If the Andrews Institute Falls in a Forest...

The Pensacola News Journal may not yet realize it, but it has just declared war on the Andrews Institute, which, as we have long surmised, is not much more than an expensive marketing ploy for the ever-expanding "non-profit" Baptist Hospital empire.

The declaration of war came in today's editorial, "Lost in Space." The opening salvo begins when the paper asks rhetorically, "Is an unethical act no longer unethical if a person says 'I quit' after reaping the benefits of that act?"

The answer can be deduced from Governor Charlie Crist's refusal to follow through on his promised ethics investigation of the "space travelers' training" program at the Andrews Clinic.
"Apparently so," the PNJ editorial concludes, "at least in the Sunshine State. * * * Be sure to pass that message along to the kids."

Now, the main point of the PNJ editorial is that if Gov. Crist won't do it, someone should investigate how Brice Harris got hired. All one can know from press reports is that using taxpayer money, the former state-paid functionary seemingly promoted himself into a new and oddball "space training" job with Baptist/Andrews that pays twice as much as his state salary -- also using state money.

Brice Harris may have acted like a dissembling, self-seeking careerist, as many think the public allegations suggest. But the thing is, someone at Baptist/Andrews also had to be in on the deal.

If the Sansom-Richburg scandal teaches us anything, it is that it takes at least two schlubs to fleece the public of its money in a hiring scandal -- the employee and the employer. Sometimes, it takes even more than two.

Once someone starts peeling the camouflage leaf off the tender parts of the Andrews Institute, there's no telling where it might lead. If the governor's office or the state ethics commission won't do it, then it's likely to be a grand jury.

In that event, you might say, outer space will be the limit. The powers that be at Baptist Hospital/Andrews Institute won't like that one bit.

edited 4-21 pm

Charlie Crist's World

Even as a Tallahassee grand jury was indicting two Northwest Florida leaders on public corruption charges, governor Charlie Crist was busy sweeping Brice Harris under the rug to cover up the "Project Odyssey" scandal:

Gov. Charlie Crist will not file an ethics complaint against a former top-level Andrews Institute employee, because he has resigned his job. * * * Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for the governor's office, said that "in light of his (Harris') recent resignation from the Andrews Institute we will not be making a referral to the Ethics Commission."

We get it. In Gov. Crist's world, thieves get to keep the booty so long as they retire right after the big score -- if they're caught.

This must be why the gods invented grand juries.

'We Be Prosecuted Now, Bro?'

Brice Harris, the once-upon-a-time state employee who slaved away on a $70,000 state salary to see that half a million dollars in taxpayer money was appropriated for a "space tourism" program in Gulf Breeze, and then took the top job himself for $150,000 a year, has resigned.

Too late. Harris' resignation comes hours after state investigators concluded the 31 year old Pensacola native "likely violated state law" by taking a job he was "substantially" involved in creating on state time with state money.

The Orlando Sentinel, which broke the original story last January, has the latest details ["Space tourism project likely tainted by official's ethics violation"].

The investigators said that they examined approximately 5,000 e-mails from Harris – many sent from his home computer -- that showed he had helped design and draw up the proposal for the program. He even negotiated to set the director’s salary at $150,000 – and then resigned his $70,000-a-year government post last summer to take the job.

Setting up the project “consumed most of Harris’ e-mail communications and work time while he was employed with” Crist’s office, the investigators wrote, and “was disproportionate to his time expended on his various other … duties.”

* * *

Besides overseeing the project’s contract dollars, Harris rewrote large portions of a $60,000 study by the University of West Florida to make the business case for creating a commercial-spaceflight-research center in the Pensacola area.

He approved photos for the project and even picked out logos for lapel pins and shoulder patches the would-be space tourists would wear. In late June, he and Andrews Director Joe Story met with Navy officials in Pensacola to explore use of the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory.

In fact, the investigators found he was so close to the project that at one point, after Space Florida and the Andrews Institute signed an agreement not to talk about their plans to create it, Harris sent Story a message from his BlackBerry. It said: “We be rollin’ now brother!”

Bejeebus! For $150,000 a year, you'd think the Andrews Institute would want someone who doesn't get his kicks emailing parodies of uneducated ghetto residents.

The full report of the Chief Inspector General is available in pdf format here.

We be facin' legal problems now, bro? Well, Governor Crist has asked for an "ethics investigation" -- which, too often, is Tallahassee-speak for "let's sweep this one under the rug."
In the Ethics Commission, at worst Harris would face "a $10,000 fine and be forced to pay back money to the state," the Sentinel says.

Yeah , right. What ought to happen is a grand jury should start looking into all the shenanigans that misled the state into committing $500,000 a year for this insane project.

Barney Bishop, a member of the Space Coast Economic Development Commission, has it right.

"There’s no reason to be spending state dollars to subsidize rich people who will be flying on future flights into space," he told the Sentinel. "I would hope they’re going to cancel this contract, because it makes no sense on the face of it and now there are questions about how it was set up in the first place."

Spacy Florida

A couple of days ago, Orlando Sentinel reporters Aaron Deslatte and Robert Block broke the news that Florida governor Charlie Crist is ordering a state ethics investigation into one of his own former staff employees.

The newspaper is claiming that Brice Harris used his position in the governor's Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development to arrange a half million dollar contract for the Andrews Institute of Gulf Breeze. Then, he "resigned his $70,000-a-year state job -- to take a job overseeing the project for the company he had helped get it."

Crist was more or less forced to run for the political cover of a typically toothless ethics investigation after the newspaper obtained "e-mails and other documents" showing that Harris engineered the grant to the Andrews Institute. Then he got waist-deep in the details of running the place by negotiating "minutae down to the design of the logos and shoulder patches the would-be space tourists would wear." And only then did he resign to take the "private sector" position of running the program himself.

That the hog trough is open for all public employees in Florida to self-deal with taxpayer money should not be surprising. After all, former governor Jeb Bush set the tone when he shagged the people of Florida by giving away millions of state money to Lehman Brothers (R.I.P.) and was rewarded soon after leaving office with a cushy consultant contract.

The majority leader of the statehouse, Ray Sansom (R-Destin), also knows a good scam when he sees it. He shoveled tens of millions of taxpayer funds at the once-obscure Okaloosa-Walton County Community College (now, with its ill-gotten wealth, re-christened "Northwest Florida State College"). For his troubles? He was given a $110,000 a year job for which he didn't even have the required advanced degree.

Never mind the absurdity of spending half a million dollars in Florida "tourism and development" money on "space tourism." Space tourism! Here along the Gulf Coast we can't even say that without giggling.

What really gets us is that the news media persist in referring to these all-too-common bag jobs as "potential ethics violations." They are to ethics what bank robbery is to a late payment to your credit card company.

The facts as reported spell out potential crimes. Rod Blagojevich-type crimes. Anyone -- including an elected official or someone who works for one -- who abuses his public position and deploys taxpayer money to secure a cushy job for himself should be indicted. Just as surely as Blagojevich will be.