Two Daytona Beach Shores city commissioners have resigned as the latest in a wave of local elected officials leaving before Jan. 1, when they face more stringent financial disclosure requirements.
Mel Lindauer, a Shores commissioner since 2016, told The News-Journal on Wednesday the new requirement − submitting what’s known as Form 6 − is “totally invasive” and serves no purpose.
Commissioner Richard Bryan, who has also served since 2016, said in his Dec. 21 resignation letter that he had another priority but added the Form 6 issue “affected the timing” of his decision.
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Many state officials already file a Form 6, including the governor and Cabinet, legislators, county council members and sheriffs. The forms require disclosure of the filer’s net worth and holdings valued at more than $1,000, including bank accounts, stocks, retirement accounts, salary and dividends.
“What difference does it make if one elected official is worth $100,000 and the other is worth $10 million?” he asked. “That’s totally irrelevant.”
Because I trust someone worth $100k or less to have my interests at heart far more than someone worth $10M. Do these people really not get that?
People are sick and tired of being ruled by the wealthy. The truth is, city government pay is often so bad, it’s only the wealthy with large passive income that will go for it.
It also shows who’s accepting other money. If you’re worth $10m but entered office with a lot less, the office doesn’t pay enough for you to have earned all of that. You must have accepted
bribes“donations” to get there.Exactly this. Finance transparency should be a requirement for public officials. I honestly don’t care if my politician has a NW of 10 million. I do care if that’s tied to industries they are supposed to be regulating. I also care if they started out with nothing and became millionaires after joining politics.
That said, billionaires should be barred from ever interacting with politics. Congratulations, you won capitalism, now leave the rest of us alone.
City officials typically don’t take bribes, they’ll buy land after learning about a project, or select a company for a job that uses supplies from your company. One of the famous politicians in my area bought a bunch of land when a highway project was announced and made millions.
LOL. How in the world did this legislation get passed? In Florida, of all places.
Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Sanford, sponsored the legislation in the Florida Senate. Rep. Spencer Roach, R-North Fort Myers, sponsored the House version of the bill and said it brings “parity” among elected officials.
Also sponsored by Republicans, voted for by a state Congress with a Republican super majority, I’d love to know what the catch is, but it’s definitely a law that should be everywhere, public servants should always have transparency to prevent corruption and as the sponsor said “bring parity” to local elections.
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The law, for example, requires listing off every single asset you own that’s worth more than a thousand dollars. And punishment for errors is jailtime.
Absolutely obscene. Just thinking about my average apartment that would include 5 desktops, 2 phones, 2 tvs, couch, sundry jewelry, etc. Plus cars and other big ticket items. And I really don’t have a lot of stuff outside my computer hobby. I’m almost certainly missing quite a few things, as well.
I also see room for creative interpretation.
That laptop might have been worth more and $1K a few years ago, but is it still? Probably not, but does the law make that distinction?
Yes, depreciation is a pretty standard thing.
The law was written to specifically target city level officials (who are often Democrats) and includes jail time for any errors found during an audit.
The law specifically does not apply to state level officials (who are almost all Republican).
So it is an open question if depreciation is considered at all, because this law is not a Transparency Law, it’s a “Punish Democrats we don’t like with Jail” law.
Is that actually average in the US? I own not a single thing worth more than $1000 and I do have a job. I’m not trying to make a point or anything, just interesting to think how much people have.
Many computers are going to be more than $1k, especially when talking about laptops that aren’t shit hardware. Gaming desktops can easily move into the $3k tier now for high end systems, not even including other expensive components like gaming monitors which can be over $1k by themselves.
Then there’s large quality TVs and home theater projectors. While a large TV can be purchased for fairly cheap now, there’s a big difference in image quality and capability between a $500 TV and the $4k one sitting next to it even through they’re the same size. TV technology has a pretty wide range now, it’s no longer a simple question of resolution, size and maybe a couple simple panel categories like LCD or Plasma.
And for whatever reason flagship phones are in that range now as well. A new iPhone 15 Pro is $999, the 15 Pro Max is $1199. The Samsung Galaxy S23 and 23+ launched at the same price points. For the base capacity, without any upgrades.
That’s why I love my thriftiness! I have a gaming PC, not the nicest but it can run any modern games well enough at 1080p/60fps, it might be worth around 1000 but I’ve upgraded it slowly over years. I have no TV, I bike to work, I got my phone for 300 in 2019 and it still works great.
I looked into upgrading my phone recently, I can’t even find a phone that has better hardware that I would want for a reasonable price, the only major improvement would be the camera, all other stats on mine are just as good or better than comparable new phones.
I live in Florida too, just didn’t see what the catch was in this one instance, but I’ve been paying attention to the Monique Worrell fuckery that DeSantis pulled to get her out of office over her political affiliation. There’s been a whole lot of stupidly specific legislation to gain the Republicans meaningless or homophobic/racist political clout, my own in the closet state rep sponsored the anti-Drag show bill, while his wife hosts an event where pageant kids get sexualized. Overall the GOP are trying govern via legislation while doing all kinds of corrupt and inhumane shit like participating in sending migrants all over the country with our tax dollars, yet next election these idiots will keep them in office while they continue to not improve the state for anyone but the rich, white, and Christian.
The catch is that it applies to city officials, not state or national level. So, not to any of the Republicans who sponsored or supported it.
Nah. It already applies to everyone else - this is maybe just about limiting the pool of challengers.
From the Florida Government site :
Who Must File Form 6: All persons holding the following positions: Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Cabinet members, members of the Legislature, State Attorneys, Public Defenders, Clerks of Circuit Courts, Sheriffs, Tax Collectors, Property Appraisers, Supervisors of Elections, County Commissioners, elected Superintendents of Schools, members of District School Boards, Mayor and members of the Jacksonville City Council, Judges of Compensation Claims; the Duval County Superintendent of Schools, and members of the Florida Housing Finance Corporation Board, each expressway authority, transportation authority (except the Jacksonville Transportation Authority), bridge authority, toll authority, or expressway agency created pursuant to Chapter 348 or 343, F.S., or any other general law, and judges, as required by Canon 6, Code of Judicial Conduct.
I’m surprised too but it sounds like its working as intended!
I was about to say that finally something good is coming from the state. Got used to disappointing headlines.
Meanwhile in Norway every citizen can look up any other person’s tax returns. Income and fortune all neatly presented on a government website.
I just today learned that Finland does this as well. It took a while to consider, but it would help people to get paid fair wages, detect corruption, and to generally ensure people are more honest about their finances. Overall, it’s a very different approach to what it means to be in a society together.
I think this works much better in society with low inequality, or maybe for ones that got rid of most robbers, scammers, and fraudsters. But then again, maybe Finland and Norway are good in that regard and that’s great then.
And by ‘works much better’ you mean: there won’t be country-wide outrage, I assume? I think it’s actually meant to bring to light inequalities, awkward as it may be.
No, I meant less targeted robbing and burglary, and people that can rest peacefully knowing that they earn pretty much the same amount as their neighbour
Privacy is by and large the tool of the powerful to abuse power and privilege.
This swings both ways. Public information such as voting records, for example, were used to coerce, intimidate, and physically hurt innocent people in the past. I think it takes a mature culture/society to use public information responsibly and I don’t think we are there yet.
Then again, a ton of awful stuff happens in private already, so there needs to be a balance of some kind.
This sounded like a bad idea to me, but I can’t actually come up with a reason why, so maybe it’s not.
I can see why people would not like it from a privacy standpoint. It would never fly in America for everyone. For government officials? I like this one.
Had the exact same thought process.
The reason is it’s like a treasure map with multiple “x”-es for any burglar. While in the Nordics it’s not that much of a problem (though I did read once or twice stories of people who were repeatedly and uniquely targeted because they were somewhat richer than their neighbours and despite not showing off), in any country with a large, unsupported poor population and limited to none public trust…
It’s almost like places with honest and open financial records like that have policies that support less income equality and therefore less thieves exist there. What a concept.
I wouldn’t exactly say that, Nordic countries have extraordinarily high rates of theft/robbery/burglary compared to the rest of Europe despite the fact that most people report feeling more safe from said crimes. Usually rates of those kinds of crimes are mostly correlated with how “rich” a country is, for example most first-world western countries have pretty high rates of theft while the “poorer” eastern European countries have extremely low rates of theft (and certain other crimes like rape and assault) – it’s a pretty big culture shock to go to e.g. Tirana and see store owners just leaving €200 bottles of wine or jewelry or whatever on display outside the store without any containers, or women walking alone at night in secluded areas, because it’s so uncommon to get crimed that way.
I’m sure it has a lot to do with the post-communism and very high income equality in those countries, or maybe it’s because of extremely harsh punishment for said crimes under communism, but in the context of “richer” countries income equality seems not to be a big factor compared to how “privileged” or financially well-off the average person in the country is (in the context of the EU and America/Canada). But that’s just the culture you get when you center your economy around capitalism/corporatism for centuries and money is made the most important thing/the biggest measure of success.
Sauce for Nordic crime rates? This disagrees: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2023®ion=150
The link doesn’t show me what you intend for it to show for some reason (Edit: it may be lemmy or my app, it is inserting a “registered trademark” symbol in place of the string
reg). But here:Robbery (2003-2017) – https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/robery/Europe/ Notice robbery is higher in Western/Northern European countries, notably Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, compared to most Eastern European countries. Some outliers like Norway.
Larceny (“Theft”), Robbery, Rape, Assault (compiled from Eurostat 2018-2020) – https://www.eupedia.com/europe/crime_maps_of_europe.shtml for theft, robbery, and rape, western European countries lead by a long shot with an obvious extreme spike in Nordic countries. Burgalary is more of a mixed bag, with northern Europe and France/Belgium/Netherlands/Switzerland/Austria/northern Italy doing pretty god-awful, compared to just Slovenia/Croatia/Bosnia/Hungary doing poorly. Eastern European countries have much lower rates of assault than Germany, Italy, France (with the excetion of Hungary) but comparable to the rest of Europe. Homicide would seem more common in non-EU eastern/southern European countries + Romania&Bulgaria however.
Homicide (2021) – https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-europe-country/ this suggests eastern/western doesn’t have noticeable impact on murder, and most EU/associated countries form a relatively steady progression, with the exceptions of Finland, Albania, Montenegro, and the Baltics which are higher – with Sweden and France being the next highest of course.
The website you referenced also seems to give total crime overall (not specific crimes) to be mostly unrelated to geography in the relevant countries it has data for, with France, Belgium, and Sweden having the most. numbeo
Generally it seems like the statistics agree with me, although the amount of things that compare specifically theft between European countries is surprisingly little. And I’m mostly emphasizing theft since that has a clear correlation with highly capitalism-centric economies.
To clarify terminology, when I speak of “eastern Europe” I generally am referring to the UN Statistics geoscheme plus Croatia and Albania, in EU or EU association. I feel that is generally the best definition to work with and encompasses what most people think of “eastern Europeans” in this kind of context (but I’m sure some people think of eastern Europe as Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine, or the Baltics instead). And of course “northern Europe” is Scandinavia + Finland, “western Europe” is anything that lies east of Czechia + northern Europe (not the UK though). Slovenia is kind of impossible to label as one so I won’t argue for any categorization but most western Europeans would probably place it in “eastern” if they had to choose between that and “western” due to being post-communist & Slavic-language speaking.
Yeah you specifically stated that Nordic crime rates are higher than EU, which your own references prove to be completely false.
Because you see it from your personal point of view. Seeing it from a government perspective it’s public money and should be easily identified. Also if I remember correctly, in Norway you have to identify yourself to get access to the data.
Because it could potentially subject you to a planned robbery? That’s about it, although I think it definitely depends on the place too. Norway likely doesn’t have to worry about that issue.
I think it’s because tax forms also contain information that definitely should not be available to anyone who wants it. Employer information especially - anyone trying to escape from an abuser really doesn’t want that info widely available.
You don’t have to reveal everything on the form.
I’m in favor of transparency, but this sounds like it was designed to put democrats in prison.
It only applies to city officials, not county or state, (more likely to be democrats) and has stiff penalties for any errors discovered during an audit.
Every level of government should require this, IMO.
If folks want to resign over it, I get it, and that’s fine. You are meant to be replaced regularly anyway. Career politicians are more of a bug than a feature.
If you don’t want people to know your finances, you shouldn’t be a public servant. Power should include transparency.
There’s only one problem: Until it’s a requirement on every level it shouldn’t be one for single levels.
This law is not a tool for transparency, but a weapon for state politicians against local politicians disagreeing with them.
What we have here is a law in a majorily red state that does not apply for state officials (republicans) but does apply for local politicians (democrats in several big cities) that can punish minor infractions (please try to make a list of everything you own with the correct values that can withstand an audit by the state…) with jail time. Go figure…
Many state officials already file a Form 6, including the governor and Cabinet, legislators, county council members and sheriffs.
Thanks for the context, that certainly changes my view of it. Sounds like the usual “rules for thee, not for me” dick move.
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The one’s resigning are the people that shouldn’t be in office. It’s likely a great benefit to Florida that they’re gone.
Hmmm, 2016… Did something else happen around that time that may have emboldened certain people with certain idealogies to get into positions of power?
Corrupt Florida men and women fecking off from positions of power they shouldn’t deserve.
I might resign too. But in my case it would be because I didn’t want to quantify how little my life has amounted to.
People are afraid of others knowing how much money they make. Either out of pride or shame, or out of fear that something out of place may be discovered.
Some quick looking doesn’t reveal the political affiliations of either Lindauer or Bryan.
