Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 4-8-22

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Mayor Focuses On Transparency, Accountability
On Wednesday after- noon, Mayor Jane Castor held a press conference about transparency and ac- countability. “The recent dis- tractions on City Council suggest we can do more to improve our transparency and accountability,” said Mayor Castor.
“We must never stop working to improve public trust in city government, and the public should never have even a shadow of a doubt that their public officials are working for the public good, and not their own personal benefit,” she said.
Mayor Castor is pro- posing measures to enhance transparency and accounta-
bility at City Hall in the af- termath of recent controver- sies on the Tampa City Council.
Her plan includes: asking the Tampa’s Ethics Commis- sion to review and analyze how the city can improve current disclosure and regis- tration requirements for lob- byists; asking the Ethics Commission to review the current ethics enforcement processes; and asking the Tampa Ethics Commission to review conflict of interest disclosure requirements.
“Potential conflicts of in- terests are inevitable among elected officials, but those conflicts should be clear and transparent,” said Mayor
MAYOR JANE CASTOR
Castor, who also plans to institute refresher course training on Florida public records laws for key city per- sonnel.
This decision came about after former Council mem- ber, John Dingfelder, re- signed his seat after a lawsuit showed he may have broken public records and ethics laws and used his public office for his personal benefit, and a second, Or- lando Gudes, last week re- signed his Chairmanship after an independent, out- side investigation found evi- dence he created a hostile work environment.
“These are two isolated cases. They cost taxpayers significant money and caused a real distraction, but they do not reflect the ma- jority of the council mem- bers,” who also brushed off
claims that the administra- tion had targeted Dingfelder and Gudes be- cause they opposed her on some issues.
“The City of Tampa did not generate these scandals. John Dingfelder and Or- lando Gudes did,” she said.
Mayor Castor also ad- dressed modernization of the city’s public records process, including new soft- ware to more easily retrieve messages from city phones and a portal to make re- sponding to public records requests more efficient.
The Mayor took ques- tions after the press confer- ence.
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