Two North Palm Beach council members with no plans to leave office next year resigned their seats last week. A third who was not seeking reelection resigned last month.
Call them victims of Ethics Form 6, the detailed income disclosure requirement that an estimated 2,500 Florida city council members in office on Jan. 1 must file for the first time.
The North Palm Beach trio — David Norris, Mark Mullinix and Darryl Aubrey — are not alone.
At least 24 council members in 11 of Palm Beach County’s 39 towns, including North Palm, have resigned.
Goodbyes — some tearful, some stoic, some angry — were sounded in:
- Lake Clarke Shores: Val Rodriguez, Robert Gonzalez and Robert Shalhoub.
- Briny Breezes: Gene Adams, Christina Adams.
- Ocean Ridge: Ken Kaleel.
- Manalapan: Stewart Satter, Aileen Carlucci, Kristin Rosen, Richard Granara and Chauncey Johnstone.
- Jupiter Inlet Colony: Milton "Chip" Block and Richard Busto.
- Glen Ridge: Jim Ussery, Matt Hadden, Allen Minars and Gary Eckerson.
- Cloud Lake: Beatrice Wallace.
- Hypoluxo: Brad Doyle.
- South Palm Beach: Robert Gottlieb.
- Village of Golf: Name not available.
“I think it’s ridiculous, honestly,” said North Palm’s Norris, a partner in the law firm Cohen Norris Wolmer Ray Telepman Berkowitz & Cohen who served 27 years in office. “Whether it’s right or wrong it doesn’t matter. It’s something I can't do. My business does not allow me to do that type of disclosure and have that open to anybody and everybody to see.”
Until now, most municipal officials had to file Form 1, the less-intrusive declaration of net worth. With Senate Bill 744, state lawmakers required they reveal net worth, income sources, assets and debts.
“This Form 6 is so minute they want me to disclose my daughter’s prepaid college fund,” North Palm’s Mullinix said. “I can’t even fathom that.
”In some small towns, elected officials are paid negligible amounts or nothing at all, making it hard to justify publicly sharing detailed personal income amounts and sources, some said, even in the name of transparency.
“We get paid basically nothing to be up here. Yet they want us to disclose basically everything we have,” said Lake Clarke Shores’ Rodriguez, a criminal defense lawyer.
The penalty for failing to file is $25 a day up to $1,500 but there’s also the potential for removal from office. The deadline to file is July 3.
Manalapan Mayor Stewart Satter initially said he would just pay the fine, The Coastal Star reported. But he joined the flood of departures after he was assured able candidates would run to take his place.
- Some cities are having a second qualifying period Jan. 4 to 11 to fill open seats in the March 19 election.
- North Palm Beach appointed former longtime Palm Beach County Commissioner Karen Marcus Thursday to fill Aubrey’s seat. Marcus does not plan to run in March, when four seats will be filled.
The Coastal Star, which has been covering Form 6’s impact on south county coastal towns for months, contributed to this story, as did Stet Palm Beach intern Jessica Abramsky.
Changing Form 6?
Stet Palm Beach Joel also found one strict Form 6 requirement may be on the way out.
It requires attorneys who own more than 5 percent of their firm and grossed more than $1,000 to disclose the names of clients who produced more than 10 percent of the firm’s income.
Such disclosures violate Florida Bar rules, Steve Zuilkowski, a lawyer for the Florida Commission on Ethics, told the nine-member ethics board on Dec. 1. But state law supersedes those rules, he said.
Ethics commissioners told staff to bring back a change to that rule at their Jan. 26 meeting.
This story was originally published by Stet Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
