Board Member Lori Cunningham's uniform sales to Lake Wales Charter violate ethics laws, investigators assert
Ethics officials found probable cause that school-based bulk purchases create a "continuing" conflict between Cunningham's "private interests and the performance of her public duties."
“There’s more than enough evidence [for a probable cause finding] … The paper don’t lie. And the checks don’t lie.” — Wengay Newton, member of Florida Commission on Ethics, explaining his vote to advance my Ethics Complaint against Polk School Board Member Lori Cunningham.
“To me, the problem is that she’s gaining entree through her position as a School Board member. I don’t care who’s paying for it.” — William P. Cervone, member of the Florida Commission on Ethics, explaining his vote to advance my Ethics Complaint against Polk School Board Member Lori Cunningham.
Note those comments as you read the rest of this.
Here are the key documents and audio from Polk County School Board Member Lori Cunningham’s probable cause hearing before the Florida Commission on Ethics on Jan. 26, 2023.
The first is the investigative report, including key exhibits and pieces of evidence.
The next is the “Advocate’s Amended Recommendation,” which is essentially the prosecutorial case against Cunningham concerning my complaint.
What follows next is the audio of the hearing, in which the Ethics Commission “advocate” and Lori Cunningham’s lawyer (my beloved cousin) Robin Gibson, make their respective cases.
As the complainant, I was entitled to attend the hearing but could not participate.
So this was the professional Ethics Commission staff — not me — making the case to the Commission members, who were sitting in a sort of judicial role. Indeed, the professional staff found extensive evidence and factual matters in the course of investigation that I knew nothing about when I filed my complaint.
Here is the probable cause order itself, which is basically just a formality.
Cunningham now has 14 days to decide if she wants a full evidentiary hearing — essentially an ethics trial.
Billy’s quick take on the record and hearing
Polk County School Board Member Lori Cunningham is in trouble with the Florida Ethics Commission for a simple reason.
Various schools operated by Lake Wales Charter Schools — at least Lake Wales High, Bok North, and Bok South — bought at least $18,000 worth of school uniforms from Cunningham’s business, Applied Images, in recent years.
That’s a way clearer violation than I ever expected to find when I submitted my complaint in early 2023.
A long-time coming
I was operating under the assumption that Lori was selling uniforms to individual parents with the help of a nudge from both Lake Wales Charter Schools and the Polk District’s Dundee Elementary Academy (DEA). In both cases, school web sites or social media or school communications identified Applied Images as the or a preferred vendor for mandatory uniforms.
Lori’s school uniform business has been a source of open whispers for years. I was hoping the Ethics Commission — the state — would address the “preferred vendor” question and put it to rest with clarity.
Investigators found no evidence that the district’s DEA magnet school ever bought any uniforms directly from Applied Images. And preferred vendor uniform buttons for Applied Images and another vendor disappeared from the DEA website while my complaint was under investigation. I don’t know the story behind that.
The Ethics Commission cleared Lori in the DEA part of the complaint.
Indeed, it does not appear the Ethics Commission actually addressed the “preferred vendor” status question at all. That’s likely because they found a far more blatant violation.
An obvious conflict and a LWC scandal
It really did not occur to me when I filed my complaint that investigators would find Lake Wales Charter Schools bought uniforms from Applied Images in bulk. Nor did it occur to me investigators would suggest Lake Wales Charter officials gave false statements about the issue. I had no inkling of any of that until last week’s hearing.
The Ethics investigators and commission found probable cause to assert that the school-based bulk purchases create an ongoing conflict between “her private interests and the performance of her public duties,” as the advocate put it.
They also found Cunningham’s actions violated guidance given to Cunningham, way back in 2012, by her lawyer Robin Gibson, in his capacity as counsel for LWCS.
Gibson, my cousin, wrote clearly in 2012 that LWCS “schools should not use school money to purchase anything from a company in which a school board member has an interest.” He called that the “bottom line” of his advice to Cunningham back in 2012.
You can see that letter in the investigation document I posted above.
Arguing nearly 12 years later before the Ethics Commission as Cunningham’s lawyer, Gibson suggested Cunningham should not be found in violation of ethics laws and his own guidance from 2012 for two basic reasons:
He claimed the money spent by the charter schools on Applied Images was privately raised and given to the schools to spend — so it’s private money and not a conflict.
He claimed elected school board members don’t actually “regulate” charter schools. This is frankly, absurd, on its face. As an elected School Board member, I took many votes and had many policy discussions related to regulating Lake Wales Charter Schools. In multiple of these votes, Robin Gibson himself addressed the Polk School Board — and even me personally — in the hopes that the Polk School Board would do what LWCS wanted us to do.
You can hear and judge for yourself in the audio above. And here are relevant summary excerpts from Advocate’s report. Lori Cunningham is “the respondent.”
What do we make of this, LWC?
And if you are affiliated with Lake Wales Charter Schools, you should probably read this excerpt from the Commission Advocate’s report. Note the parts that are underlined. The entire report is posted above.
That’s enough for now. I’ll have more to say about the enormous value of this process in a civic sense at a later time.
For now, I’m even more convinced that citizenship is the new journalism.