Abuse of the Recall

After the recall petition surrounding the Election Building died, a second recall petition, again aimed at Executive Don Townsend, was started. This time, the subject was an alleged misuse of ARPA funds, specifically the purchase of office furniture. Guidance on this can be found from the Treasury Department through an FAQ PDF file online (https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/SLFRF-Final-Rule-FAQ.pdf Section 3.2). Office furniture would seem to clearly be an approved item.

The second recall petition has subsequently failed.

There seems to be a fairly small group of Dade voters, along with someone not registered to vote in Dade at all, who have a significant axe to grind against Executive Don Townsend. As Townsend is a Republican official, it would be easy for our Committee to simply stand by and say nothing about these efforts. But much of local politics really has nothing to do with partisan politics. It's just about good governance, or it should be. A person could be against the Election building or the use of ARPA money, and have good intentions at heart. But there are a couple of reasons to suspect that the recall petition feature is being abused:

1) Bad Faith Reasoning: In the case of the Election building, the only thing Townsend had done at the point of the recall being initiated was publicly announce the bids. Anger about the recall was ginned up because the bids were all around $3 million. But the Commission hadn't acted on any of the bids; they had just made them public.

Don Townsend didn't start the election building project. That had been going on for years. He didn't start the bidding process. That was initiated while Ted Rumley was still Executive.

You can't recall someone for things that happened before they were in office. Likewise, all ARPA funding requests had to be made before midnight on December 31st of last year. Don Townsend wasn't the Executive then either; again, it was Ted Rumley. So even if certain spending requests weren't appropriate, they weren't made by Don Townsend.

2) Exclusion of the Other Commissioners: The entire Board of Commissioners was involved in the election building process. It wasn't just Don Townsend. Why didn't any of the other Commissioners have recall petitions filed against them?. Even as the Executive, when it comes to voting, Don Townsend is just one of five votes. The Board approved the building project. Commissioner Hartline pushed for the addition of a basement, which ended up pushing the price of the bids up an additional $1 million. If the cost was so outrageous, shouldn't an attempted recall have been made on him as well?

It's possible that both the chief petitioners weren't fully aware of all the facts involved in these cases. But you need to be fully aware of those facts before starting something like a recall petition. That doesn't seem to have happened in either case.