Cronyism at work
To the editor:
Town hall’s refusal to enforce our town’s sign law is an example of political cronyism at its worst.
The head of the town’s code enforcement office is failing to enforce the sign law on the island’s biggest and most successful businesses. Some of those businesses are campaign contributors, friends and big supporters of the current Council. They have been allowed to go on thumbing their noses at the law while smaller businesses have spent the money to obey the law and come into compliance.
How does this happen? Simple. We have a bureaucracy at Town Hall that is scared to death of losing their jobs or at the least angering political insiders if they do their job.
In this case their job is to enforce a well established law our town adopted 10 years ago. It’s a law much like the one so many other towns have.
But the man whose duty it is to see that the sign law is enforced, Community Development Director Frank Shockey, is too timid to do so. And so, his subordinates in the code enforcement office can’t do so.
In an interview with him on Monday he told me it’s council policy whether he is to enforce it. What he’s saying is he needs the approval of the Town Council to make the violators comply with the law.
He does not. The law is on the books. It’s Shockey’s and his code enforcement’s job to enforce it, plain and simple. It’s not up to him or Council to decide what laws are enforced and which are not, or who must comply and who doesn’t have to. If this Council and their pals in business don’t like the law, let them hold public hearings and repeal it. Until then, it’s the law. and it doesn’t say comply with this law only if you want to. It isn’t a multiple choice ordinance.
Shockey is also claiming it costs money to enforce that law.
Mostly, it just takes will.
Refusing to enforce it stinks of cronyism and flat out rotten politics.
It says that those with connections don’t have to obey the same laws others are obeying.
Lee Melsek
Fort Myers Beach