my wife to do some work on our property and from all appearances, he was a good candidate. We hired him to work on our property, and he extended a deck. It was very simple work. It wasn’t complicated, nothing structural, just extended a deck about 25 feet, maybe, he added a little bit onto a fence, and he removed a shed. That’s really it. Then, obviously everything took place. He later became the CBO, and apparently, like many other projects Mr. Ramsingh was working on, he did not complete the permits correctly. That’s unbeknownst to myself and my wife and that’s going to be occurring to many people, because all of these permits now are going to be scrutinized and I support that, and I’ve been promoting that for over a year now. So then, very interestingly, I received a phone call from the city manager’s office, multiple calls from the building department, the building department director, and they said, this was two days ago, they said they have to inspect my house, and it has to be done right away. So I said, okay, we’ll do it. So I met them yesterday, the day of the meeting, and on the same day of the meeting, the city manager and management publish a letter stating that my wife and I are out of compliance because of these permits that Mr. Raj Ramsingh didn’t do properly. The reason I think it’s important is the fourth item on the grand jury report recommendation says what needs to be expedited is a review of Jim Young’s property at 902 Thomas Street, and it came out yesterday that that had not been done. So there were three properties only in the whole city that have been prioritized, remember these indictments came out two and a half months ago. One is Raj Ramsingh’s house. One is prominently written about in the Corradino Report and the third one is my house. My house yesterday it was published, and I believe it was an attempt to spin or somehow impeach my credibility, something like that. I don’t understand why, and that’s what I brought up yesterday, why would my house, of all the hundreds of properties, be in the top three priority and to be published on the same day as the city commission meeting, and before Jim Young’s house. I’m telling you that from the perspective of the person, myself, trying to address this corruption for the last year, and continuing and being the most outspoken at City Commission meetings and addressing head on the problems in the Human Resources Department, the problems with procurement, the problems with our finances, the problems with management, and then the manager, who, by the way, didn’t have the courtesy to tell me he was doing this. We will take full responsibility for correcting any permits that Mr. Ramsingh didn’t complete, of course, but this shows the priorities of management at this time.”
What is the next step with the grand jury report?
Kaufman said, “We need to hold management and the city attorney’s office accountable and continue to watch them and continue to follow up. But there are some things that need to be brought to the City Commission on July 22 which is our next meeting for budget review, because there are some items, such as creating a compliance officer to review regulations and implement some of these ethical guardrails. So we will be hearing some of this, I’m sure, July 22 and 23rd during budget workshop. But the bulk of these items, we would expect to be presented at the next regular City Commission meeting, which is August, 6, and so we’ll see. There wasn’t a lot of comments made by my fellow commissioners. So actions speak louder than words. It’s easy to sit there during a meeting and say, yes, yes, yes, we’re going to do all these things, but when the votes take place, we need to be there and ensure that the City Commission know what the public is expecting.”
Another meeting is coming up and this one is about ICE 287(g) program.
Kaufman said, “My first nine years, we never had public records requests, subpoenas, indictments, all these things, right? And we also never really had special meetings. We didn’t have the need for all of this. Things were things were organized in a methodical way and in ways that work consistent with common sense. So here we are, within the span of a week, we’re having two special meetings. We have another by the way. We have another special meeting scheduled in July. We have a water quality special meeting next month as well, which, this is very unusual times, but Commissioner Donie Lee, and I started this, but we called this meeting on Monday, June 30, it’s five o’clock at City Hall, and very, very happy to tell you and your listeners that we have over 160 local businesses that are in support of a community statement from myself and a coalition of business owners and clergy and local citizens, 160 businesses have signed on to this community statement. We have over 500 citizens who’ve signed on to it. The concern is that, I mean, most people know, I think, because of the news that the concern about the immigration enforcement, and we’re not talking about people who are undocumented, we’re talking about people who have documentation. They’re either here with a green card, which it means they have residency status in the United States, they have visas, or they have work authorizations, they have asylum claims, or whatever the legal process is, and the focus really is on the rule of law, due process and just respecting human beings here, and what we’re hearing from business owners, I’m hearing from accountants who have their clients who are business owners, are just at their wit’s end, because they’re having their employees physically removed from Key West with valid work authorization. Then they’re taken to Jacksonville, or they’re taken to Miami or wherever. Then they have to bond them out, which costs them $5,000 or $6,000, that’s the typical bond and they have to hire immigration lawyers, and then they come back, if they can do it. It’s a great disruption to our local economy, especially as you can imagine in the construction business, landscaping, hospitality areas. It seems really unfair and not right. So that being said, we are going to address how the city of Key West entered into an agreement in March, unbeknownst to the City Commission in March, with an agreement with the federal government, which it’s a program where some selected officers with the Key West Police Department become basically deputized and can carry out some of the functions of ICE agents for the Department of Homeland Security. I just want to encourage everybody to continue to be vigilant and monitor the situation. Come to meetings, reach out to your commissioners, reach out to me with any questions. I’m happy to speak with anybody, always responding to emails and phone calls, so we need to make sure that city government is doing the right thing.”